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While research on youthful drinking is extensive, the literature has been geographically skewed towards urban settings. As a potential corrective to this, our focus in this paper is on youthful drinking in rural Denmark. Based on 22 in-depth interviews with young drinkers, this paper explores the drinking practices of rural youth. More specifically, drawing on Antonsich's [2010. "Searching for belonging–an analytical framework." Geography Compass 4 (6): 644–659] notion of place-belongingness, we examine how sentiments of belonging relate to locally embedded drinking practices. We highlight the extent to which rural drinking places are characterized by the participation of young men, whose educational and professional aims are predominantly tied to the local community and activities within it. In so doing, we show that these contexts are primarily associated with 'drinking a single', as opposed to drinking to intoxication like their urban peers. We argue further that these 'lighter' but frequent forms of alcohol use, which we term 'congenial drinking', are related to accomplishments of place-belongingness and stand out as a gendered, classed and place-bound phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown an increase in the experience of educational pressure among students in contemporary Western societies and also, in their use of pharmaceuticals, for enhancement purposes. Based on qualitative interviews with 60 Danish students conducted in 2016, this article analyses student narratives about their use of pharmaceuticals to meet the expectations they experience in the educational settings. Though many students find pharmaceuticals useful, interesting gender differences exist regarding their motives and legitimations of use, and regarding pharmaceuticals of choice. By using two paradigmatic, narrative cases the article suggests that a 'male strategy' of augmentation is more in accordance with the overall requirement to perform and succeed in the 'performance society' than a 'female strategy' of normalisation. The article argues that there may be a parallel between the increasing numbers of women in Danish society diagnosed with stress and anxiety, the media representations of achieving women being more vulnerable than men, and the gender differences in pharmaceutical use. The paper aims to contribute to a nuanced discussion of the relations between educational pressure, gender and use of pharmaceuticals for enhancement purposes in contemporary Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the ‘gangster’ subculture of boys aged 15–18 years in a secure care unit for young offenders in Denmark. By drawing on a specific case from a 2-month field study, the paper demonstrates how three boys teach a new boy to become a ‘real gangster’. This learning process not only reveals central elements in what constitutes the ‘gangster subculture’ in the secure care unit but also shows constituents of the subculture in which the boys live their everyday lives outside secure care. Learning to be a ‘gangster’ involves both short- and long-term learning processes. The short-term process is closely linked to learning the specific ‘gangster style’. The long-term learning is closely connected to experiences of growing up in areas of ‘advanced marginality’ and life on the streets celebrating values of respect, loyalty and crime, all subcultural values formed by the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender. The paper suggests that understanding the ‘gangster’ subculture calls for taking its cultural expressions seriously in terms of the intersection of class, ethnicity and gender formed in everyday practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intersection of gender and class concerning welfare clients with medically unexplained symptoms. The study is conducted in Denmark using qualitative interviews with welfare officers and clients. The paper's focus is on how issues of gender and class intersect in the negotiation of illness among welfare officers and clients. The particular client group in question consists of individuals that are defined by their lack of a bio-medical diagnosis. Their 'lack' of identity accentuates how gender and class become central in the categorisation practices, constructing the ill person as either bio-medically sick or as a person who may be suffering but only from diffuse psychological problems. The paper shows that it is predominantly poorly educated women without a bio-medical diagnosis that welfare officers describe as suffering from psychological problems despite the fact that the women themselves focus on physical ailments in their illness stories. Men and better-educated women are described by the welfare officers as tired and exhausted or truly stressed after a long working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]