Muslims Opposing Violent Radicalism and Extremism: Strategies of Swedish Sufi Communities

Europe has seen the development of a new research agenda in response to Islamist terror attacks of recent years. Researchers are not only trying to solve the “radicalization puzzle” in order to understand the reasons why young Muslims in Western countries are attracted to extremism, but they are also making proposals for de-radicalizing extremists and creating relationships of trust with Muslim communities. Directly or indirectly, Europe’s Muslim minorities are the objects of the interventions and preventive work under discussion. This study suggests an alternative approach. Rather than regarding Muslims in Europe as more or less passive objects of various anti-extremism interventions, it directs attention toward the strategies developed by European Muslims themselves in fighting Islamist extremism. Using qualitative interviews with leaders of five Sufi communities in Sweden, the study examines a series of strategies for meeting the challenges posed by extremists.     

Perceived contra observed physical work load in Swedish dentists

In an earlier questionnaire study, dentists reported high experienced physical work load in their profession, but low to moderate complaints from their musculoskeletal system. The correlation between reported physical work load and pain from the musculoskeletal system was weak. This discrepancy could not be satisfactorily explained. Therefore, a second study was undertaken, in which the same 27 dentists who reported musculoskeletal problems were video recorded during one hour of clinical work, and the records were later analyzed using PEO (Portable Ergonomic Observation). PEO is a frequency analysis method which allows observation of work in real time using a portable computer or video recordings. PEO can be adjusted for registration of single or multiple work operations. Output data are presented as frequency, duration, and sequence of the various work operations. The aim of the present study was to investigate if there was a relation between observed work load recorded with PEO, and subjectively estimated work load and musculoskeletal complaints recorded with a questionnaire based on Visual Analogue Scales. Sitting and standing postures, and head, trunk and arm movements were analyzed. The PEO observations showed that dentists generally perform their clinical work in a sitting position, with the head bent forward almost half of the time. Only weak to moderate correlations (r =0.0-0.6) were found between observed physical work load and subjective estimations of experienced physical work load and musculoskeletal complaints. These findings support the results in our previous study, but they do not explain the large difference between the observed low work load and the subjectively experienced high work load. The study will be followed up by EMG measurements and free interviews, where both muscular load and psychosocial factors will be evaluated.     

The Influence of Family Structure Vs. Family Climate on Adolescent Well-Being

A study was conducted to explore adolescent well-being as a function of family climate versus family structure. Two hundred seventy-eight adolescents (52% female, 48% male; mean age = 14.78 years) completed questionnaires that assessed family structure (nuclear, single-parent, step), family climate (level of satisfaction with one’s family and level of negative affect in one’s family), and several indicators of current well-being (educational expectations, self-esteem, hopelessness, delinquent attitude scores, and optimism). Participant well-being did not vary by family structure. However, family climate and well-being were significantly related. Implications of the study’s findings are discussed.     

Perceived inflation and expected future prices in different currencies

Five experiments were conducted to investigate whether perceived inflation and expected future prices are influenced by the nominal representation of increases in product prices in different currencies. In contrast to previous research demonstrating overestimates of the perceived inflation of product prices after the transition of the domestic German Mark to Euro [Greitemeyer, T., Schultz-Hardt, S., Traut-Mattausch, E., & Frey, D. (2005). The influence of price trend expectations on price trend perceptions: Why the Euro seems to make life more expensive? Journal of Economic Psychology, 26, 541–548; Traut-Mattausch, E., Schultz-Hardt, S., Greitemeyer, T., & Frey, D. (2004). Expectancy confirmation in spite of disconfirming evidence: The case of price increases due to the introduction of the Euro. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 739–760], the price increases were of normal magnitude (5% and 8%) and a larger set of prices was used including small weekly expenses, prices of durables, and rent. All experiments were conducted in Sweden (not member of the European monetary union) employing undergraduates who volunteered to participate in class settings without any financial compensation. The price increases were expressed in the same currency, either actual currencies (Swedish Crowns or Euros) or fictitious currencies with different units. In general inflation was underestimated, to a larger extent when the currency or the product prices were unfamiliar than familiar. It was also shown that product-specific price changes made it difficult to perceive inflationary price increases. Only marginal effects of currency unit were observed.     

