Åse Strandbu

Identity, embodied culture and physical exercise Stories from Muslim girls in Oslo with immigrant backgrounds

The article has two closely connected aims. The first is to illuminate some embodied aspects of identity that might contribute to the understanding of the underrepresentation of girls with immigrant parents in sports clubs. The second, and most important aim, is to discuss some recent identity theories. Roughly speaking two approaches dominate studies of, and public debates on, the lives and identities of young girls with immigrant parents; hybridity and Creole identity perspectives on the one hand, and power perspectives addressing control and restrictions by parents and persons from power elites on the other. Advantages and problems with these perspectives are discussed in the light of stories about physical exercise told by girls with immigrant parents. Even though they provide some important insights, the two perspectives are criticized for lacking a grip of the non-reflexive parts of identities. The article concludes by suggesting that practice perspectives could contribute to a more complete understanding of the lives and identities of young minority girls.

Environmentalism among Norwegian Youth: Different Paths to Attitudes and Action?

Based on a survey of three cohorts of youth in Oslo, aged 14–16 (N = 11 425), the relevance of gender, class, cultural capital and political orientation to developing a pro-environmental orientation and joining an environmental organization was analysed. Cultural capital appeared to be of importance for developing strong environmental concern as well as for joining an environmental organization, while traditional measures of class background were less relevant. As many boys as girls were strongly concerned about the environment, but the majority of members of organizations were girls. The relationship between a conservative political orientation and strong environmental concern was positive, while the relationship between this political orientation and membership in an environmental organization was negative. Environmental issues now appear to have entered a realm of self-evident ‘good things, regardless of political perspective. However, the more comprehensive critical stance found in most environmental organizations is still related to a radical political perspective.

Sport for Children and Youth in the Scandinavian Countries

In the course of less than 100 years, childrens sport in the Scandinavian countries has been going through a remarkable transition. By the turn of the twentieth century, voluntary sport participation was primarily an adult domain, and childrens opportunities for participation were generally limited to a small selection of sports and primarily through the public school system. Today, childrens sport is an important public health and welfare issue in all of the Scandinavian countries, and children are far more sport active than adults, and the majority of childrens sports participation takes place in voluntary sport clubs or in commercial sport settings. The comparative analyses show that the states of Denmark, Norway and Sweden have willingly and frequently sought to regulate school sport. By contrast, traditions regarding the voluntary sport organizations have been much more diverse and ranged from heavy interference in Norway to almost no interference in Denmark.

Youth and the environmental movement: symbolic inclusions and exclusions

The present study set out to use qualitative interviews in an effort to understand why young people from highly educated groups, especially from ‘non-productive’ sectors of the economy (public services, teaching, etc.), are found to have a relatively strong affinity to the environmental movement. Young people aged 15–20, who were members of organizations associated with the protection of or use of nature, were interviewed. In conclusion, we suggest that to some extent the class differences can be interpreted in the light of forms of symbolic inclusions and exclusions. There are a number of ‘symbolic fences’ that working-class youngsters have to cross in order to become members of an environmental organization. These fences are related to: the style and cultural identity of the members, expectations of a sort of self-enclosure as part of participation in the organization, the somewhat androgynous gender-identity of the members, the perceptions of nature that are dominant among the members and the organizations intellectual image.

Experiences of Body and Gender Identity among Young Female Norwegian Basketball Players[1]

The experience of gender identity in relation to exercise and sport participation is discussed in this essay on the basis of interviews with young women in a non-elite basketball team in Norway. We conclude that skills and values previously identified as masculine tend not to be at conflict with general gender scripts for young women. Girls participation in sports appears not to be accompanied by threatened gender identities or gender battles, but rather by prudent negotiation and expansion of gender scripts. Furthermore, we discuss whether or not sports participation can be seen as progressive for women by empowering the body-subject and counteracting objectifying discourses about the female body.

