‘When you're boxing you don't think so much’: pugilism,transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members

This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young men's dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.     

Influence of competition level on referees’ decision-making in handball

The influence of competition level on referees’ decision-making was investigated. Referees’ decisions in 90 handball games (30 games X 3 competition levels) were observed in different situations related to the advantage rule, and 100 referees from two different levels of expertise were subsequently asked to offer explanations for the competition-level effects from the first part of the study. Results revealed that at the highest level of competition referees intervened less frequently with sporting sanctions, but more frequently with disciplinary sanctions. These effects were apparent mainly in immediate intervention situations and unsuccessful advantage situations, but not in successful situations. Referees explained these effects of competition level in terms of a player competence stereotype, in addition to referees’ different expertise across competition level. The implications of the findings for understanding how status-related stereotypes impact on intervention behavior are discussed.     

Changing men,changing times – fathers and sons from an experimental gender equality study

The aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for addressing intergenerational transmission, historical change and agency. The framework will be employed to analyse the findings from a longitudinal follow‐up study over two generations of men, where couples from Norway participated in an experimental research study, the Work‐Sharing Couples Project, which aimed to promote egalitarian work–family adaptations in the early 1970s. The original study was based on both spouses working part‐time and shift parenting. The follow‐up study concluded that the untraditional work–family arrangement had not been passed on to the sons. The article develops a multidimensional analysis of the work–family adaptations of men in two generations: the untraditional adaptation of fathers in the 1970s; and the neo‐traditional adaptations of sons in the 2000s. In developing a four‐dimensional approach to intergenerational transmission and social change, the article contributes to the study of intergenerational transmission through the comparison of situated agency in different generations and time/spaces. Taking into account different aspects of time and space, personal biography, discursive and material structures of opportunity, and intergenerational dynamics at the family level as well as at social level, the article contributes to theorizing longitudinal qualitative research by linking the micro‐level to the macro‐level.     

A Study of a Network Meeting: Exploring the Interplay between Inner and Outer Dialogues in Significant and Meaningful Moments

The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies focusing on dialogic practice in southern Norway. In this article, we present a qualitative study of a network meeting focusing on the interplay between the participants' inner and outer dialogues. The network meeting is between an adolescent boy, his mother and two network therapists, the same adolescent case discussed previously in this journal by Bøe et al. ( 2013 ). The aim of this study is to explore how the interplay between inner and outer dialogues contributes to significant and meaningful moments for the interlocutors. A multiperspective methodology is used that combines video recordings of a network meeting and participant interviews with text analysis. Our research found the interplay has an important role in understanding the emergence of significant and meaningful moments in therapy. A one‐sided focus on participants' utterances or inner dialogues was insufficient to explain their significance and meaning to the interlocutors. A dialogical approach provides a theoretical frame and concepts that are useful in investigations of therapeutic conversations.     

How does Conflict in Migrants’ Country of Origin Affect Remittance‐Sending? Financial Priorities and Transnational Obligations Among Somalis and Pakistanis in Norway

This article examines how conflict in the country of origin interacts with other factors in shaping migrants’ remittance‐sending practices. Our data come from a survey of 10 immigrant groups in Norway and semi‐structured interviews with Somali and Pakistani remittance‐senders and receivers. First, we conduct an in‐depth comparison to explore the differences in how Somali and Pakistani migrants decide about remittance‐sending. Second, we use survey data on all 10 migrant groups to evaluate whether the differences that are not explained by socioeconomic characteristics, may partly reflect whether or not there is ongoing conflict in the country of origin. In our analyses we differentiate between (1) the effect of migrants’capacity to remit and their prioritizing of local and transnational expenditures, and (2) the impact of state collapse and absence of human security on migrants’ and refugees’desire to remit. We find that ongoing conflict in the country of origin exerts an upward pressure on remittance‐sending.     

Work hours,social value of leisure and globalisation

We examine how openness interacts with the coordination of consumption–leisure decisions in determining the equilibrium working hours and wage rate when there are leisure externalities (e.g., due to social interactions). The latter are modelled by allowing a worker's marginal utility of leisure to be increasing in the leisure time taken by other workers. Coordination takes the form of internalising the leisure externality and other relevant constraints (e.g., labour demand). The extent of openness is measured by the degree of capital mobility. We find that: coordination lowers equilibrium work hours and raises the wage rate; there is a U-shaped (inverse-U-shaped) relationship between work hours (wages) and the degree of coordination; coordination is welfare improving; and, the gap between the coordinated and uncoordinated work hours (and the corresponding wage rates) is affected by the extent and nature of openness.     

Geometric Anisotropic Spatial Point Pattern Analysis and Cox Processes

We consider spatial point processes with a pair correlation function, which depends only on the lag vector between a pair of points. Our interest is in statistical models with a special kind of ‘structured’ anisotropy: the pair correlation function is geometric anisotropic if it is elliptical but not spherical. In particular, we study Cox process models with an elliptical pair correlation function, including shot noise Cox processes and log Gaussian Cox processes, and we develop estimation procedures using summary statistics and Bayesian methods. Our methodology is illustrated on real and synthetic datasets of spatial point patterns.     

The Relationship Between Aversive Conditioning and Risk-avoidance in Gambling

This study investigated the relationship between aversive conditioning, heart rate variability suppression, behavioral activation system/behavioral inhibition system and risk-avoidance on the Iowa gambling task (IGT) in a nonclinical sample (29 male, 29 female, mean age = 20.7). A laboratory based Pavlovian aversive conditioning paradigm was used where a 1500 Hz tone (CS+) was followed by a burst of loud white noise (US), and a 850 Hz (CS−) tone was never followed by the US. In a subsequent extinction phase where the CS+ and CS− were presented without the US, conditioned skin conductance responses to the CS+ indicated aversive conditioning. The results showed that the participants who did not show aversive conditioning (N = 26) exhibited significantly less risk-avoidance compared to participants who did show aversive conditioning (N = 32). Regression analysis showed that among the study variables, only aversive conditioning contributed significantly to explaining variance in risk-avoidance. These results may have implications for understanding risk-taking in gambling in general, and may be a starting point understanding the role of aversive conditioning in the development and maintenance of gambling problems.