Reidar Almås

Domestic dinner Representations and practices of a proper meal among young suburban mothers

The purpose of this article is to explore contemporary representations and practices of the domestic dinner in the context of households in the process of establishing themselves and families in suburban Norway. The concept of a ‘proper dinner’ is the result of complex social and cultural processes. Cooking dinner is not only an act of caring for others, preparing a proper meal is also an act of positioning oneself. Cooking dinner is an important part of the symbolic production of socially and culturally acceptable feminine subject positions. The empirical analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 25 mothers of young children about how they think and act in their everyday dinner practice. The material shows clear limitations on individuality when it comes to dinner patterns. There is a network of social and cultural conventions that frame eating practices and distinguish between different dishes. These distinctions follow a clear temporal and spatial order. Dishes prepared from a common Norwegian ingredient, minced-meat, are used as an example of how dishes carry quite different social and cultural meanings.While there are several discourses surrounding dinner that offer different possibilities for action, some representations and practices are more ‘proper’ than others. Three distinct dinner models for proper meals are identified: the traditional, the trendy and the therapeutic.

Norwegian gender roles in transition: the masculinization hypothesis in the past and in the future

Abstract This paper discusses the so-called masculinization hypothesis which states, in the Norwegian context, that the female share of the agricultural labour force has been declining for the past four decades. Historically, the female contribution of agricultural labour has been under-estimated, but in recent times, social scientists and politicians have ‘discovered’ the important role of women in agriculture. Nevertheless, women are still leaving the farming industry and, while gender equality is on the political agenda as never before, it has not been easy to mobilize rural women to enter the troubled farming sector. The female exodus from farming is deeply embedded in changing gender roles. While the role of Norwegian women in the labour market saw major changes in the 1970s and 1980s, changes that gave women a greater share in wages and welfare benefits, the inequality between agriculture and other industries is growing again. Young rural women seem reluctant to join a low-paid industry in which they have to work on their own most of the day, without enjoying the recent social gains of women employed in other industries.

Food Trust, Ethics and Safety in Risk Society

We are living in the age of mad cow disease. Through large scale bulletins in the media, we have learned about food scandals that threaten both our health and our environment. This has raised problems like: Who can we trust? And what type of food production can be regarded as ethically defensible in our day and age? And finally, how does the precautionary principle apply to the way we evaluate food and risk. The likelihood of becoming sick from the next meal has probably never been less than it is today. Yet at the same time, we know less than ever about the long-term consequences of todays food production. Ulrich Beck argued more than 10 years ago that we are moving from “industrial society” to “risk society”. While industrial society was structured through social classes, risk society is individualised. Becks individualisation thesis is central to being able to understand how individuals handle risks through composing their own risk identity profile. Because the different experts “dump their contradictions and conflicts at the feet of the individual” (Beck 1992:137), he or she has to find biographical solutions to handle risks. Where to live, what to eat, where to take a vacation, what clothes to wear, with whom to mingle and to have sex with is up to the individual. And it is not like in simple modernity anymore, when the regulatory authorities took care of the risks and kept the foods you should not eat out of the country. The reflexive burden is placed upon the shoulders of the individual. So is also the case when it comes to genetic modified foods and debates around this. Even if these new foods are labelled, the consumer has to choose which experts to believe before to buy and eat. It is not the case any more that all experts agree and that the public food control institutions will tell you what to do. In the future there will be new food scandals in Europe that will threaten health and the environment. Such food scandals will be a central feature in what people experience as “risk society”. Expertise in the social sciences will gradually be given a new role as “experts on peoples’ concerns”.

The diffusion of cardiovascular disease in the Norwegian farming community: A comnination of morbidity and mortality data

This article analyses an observed increase in cardiovascular morbidity among male farmers in Norway during the last decade in the light of the traditionally low mortality in farmers. Three hypotheses to explain the increases in CVD morbidity are tested, of which one, stating that there is a time lag in the spread of risk factors, proves to be most fruitful. Mortality data for agricultural communities show no increase in overall CVD rates, but when age-specific rates are analysed, an increase in the younger age groups emerges, especially for ischaemic heart disease. If this process continues, farmers and farming areas may change from low to high mortality, relatively speaking. It is argued that this change is due to a time lag in two waves, first an increase in risk factors such as smoking, more fatty diets and less physically demanding work, then improved lifestyles due to a better perception of risk factors. Both waves may be affecting rural areas later than the urban centres. Knowledge of such geographical and socio-economic diffusion processes is important in the planning and implementation of prevention programmes.

Introduction: Emerging Challenges, New Policy Frameworks and the Resilience of Agriculture

Purpose – This chapter introduces the book collection and sets the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the book is to re-interpret major challenges to global agriculture – particularly climate change and the food crisis of 2008 – as demonstrating shocks to the resilience of global food systems. Findings – Using resilience to shocks as a key quality of food systems enables recent crises to be understood as central to the ongoing dynamics of food systems rather than simply atypical events. Alongside climate change and food security, other potential shocks are identified: biosecurity, energy, financial and volcanic. Originality/value – This framework establishes new criteria for examining the potential merit of multifunctional and neo-liberal policy regimes with world food systems.

Physical activity among Norwegian adolescents- a multilevel analysis of how place of residence is associated with health behaviour: the Young-HUNT study

IntroductionThe purpose of this article is to investigate whether and to what degree participation in physical activity among adolescents is associated with area economic deprivation in the municipality where they live. In the study we took account of aggregated informal social capital at the municipality level and compositional effects due to spatial concentration of individual variables known to be associated with physical activity. These include informal social participation, participation in other cultural activities, and family affluence.MethodsThe study was based on a secondary analysis of data from the Norwegian HUNT study and municipality characteristics from the Norwegian Social Science Data Service ‘Commune Database’ from 2006. The sample consisted of 8114 adolescents whose ages ranged from 13 to 19. The explanatory power of the independent variables on the dependent variable was assessed using a multilevel analysis in which individuals comprised the first level and were nested within the municipality level.ResultsThe average level of physical activity was not negatively associated with the level of area economic deprivation when we adjusted for informal social participation at the community level. Adjusting for area economic deprivation, we found that informal social participation at the community level was associated with a higher level of participation in physical activity at p< .01.ConclusionFor adolescents in a given municipality, informal social participation is more strongly associated with a higher level of physical activity than the degree of area economic deprivation. This finding supports our social capital hypothesis, which states that the amount of social capital is strengthening the individual’s ability to take part in physical activity.

Reframing Policy Regimes and the Future Resilience of Global Agriculture

At the outset of this book, we argued that it was important that we study agricultural “policy regimes” rather than agricultural policy itself. Our reasoning was that our interest lies in the actual outcomes in terms of farming practice, industry arrangements, global trade linkages, technology assemblages, and agroecological relationships in particular countries and regions. It is a convenient fiction that these practices and arrangements are the direct result of the formal agricultural policy arrangements in each specific country. In reality, the formal policy process in each country (including not only agriculture, but also, in some cases, rural, environmental, trade, and social development policy) can be argued to be in constant interaction with wider global politics, geographically specific environmental and cultural dynamics, prevailing farm practices, and new technologies. To recognize this full assembly of dynamics that coordinate to determine actual farm practice, we use the term “policy regimes.” In neoliberalized economies such as New Zealand, there is even a strong sense in which devolved governance at the industry and sector level now operates within these regimes in the same way that formal agricultural policy does in European countries.