Understanding the increase in parents’ involvement in organized youth sports

ABSTRACT As part of an ethnographic study on young people and learning (the knowledge in motion across contexts of learning project, set in Norway), we interviewed a diverse sample of parents of young teenagers, many of whom were active in organized sports. The parents described their level of involvement in sport in a way that contrasted sharply to our own experiences participating in youth sports in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then most parents were absent from the sports fields. This new role of sports in the practice of parenthood is what we investigate in this study. The purpose is to further the understanding of the cultural processes that drive what we see as a marked generational change in the relationship between organized sports and the practice of parenthood. In contrast to previous studies, we also focus on the relationship between generational change and classed patterns in parenting. Our data suggest that across social classes, parents see involvement in sports as normal, and as a way to connect to the child emotionally and to further the childs development. We interpret the significance of sports in the parent–child relationship as related both to the normalization of youth sports that the parents experienced when they grew up, and to the new cultural ideas of parenthood that they encounter as adults. We find that there are tensions embedded in this new form of parenthood that are particularly evident in what we call ‘deep involvement’, an intensified form of parental engagement with youth sports that is practiced primarily by fathers in the economic fraction of the middle class. We conclude that the new role of sport in the practice of parenthood is a classed as well as a generational phenomenon.

Young Norwegian-Pakistani women and sport How does culture and religiosity matter?

Studies from several countries show that girls with an immigrant background participate in organized sports to a lesser extent than other young people. Barriers related to culture and religion serve in many of these studies as explanations. In this article we suggest that the notions of culture and religion in this field of studies could be elaborated and we distinguish between three different approaches: (a) culture and religiosity as restricting factors; (b) culture and religiosity as embodied dispositions for action; and lastly (c) culture and religiosity as the basis for reflexive praxis. Analyses of qualitative interviews with young Norwegian-Pakistani women show the relevance of the three perspectives. The study’s most important contribution is to illustrate how culture and religiosity have multiple meanings. The three perspectives presented in this paper might be used as analytical tools in future research on minority women and sports.

Body Talk and Body Ideals Among Adolescent Boys and Girls: A Mixed-Gender Focus Group Study

This study explores how body ideals are discussed among adolescent boys and girls in 5 mixed-gender focus groups (n = 37). The ways in which boys and girls talk about bodies differed clearly within the focus group conversations as well as in the everyday situations described in the interviews. The boys were more concrete in their description of ideal bodies in the focus groups but reported less engagement in everyday body talk. The study demonstrates that self-derogating “fat talk” is normative in the meaning “easy to fall into” but not normative in the meaning “approved of”: Fat talk is more or less required in some situations but not really appreciated. Both girls and boys agreed on this description of fat talk among girls. They also agreed that fat talk rarely occurred among boys. It was a general consensus that body issues are more sensitive and problematic for girls than for boys.

Political framing of sports: the mediated politicisation of Oslo’s interest in bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics

ABSTRACT Sport is a malleable phenomenon: it is not obvious what might be contentious about sports and how sports eventually turn into political questions. For years, there had been discussions on whether the city of Oslo should make a bid for the Winter Olympics 2022. In 2012, it was decided that the issue should be the topic for an advisory referendum in 2013. This guaranteed the presence of a sport issue on the public agenda for a longer period. We used the occasion of the referendum to study how a sports issue was framed politically through a content analysis of articles on the issue in a selection of Norwegian papers the year leading up to the election (N = 362). We first give a basic overview of number of articles, the papers in which they occur, article type, and timing. Then, we present the stand taken on the issue and identify the actors involved. Two groups of actors, both positive to making a bid, dominated the debate: sport organisations and Oslo politicians. Finally, we look at the issues discussed. The dominant themes were sport facilities, economic questions, urban development, and sport goods. In our conclusion, we emphasised three aspects of the debate. First, Norwegian regional politics were central in giving meaning to the issue and sports-specific benefits became more marginal. Second, the core argument became that we need a large sports event primarily because of indirect effects. Third, sports as a political issue lacks ‘severity’ and ‘efficacy’ and sports are lacking ‘propriety’.

Bourdieu knew more than how to play tennis! An empirically based discussion of habituation and reflexivity

This paper explores the role of reflexivity in habituation by contrasting the learning of aerobics and basketball with the acquisition of gendered bodily skills. The discussion is inspired by the paper So, how did Bourdieu learn to play tennis? Habitus, consciousness and habituation, by Noble and Watkins (2003), which represents a fruitful contribution to the debate on the roles of reflexivity and consciousness in learning. Still, this model of habituation remains one-dimensional, since it only addresses habituation involving reflexivity. Based on fieldwork at both a basketball club and an aerobic group for Muslim women, along with interviews with participants in the two arenas, we suggest that even though habituation often involves reflexivity, there are also forms of habituation that do not involve high degrees of consciousness. The paper adds to the on-going theoretical debate about the hybridisation of habitus and reflexivity by offering concrete and empirically based examples of different degrees of reflexivity involved in processes of habituation. This adds to a theoretical underpinning of habitus as a lived, changing category.