Birgitte Schepelern Johansen

Counting Deviance: Revisiting a Decade’s Production of Surveys among Muslims in Western Europe

Abstract This article looks at the emergence of Muslims as a category of knowledge in surveys and opinion polls that have been conducted as a reaction to the rising demand for data about Muslim populations in Western Europe within the last ten years. The most prevalent feature of the conceptualization of Muslims is that they are inherently immigrants, or of immigrant descent, who are living within a certain nation state. This creates a continuous statistical invisibility of certain Muslims, for instance those without immigration backgrounds, as well as Muslims with national backgrounds other than Muslim majority countries. Further, this identification of the Muslim as immigrant, even if unintended, contributes to upholding a subtle exclusion of Muslims from the national community as always foreign and always potentially in need of integration.

Heroin: From Drug to Ambivalent Medicine

Abstract This article provides an anthropological analysis of the introduction of medically prescribed heroin as part of official substance abuse treatment. While anthropological inquiries of substance abuse treatment have mainly focused on providing the users perspectives on the (ab)use or unraveling the conflicts and negotiations between users and staff, the present article argues for the merits of paying attention to the spatial dimensions of substance abuse treatment. Focusing on the spatial and material ramification of the treatment can shed a nuanced light on the still vulnerable process of altering the heroin from drug to medicine, and thereby on the attempts to settle heroin in a new practical and semantic landscape. The heroin is anchored in some powerful discourses of crime, death, and pleasure, and the analysis shows how these discourses (re-)appear in the spatial textures of the clinic, contesting the attempts to medicalize the heroin. Further, the article argues that even though the treatment aims at a marginalization of the heroin in the life of the clients, the spatial arrangements and the practices within them simultaneously enforces a centralization of the heroin, making the space for treatment highly ambivalent.

Counting niqabs and burqas in Denmark: Methodological Aspects of Quantifying Rare and Elusive Religious Sub-cultures

Muslim women wearing face-covering clothing are the subject of politically heated debates in a number of European countries, but reliable data on the number of these women (niqabis) are generally lacking. At the request of the Danish government, the authors conducted a survey of niqabis in Denmark; this work is the first attempt to quantify niqabis in a European country by sampling new data from several different kinds of sources. Sociologically, niqabis represent a rare and elusive group, which presents particular methodological challenges. The methods discussed and used, such as stratified sampling, use of key informants, and location sampling, are relevant in the studies of many contemporary religious sub-cultures. Extensive triangulation of the different data provided an estimated number of niqabis of 150, with an uncertainty range of 100–200. This corresponds to 0.1–0.2% of Muslim women in Denmark. These figures tally with current rough estimates in other European countries.

Doing the Secular: Academic Practices in the Study of Religion at Two Danish Universities.

The academic study of religion at the public university often presents itself as a secular, non-religious, scientific endeavor. The identity of the study is thus firmly rooted within one of the central secular—religious divides, namely that between science and religion. Based on the assumption that such distinctions between religion and the secular (in this case science) are by no means naturally given, but continuously need to be produced and sanctioned in social practice in order to sustain themselves, the article shows how the distinction between religion and science is produced in daily academic practices at two departments for the Study of Religion at Danish universities.The academic study of religion at the public university often presents itself as a secular, non-religious, scientific endeavor. The identity of the study is thus firmly rooted within one of the central secular—religious divides, namely that between science and religion. Based on the assumption that such distinctions between religion and the secular (in this case science) are by no means naturally given, but continuously need to be produced and sanctioned in social practice in order to sustain themselves, the article shows how the distinction between religion and science is produced in daily academic practices at two departments for the Study of Religion at Danish universities.

Heroin: From Drug to Ambivalent Medicine: On the Introduction of Medically Prescribed Heroin and the Emergence of a New Space for Treatment

Abstract This article provides an anthropological analysis of the introduction of medically prescribed heroin as part of official substance abuse treatment. While anthropological inquiries of substance abuse treatment have mainly focused on providing the users perspectives on the (ab)use or unraveling the conflicts and negotiations between users and staff, the present article argues for the merits of paying attention to the spatial dimensions of substance abuse treatment. Focusing on the spatial and material ramification of the treatment can shed a nuanced light on the still vulnerable process of altering the heroin from drug to medicine, and thereby on the attempts to settle heroin in a new practical and semantic landscape. The heroin is anchored in some powerful discourses of crime, death, and pleasure, and the analysis shows how these discourses (re-)appear in the spatial textures of the clinic, contesting the attempts to medicalize the heroin. Further, the article argues that even though the treatment aims at a marginalization of the heroin in the life of the clients, the spatial arrangements and the practices within them simultaneously enforces a centralization of the heroin, making the space for treatment highly ambivalent.