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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.

Despite numerous international and national policy documents promoting girls' and women's empowerment and participation in community sports, the actual access to sport for women and girls is still restricted in several countries. This paper explores the situation in Ghana. Through the analytical lens of Cooky and Messner's theory of 'the unevenness of social change', we analyse the cultural and structural barriers that prevent girls and women from participating in sport in Ghanaian communities. The data material is document analysis, focus groups and semi-structured interviews with male and female officials representing state-funded regional and district sports organisations as well as non-state sports organisations in Ghana. The findings reveal that cultural barriers, rooted in deep-seated cultural norms and structural hindrances that undermine gender-inclusive policies, contribute to the limited participation of girls and women in community sport. Furthermore, the interplay between these cultural and structural factors leads to gender-specific practices and fewer women in leadership positions. Based on our analyses, we suggest that structural changes (enforcing and implementing gender policies) can result in cultural changes (positive gender equality outcomes) over time.

In 2005 the political parties constituting the Norwegian Government declared that they wanted to introduce a nature index providing a picture of developmental trends in Norwegian nature. In September 2010 The Norwegian Directorate for Nature presented the first Nature index for Norway (NI): an overview of the situation and development for nine central ecosystems. The results show varying trends. The situation for 'forest' and 'open lowland' is relatively poor, whereas the situations for the other ecosystems were, although varying, less precarious, for some good and improving. One of the explicit aims of NI were that the results should be of help for future environmental policies. This report is an answer to this last challenge, and aims at an answer to two questions. First, we want to find out how politicians conceive of the results from NI: Do they actually understand the message? Second, we would like to see how a biological diversity policy actually is articulated by Norwegian politicians: Is biological diversity an issue of concern to them? Do they consider it a pressing issue? How do they look at the relation between scientific knowledge and politics? How does biological diversity as in issue fit in with existing political cleavages? What kind of policy tools do they see as relevant for a policy based on the information from NI? To find an answer to these questions, six focus group interviews with members of the youth organizations of six political parties where conducted. As an introduction to each interview, the participants were given a 25 minutes introduction to the results from the NI. Thereafter the groups discussed biological diversity as a political issue, to the extent it was necessary, guided by the researchers' interview guide. The groups consisted of four to eight participants, from 17 to 27 years of age. For the first research question, all involved participants reported that they understood the results presented to them from the NI. When given the opportunity to comment on NI, two themes appeared more often than others. First, the question of reference situation (what is the optimal biodiversity in different ecosystems?) was not clear to everyone. Second, there was some discussion regarding what is called expert knowledge which were based on more qualitative knowledge (in lack of quantitative data). The main question addressed how youth politicians actually articulate biodiversity as a political issue, on the background of a presentation of NI. The study summarises the answers to this question along four dimensions. First, when it comes to the theme of biodiversity, we see that, with a very few exceptions, none of the participants have any special knowledge or interest in this issue. Even though all agree that biodiversity is an important issue when they actually are asked to discuss it, few participants are seeing this as an issue requiring immediate action. Scientific knowledge is of uttermost importance for understanding the issue of biodiversity. Even though none of our participants were very critical towards NI when it was presented to them, they all revealed a deep uncertainty with respect to scientific knowledge and most also a certain scepticism towards science. Apart from this common scepticism, there are significant differences when it comes to what kind of research (f ex IPCC) they actually trust and the extent to which they consider research a good policy tool for nature preservation. For a theme to have some political momentum, it has to be linked to other political issues and ideologies, and in the interviews two such cleavages stood out as important. First, there is the traditional left-right cleavage. On the one hand, there was a tendency, for both left and right, to emphasize that biodiversity and nature preservation are issues with a broad appeal, on the other the more leftist parties expressed a clearer intention to prioritize ecology at the cost of economic matters than the rightist parties. As a political issue biodiversity often equals nature or species preservation which in practice implies that more rural districts have to carry the cost of general interest. For four of our focus groups this meant that national institutions should take the necessary decisions concerning biodiversity, whereas two other groups tend to prioritize local development and welfare at the cost of general interests. On a question of relevant policy tools regarding biodiversity, responses reflected the lack of specific knowledge on biodiversity and represented more standard political approaches: from radical anti-system stances, via more state and marked friendly strategies to a view stating that this in the end is an individual responsibility. For more information on the nature index, see: http://www.dirnat.no/content/500041350/ ; «Naturindeks for Norge» er en oversikt over tilstand og utvikling for biologisk mangfold i Norge. Et av målene for Naturindeksen er at den skal kunne fungere som et redskap for politikkutforming. Mot en slik bakgrunn, spør vi i denne rapporten hvordan politikere forstår den kunnskapen som formidles i Naturindeksen. Dernest spør vi hvordan en politikk om biologisk mangfold blir formulert av norske politikere: Er biologisk mangfold viktig for dem? Hvordan ser de på forholdet mellom vitenskap og politikk? Hvordan passer biologisk mangfold inn i forhold til vanlige ideologiske skillelinjer? Hva slags politiske virkemidler er sentrale? Studien er basert på fokusgruppeintervjuer med medlemmer av seks norske politiske partiers ungdomsorganisasjoner.

