Campylobacter QMRA: A Bayesian Estimation of Prevalence and Concentration in Retail Foods Under Clustering and Heavy Censoring

A Bayesian statistical temporal‐prevalence‐concentration model (TPCM) was built to assess the prevalence and concentration of pathogenic campylobacter species in batches of fresh chicken and turkey meat at retail. The data set was collected from Finnish grocery stores in all the seasons of the year. Observations at low concentration levels are often censored due to the limit of determination of the microbiological methods. This model utilized the potential of Bayesian methods to borrow strength from related samples in order to perform under heavy censoring. In this extreme case the majority of the observed batch‐specific concentrations was below the limit of determination. The hierarchical structure was included in the model in order to take into account the within‐batch and between‐batch variability, which may have a significant impact on the sample outcome depending on the sampling plan. Temporal changes in the prevalence of campylobacter were modeled using a Markovian time series. The proposed model is adaptable for other pathogens if the same type of data set is available. The computation of the model was performed using OpenBUGS software.     

The Import/Export of Police Models: Danish 19th Century Police Reform Between Elites of Revolution and Reaction

The article investigates the diffusion of police models in the 19^th century taking the Danish import of the Metropolitan Police implemented in London in 1829 as its main object of analysis. Building on the sociological framework of Pierre Bourdieu, the focal point of the analysis is how an international police model was crafted by national elites who profited from the import of a specific form of policing. In the Danish context, the import and mutation of the English role model was closely related to a transformation of the national field of power as absolutism was formally disbanded but practically folded into a new constitutional monarchy in which conservative and liberal elites coexisted.     

COMMUNITY AND CARE WORK IN A WORLD OF CHANGING IDEOLOGIES

Seymour B. Sarason, one of the founders of community psychology, has stated the need for developing barometers of community changes. The authors present a methodology for identifying societal ideologies, ideological shifts and power relations as reflected by the language of public discourse. As a case study, systematic analyses of changes in the Norwegian language over the last two decades are presented. It is demonstrated how Norwegian society has been gradually transformed from a traditional Scandinavian welfare society towards the values and ideals of neo-liberalist market ideology: for instance, language reflects and supports competitive practices increasingly being applied to public service provision. Another example is that the public discourse of individual rights has gradually been overshadowing the discourse of community duties and obligations. On the other hand, the analyses also reveal counter-ideologies, reflected, for example, in the launching of new words and expressions critical to neo-liberalist ideology.     

Rituals of migration: an introduction

ABSTRACT

This introduction presents a framework for the articles in the special issue Rituals of Migration. First, it provides an overview of studies of ritual and migration, highlighting the fruitfulness of exploring the two fields together and arguing for the use of ritual as a cultural prism on processes of continuity and change in migration. In light of these analytical approaches, the introduction continues by outlining and discussing the three major themes that crosscut the articles (the interrelations between change and continuity, processes of placemaking and lines of social differentiation), demonstrating how the articles can shed light on these issues.     

Ecstatic things

Abstract

This article addresses the orchestration of domestic lighting as an object of anthropological study. It takes Bedouin domestic architecture in southern Jordan as a starting point in an analysis of how light is used as means of safeguarding spaces as part of hospitality practices central to Bedouin culture. By arguing that things are “ecstatic” in the sense that they transcend their own tangibility, the article shows how objects, such as tinted windows, impose themselves on other objects to shape the particular visual presence of the world that informants opt for. Such a presence of the world is analyzed through the notion of “atmosphere” as a contemporaneity of subjective emotions, cultural ideals, and material phenomena. Thus, while boundaries between interior and exterior may be upheld by tangible material strategies, such as walls, these boundaries may also simultaneously be permeated by the ecstasy of material things, which aim to safeguard other aspects of life through less tangible strategies.     

Burger Jihad: Fatal Attractions at a Sufi Lodge in Pakistan

Based on a number of “burger episodes” during 10 days of itikaf at a Sufi lodge in Pakistan, this article discusses the difficulties of religious self-cultivation among young Muslim pilgrims from Denmark. The focus on food and eating is not only used to discuss how religious brotherhoods and spiritual kinship are created and maintained, but also becomes a prism to discuss emic conceptualizations of the nafs, the lower self, as well as how the jihad of dedicated Sufi Muslims is tested by fatal attractions of various kinds—in this case, in the guise of tasty burgers.     

Durable consumption,saving and retirement

Durables yield services through life but are also a store of value and both features may have important implications for savings and retirement decisions. Durables also affect bequests and thus induce intergenerational transfers. We show that allowing explicitly for durables has important implications for retirement decisions and responses to various changes in the environment. An improvement in the possibility of freeing housing capital makes the old retire earlier (income effect) while the young plan to retire later since they increase housing demand and reduce financial savings. Considering welfare in stationary equilibrium, we find that a reduction in wealth locking-in in durables is not necessarily welfare improving due to the effects on bequests. From a social welfare perspective, individuals tend to choose too much financial savings, too little durable acquisition and too early retirement.     

Back to the future: religious mobility among Danish Pakistani Sufi Muslims

ABSTRACT

Pakistani migrant families in Denmark are embedded in a transnational social field, one that stretches between the rural villages in Punjab that they left behind in the 1960s and 1970s, and their new home in greater Copenhagen. However, the upcoming generation, born and raised in Denmark, often has an ambivalent relationship with the homeland of their parents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Sufi tariqa(order, path) called Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Saifi, this article explores how the ritual of ‘zikr Allah’ (the commemoration of God) provides an opportunity for the Copenhagen Saifis to cultivate new connections with Pakistan, beyond the kinship networks and the family village of origin. The ritual is significant for their aspiration to become pious Muslims. In this process, Pakistan comes to be ascribed with new meanings. Whereas the parents’ generation associated Pakistan with family and kin, property, houses, and power connected to the village of origin, these pious Saifis begin to associate Pakistan with spirituality, purity, and love for their shaykh in particular and the Sufi tariqa in general.     

Different routes,common directions? Activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK

This article analyses and compares the development of activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK from the mid-1990s. Despite their diverse welfare traditions and important differences in the organisation and delivery of benefits and services for the unemployed, both countries have recently introduced large-scale compulsory activation programmes for young people. These programmes share a number of common features, especially a combination of strong compulsion and an apparently contradictory emphasis on client-centred training and support for participants. The suggested transition from the 'Keynesian welfare state' to the 'Schumpeterian workfare regime' is used as a framework to discuss the two countries' recent moves towards activation. It is argued that while this framework is useful in explaining the general shift towards active labour-market policies in Europe, it alone cannot account for the particular convergence of the Danish and British policies in the specific area of youth activation. Rather, a number of specific political factors explaining the development of policies in the mid-1990s are suggested. The article concludes that concerns about mass youth unemployment, the influence of the 'dependency culture' debate in various forms, cross-national policy diffusion and, crucially, the progressive re-engineering of compulsory activation by strong centre-left governments have all contributed to the emergence of policies that mix compulsion and a commitment to the centrality of work with a 'client-centred approach' that seeks to balance more effective job seeking with human resource development. However, attempts to combine the apparently contradictory concepts of 'client-centredness' and compulsion are likely to prove politically fragile, and both countries risk lurching towards an increasingly workfarist approach.