Polyhedral combinatorics of the cardinality constrained quadratic knapsack problem and the quadratic selective travelling salesman problem

This paper considers the Cardinality Constrained Quadratic Knapsack Problem (QKP) and the Quadratic Selective Travelling Salesman Problem (QSTSP). The QKP is a generalization of the Knapsack Problem and the QSTSP is a generalization of the Travelling Salesman Problem. Thus, both problems are NP hard. The QSTSP and the QKP can be solved using branch-and-cut methods. Good bounds can be obtained if strong constraints are used. Hence it is important to identify strong or even facet-defining constraints. This paper studies the polyhedral combinatorics of the QSTSP and the QKP, i.e. amongst others we identify facet-defining constraints for the QSTSP and the QKP, and provide mathematical proofs that they do indeed define facets. Author now works at Motorola. (2005 onwards)     

Estimation of a population mean with two-way stratification using a systematic allocation scheme

A technique of systematically allocating a sample to the strata formed by double stratification is presented. The method can proportionally allocate the sample along each variable of stratification. If there are R strata and C strata for the first and second variable of stratification respectively, the technique requires that the total sample size be at least as large as max(R, C). An unbiased estimator of the population mean is given and its variance is obtained. The technique is compared with a random allocation procedure given by Bryant, Hartley, and Jessen (1960). Numerical examples are given suggesting when one technique is superior to the other.     

A Comparison of Out-of-home Care for Children and Young People in Australia and Sweden: Worlds Apart?

Abstract

In this paper we present a comparative analysis of out-of-home care in Australia and Sweden. We compare the age structure of the out-of-home care population and the types of out-of-home care services provided to children and young people in both countries. Our analysis reveals that in Australia the out-of-home care service system is focused mainly on children who are deemed to be abused or neglected within their families, while in Sweden the majority of the out-of-home care population are teenagers who cannot live with their families for emotional or behavioural reasons. These population differences intersect with variations in the forms of service provision in both countries, with a much greater reliance on home-based care in Australia than in Sweden, while there is more extensive use of residential care in Sweden. We envisage that this paper will demonstrate how the age structure of the out-of-home care population, though rarely considered in international comparative child welfare research, reveals much about the assumptions on which State intervention with children and young people is based. We intend that this analysis will assist social workers to better understand and address the gaps in the quality and comprehensiveness of out-of-home care service provision to children and young people in both countries.     

“The First Mark of Pain”: Toward a child-centered methodological reorientation of social theory,race and corporal punishment in American life

The current white supremacist racial order in America fundamentally relies on fear and pain to shape the subjectivities of Black people in childhood. This violence is most visible when enacted by police officers against unarmed Black youth. A less visible yet more pernicious form of racist violence against Black children is exercised by community proxies such as Black teachers and parents. Annual government reports reveal that Black children are more likely to be injured or killed by their parents than by police. In this paper we inquire as to why, despite the many Black writers who have described parental violence as an intergenerational re-enactment of the violence of slavery, and despite decades of research on the harms of hitting children, social theorists have not analyzed how Black parents can serve as proxies for white supremacist violence. We argue that Black parenting culture has in many ways internalized the white supremacist view that corporal punishment is required to instill the discipline necessary to spare Black youth from police violence and incarceration. We conclude that until social scientists foreground the voices of Black youth in their studies, rather than adults, our ability to understand and confront the reproduction of white supremacist violence will be impeded. We argue that the physical punishment of children in Black families is an aspect of the legacy or “afterlife” of slavery. We contend that this omission persists because Black youth voices are absent from social analysis on the issue of physical punishment, existing only in clinical studies divorced from macro-sociological analysis, and we discuss how this omission occurred as a matter of scholarly history.     

Big Business in a Thin Market: Understanding the Privatization of Residential Care for Children and Youth in Sweden

This article analyzes the transformation of Swedish residential care for children from a regionally coordinated, public social service system into a thin, but highly profitable, national spot market in which large corporations have a growing presence. Marketization and privatization are theorized as complex processes, through which the institutional structure and logics of this small, but significant, social policy field changed profoundly. Using official documents, register data, media reports and existing research, three consecutive phases in the development of the children's home market are identified since the early 1980s. Change was driven on one hand by policies inspired by New Public Management, which shifted public authority horizontally to the private sector, and vertically to local authorities (funding) and to the state (regulation). On the other hand were the responses of local authorities and private actors to the changing incentives that policy shifts entailed. During the first two phases, both the proportion and size of for‐profit providers increased, and the model of family‐like care was replaced by a professional model. Cutting across the trend of privatization in the third phase was establishment of a parallel system of homes for unaccompanied refugee children – mostly in public ownership. Similarities with privatization in the English system of children's care homes are noted. By showing how the Swedish market for residential care has been created by policy and by actors’ responses to those reforms, the article provides a foundation for thinking through how the predictable, significant and well‐documented problems of such care markets might be addressed.     

A framework for comparing social protection in developing and developed countries: The example of child benefits

Abstract   The article outlines a conceptual and theoretical framework for improved comparative analysis of publicly provided social protection in developing countries, drawing on the research tradition of the study of longstanding welfare democracies. An important element of the proposed institutional approach is the establishment of comparable qualitative and quantitative indicators for social protection. The empirical example of child benefits indicates that differences between developed and developing countries should not be exaggerated, and that the prevalence of child benefits in sub-Saharan African and Latin American countries today resembles the inter-war period (1919-1938) situation in developed regions.