Recent decades have seen the growth of various strands of rightwing populist political orientations, where populism and critique of immigration policies have been central. These ideological developments have caused concern for the legitimacy of social and political institutions. The question explored in this paper, based on Norwegian survey data, is 'Which types of right political orientations exist among young people, and how do these political attitudes affect trust in social and political institutions?' The results reveal the existence of both a populist 'new right' political orientation similar to the ideology of the Progress Party and a nativist ideology. The new right orientation contains two sets of variables: (i) economic liberalism/state scepticism and (ii) nationalist values. For trust in political institutions, the emerging picture is complex because the nationalist dimension of both the populist orientation and the nativist ideological orientation implies a high level of trust in political institutions. To the extent the new right political orientations causes mistrust, it seems to come from the liberal economic, anti-statist values included in this ideology. Based on these findings, future researchers should distinguish more clearly between the ideological dimensions going into populist political right orientations and the relationship between attitudes and more practical implications of such ideologies. ; acceptedVersion

This article draws attention to safety concerns affecting young people in the setting of organized sport in Zambia. Our primary aim is to explore ways in which aspects of sport culture may constitute a threat to athlete safety. Secondly, we try to understand sport-specific safety concerns in light of more general concerns for young people's safety in Zambia. The study is based on interviews with athletes, coaches and sports leaders from Zambian sport. Although sport was mainly described as a positive recreational arena for youth, concerns were raised about unequal power relations and problematic ideals in the sport culture. Our findings suggest a need to discuss critically how glorification of toughness and resilience might contribute to normalize harmful practices in sport. Further, we indicate that divergent and elusive understandings of violence and abuse – in research and in practice – can influence athlete safety in significant ways. We conclude that safeguarding in sport continues to exist in the tension between protecting athletes from harm on the one hand and subscribing to a culture that promotes the ideals 'faster, higher, stronger' on the other.

The study investigates how body ideals are discussed and conceptualized among groups of Norwegian youth. Altogether 48 girls and 15 boys, most aged 17 years, took part in nine focus groups, in order to study subcultural body ideals. Major differences were found between east-end and west-end boys (representing socioeconomic differences), where the former were more concerned about being big. Even though the ideals were more or less the same across the groups, the ways of addressing, conceptualizing and discussing body ideals clearly differed between the groups. The analyses reveal that body talk within peer groups seems to contribute to define adequate levels of effort that should be put into reaching the dominating body ideal.

It has long been stated that children have the rights to protection from, e.g., abuse and to the provision of age-appropriate leisure, play, and recreational activities along with participation in all matters that concerns them. Yet, the full range of children's rights to and in sport has not yet been explored in detail. To do so, it is relevant to turn to the Scandinavian countries, which are praised for promoting children's rights and well-being, with organized sport forming part of the daily lives of many children and youths. In this paper, we examine the organizational policies in Scandinavian sport in order to develop foundational knowledge about how the range of children's rights to and in sport may be supported. Comparing key policy documents of the major sports confederations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, these analyses identify great variety in the following: 1. when and how children's rights to and in sport have been made explicit in the three countries; 2. whether the emphasis is on protection and/or provision of sport to children and youths or their participation in shaping sporting activities; 3. the degree to and ways in which such rights are regulated. In sum, our findings reflect a disparity between organizational policies in the three countries, with a more liberal and individualistic approach to public policy in the Danish context, providing some explanation of the only recent development in and scattered enaction of regulations to support children's rights to and in sports. Furthermore, we identify that political attention has mainly been drawn to the protection and provision of sports to children and youths, while their participation in shaping sport is a shared challenge for sport confederations in the Scandinavian countries and beyond.

This article explores an important measure in current prevention policies in sport: guidelines against sexual harassment and abuse. Because little is known about how people involved in sport understand and relate to such guidelines, it fills a gap in current research on sexual harassment and abuse prevention in sport. We draw on 'video elicitation' focus group interviews with sport students in Norway. Our analysis is guided by Norbert Elias's sociology of knowledge and particularly his concept of 'degrees of involvement and detachment'. First, we found that the students had limited knowledge about the sexual harassment and abuse guidelines. Second, we saw how their discussions alternated between different positions when reflecting upon the guidelines' usefulness. From a relatively detached position, the students supported the general idea of guidelines. From the more involved position they voiced concern related to conduct regulations that conflicted with valued aspects of sport practice and mentioned problematic aspects of sport culture that the guidelines do not target. In a blend of involvement and detachment, the students drew on their sport experiences to reflect critically on both the potentials and limitations of the sexual harassment and abuse guidelines. Finally, we draw some implications of the analysis for the improvement of prevention work.

To maintain biological diversity is an important aim for Norwegian environmental policies, and the Nature index for Norway is supposed help this policy by surveying the situation for biodiversity in Norway. The nature index is developed by the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management (DN) and is based on a combination of quantitative data and qualitative evaluations. The index covers the situation for nine ecosystems and is based upon 309 indicators. The aim has been to develop an index giving a concrete numeric measure of the situation for Norwegian nature where the value of zero (0) represents an ecosystem in seriously bad conditions and the value one (1) is the reference state which is supposed to reflect the size of populations in areas with low human influences. The reference state is not to be understood as a political aim. The index for forest is built upon 72 indicators. When it comes to the conclusion for the situation for biodiversity in Norwegian forests, the report says that «Overall, open lowland and forests have the poorest state of all the major ecosystems …» (Nybø 2010, page 6). At first glance, the index seems to indicate that the biodiversity situation in the forests is poor, but at the same time, it is emphasised that there are serious problems with the index value for the forest: lack of time series data, a large proportion of qualitative expert knowledge and difficulties in setting the standard for the reference state. Because of such problems, the report say, one should be very careful when comparing indices across ecosystems. The nature index for forest thereby communicates a certain ambiguity: on the one hand the best science can do, on the other, precautions with respect to how to interpret the result. Against this background, the Nature index for Norway was presented September 2010. The low value on the index for forest immediately sparked many and mostly critical reactions, and the aim of this study has been to study the debate that developed more in detail. A content analysis illustrates how the debate took form and what it looked like. Interviews with persons central to the debates provide information for interpretations of why the topic turned out to be so conflictual. Finally, the aim of the article is to suggest some general insights into what really hinders a consensual application of scientific knowledge in processes as the nature index. The first empirical part of the study is a content analysis of the reactions to and debate on the nature index. During the first year, but mostly the first month after the release of the index, there were 82 articles on the nature index and the forest. Four groups of newspapers stood out as central to the debate: (1) Nationen, (2) Adressa/Trønderavisa, (3) other national papers and (4) other local papers. Furthermore, the analyses showed that the theme was debated (op-eds, editorials and opinions) rather than neutrally presented. The next step was to identify central actors in the debate: both as individuals and as institutions. Focusing on institutions, Ministry of Environment was the most active actor and clearly supportive to the index, Ministry of Agriculture and Food was more critical, whereas researchers seemed more mixed: SSB as positive, other as more critical or neutral. Organizations representing the forest industry appeared as mostly critical whereas environmental organizations were positive or neutral 37 percent of the articles were critical to the nature index and the forest, just as many were neutral, and 26 percent were positive. The most frequent point of critique had to do with the reference state (N=18), followed by discussions of the communication related to the index (14). Thereafter, many actors were concerned with the problems of (not) distinguishing politics and science (9), whereas pointing out the lack of appropriate data also was mentioned in several papers (6). To better understand the reasons for the conflicts appearing in the newspapers, 14 people central to the debates were interviewed. Results from these qualitative analyses are presented in two parts: one more directly linked to what the interviewees report, the other interpreting the finding as part of the larger context. The first topic coming up in most of the interviews is the question of the reference state, and three aspects of the question are discussed. First, many of the interviewees are worried about the relation between the reference state as a scientific and political measure. Second, there is a focus upon how the construction of the nature index has consequences for the forest-index. As a third concern, the communication related to the publication of the index is very much in focus. Even though the overall aim is that the nature index should be based on quantitative measures, these types of data are not available for most of the indicators, and the nature index is, accordingly, to a large extent based on expert knowledge. Because of this lack of quantitative data, some of the discussants claim that the data are simply not good enough. Furthermore, the forest industry is worried for the tendency to, in spite of the call to the opposite, compare across indices leading to the conclusion that the situation is worse in the forest than other ecosystems. Interpreting the interviews as part of the larger context, it becomes indeed clear that the involved actors see themselves as belonging to different societal segments, and very briefly: those working close to the forestry industry are critical to the index, those working with environment are positive. This does not imply that structural positions determine opinions, but identities linked to segments impregnate the whole debate, and structural positioning is reflected in opinions on which knowledge is the best and most relevant. Next, all actors appear as genuinely interested in the development of the forest and want to legitimate their own interests, knowledge and values as being to the best for the forest. Finally, the debate dovetails with the question of who really represents the environment or are most concerned with the forest, and this 'politics of identity' seems to intensify the debate. We wind up the report answering the question of what the hindrances for a successful use of science in environmental policy processes are through the concept of 'boundary work'. Boundary work implies to study relations between science and other societal arenas as a continuous struggle for the legitimacy of science and the question of what should be hegemonic knowledge and values in a field. DN has based their work with the nature index in an ideal where scientists produce the best available knowledge, where after politicians should prioritize how to act on this knowledge. Even though most participants tend to agree that this is a reasonable strategy to follow to legitimate the nature index, they do not assume that this is how the process of scientific knowledge actually works in the field of politics. As mentioned, our qualitative data are interpreted on two levels. First, with respect to the level of factual communication related to the nature index, most participants seem to agree that the communication, especially related to the publication of the main report, could have been better. Several interviewees also indicate that groups representing interests in the field could have been involved to a higher degree. Secondly, at the general level, there is no doubt so that the index delivers information in a field with deep, historical and well known conflicts of interest between groups of actors. Those working with the nature index face a divided field with two set of actors that, even though they agree on certain issues and claim to have common aims and interests, basically want to develop Norwegian forests differently. Both have to legitimize their interests which inevitably leads to, sometimes, intense debates. Even when wise strategies and good communication prevails, such structurally embedded disagreements do not disappear. Nevertheless, boundary work matters and how the nature index was and will be communicated and presented is certainly decisive for how the interaction between science and politics develop. ; Naturindeks for Norge er utarbeidet for å bedre arbeidet medbiologisk mangfold, og vurderer tilstanden i ni økologiske systemer. Da den første versjonen av indeksen ble lansert høsten 2010,ble det diskusjon omkring indeksens vurdering av tilstanden fordet biologiske mangfoldet i skogen. I denne rapporten ser vi nærmere på denne debatten. Ved hjelp av en innholdsanalyse beskriver vi når og hvor debatten foregikk, hvem som deltok, hvor kritisk den var, og hva som var gjenstand for kritikk. Med utgangspunkt i intervjuer med sentrale personer, ser vi så nærmere på hvordan de ulike aktørene beskriver og begrunner sine posisjoner. Dernest fortolker vi aktørenes posisjonering i en større sammenheng og finner klare spor av segmentering: næring mot miljø. Til slutt ser vi på debatten i lys av begrepet om grensearbeid: Kampen om legitim kunnskap.