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This qualitative study investigates health care practitioners’ approaches to early childhood obesity in Denmark and their view on their own ability to initiate processes of change in affected families, and it asks the overall question of whether perceived barriers become real through practitioners’ reluctance to intervene in families labelled as ´problematic’. The paper identifies three approaches in the practitioners’ narratives: the socially oriented, the individually oriented, and the mixed. The individually oriented approach was based on a logic resembling individualistic explanatory models of behaviour change, and was related to a positive perspective on their own ability to move families towards healthier habits by health care practitioners. The socially oriented approach borrowed elements from a sociological perspective, which seemed to lead to resigned pessimism in the face of the complexity of the problem of childhood overweight and a reluctance to address early childhood overweight in some families. In practitioners of all three types, widespread cultural essentialism was found. Non-western, ethnic minority background was seen as determining family habits and making preventive action especially difficult. Based on this, the current paper discusses whether individual actions and choices are being ascribed too much explanatory power, and the health system's biased perceptions too little. [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]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of the onset of acquired hearing impairment. The focus of attention is why a person seeks treatment. The Danish welfare state serves the population 'in need' such as those with an audiological need and gives them guidance on becoming hearing aid wearers in order to rehabilitate them back to 'normalcy'. However, within audiological research, noncompliance has attracted much attention as investigations have shown that more than 20 percent of hearing aids are very seldom, if ever, in use and 19 percent are used only occasionally. As shown in the paper the form a problem takes is in large part a product of micro-political struggles. Hence, at the onset 'need' is often embedded in social pressure from significant others. The paper examines these two discursive frameworks and their constitution of (hearing) problems and concludes that norms of disease are complex and epistemologically contested and can help explain why noncompliance is dominant when it comes to hearing rehabilitation for hearing impaired adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loïc Wacquant has made a widely read and debated contribution to critical research on contemporary urban marginality. A central part of the theoretical framework is that residents of deprived areas internalize territorial stigmatization, which then has a range of negative effects. Based on empirical research this paper assesses Wacquant's conception of territorial stigmatization and suggests some points where urban sociology might go beyond or adjust Wacquant. The empirical research focuses on Aalborg East, a deprived area in the northern part of Denmark. Through media analysis it is documented that Aalborg East is subject to territorial stigmatization, and it is suggested that cultural racism plays an important role. Qualitative interview data suggest, however, that the residents do not internalize or resign to the stigma. They become sad or angry when confronted with the stigma, but they have an either positive or ambivalent view of the area and most of them are content to live there. This finding is validated by survey data. Wacquant's conception cannot be entirely rejected, though, as the construction of internal dividing lines in some interviews can be interpreted as a way of managing territorial stigmatization. Nevertheless, the data provide little support for a theory of clear-cut internalization of territorial stigmatization in the case of Aalborg East. This conclusion leads to three discussions: a confirmation of Wacquant's claim that the role of the state matters; a discussion of the specific political culture of Scandinavian societies; and a problematization of Wacquant's reliance on Bourdieu's conception of symbolic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initial viewpoint of this paper is that one can understand neither the social foundation of the Progress Party nor its future maximum and minimum support from the electorate by abandoning the assumption that it is a class party. The question is whether this selective support forms a total pattern which clearly both designates the Progress Party as a class party and shows that new class distinctions have come to the surface in Denmark. Is the appearance of the Progress Party simply a symptom of new social contradictions splitting up and grouping some of the traditional social classes and, if so, what are these contradictions? A weakness of the material used here is that it only concerns one period of time, the late summer of 1976. Therefore, it does not allow for any changes over time in the social composition of Progress Party or other parties. Nevertheless, the material provides a basis for expressing some doubt about the declining class dependence of the political parties in recent times. These statements are based on analyses which do not normally discuss whether any change has occurred in the content of the classes over time. To what extent, for example, has the working class had to recruit its new members from other social categories than has previously been the case.

Since the mid-1980s, gender equality has constituted a major priority in the provision of Danish foreign aid. Seeking to understand policy-making processes in the field of foreign aid, this article analyses three gender policies in relation to Denmark’s official foreign aid published respectively in 1987, 1993 and 2004, examining the degree to which they reflect domestic politics, organisational concerns within Danida and global gender norms. Challenging earlier research, the conclusion is that, while global norms, organisational concerns and the normative environment in Denmark all play important roles, Danish stakeholders have had a limited and decreasing influence over these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theodor Geiger grew up in Germany and emigrated to Denmark in 1933, threatened by the Nazi regime. He worked at the University of Copenhagen 1933-38 and was the first Professor of Sociology at the University of Aarhus 1938-52. He spent 3 years in exile in Sweden. Geiger is an important figure in German and Scandinavian sociology and also known in English-speaking countries. He was a prolific teacher and writer. Throughout his life as a sociologist Geiger combined theoretical with empirical interest. If he rejected all speculation without a factual basis, he showed an equally strong disdain for empiricism without a theoretical foundation (Mayntz 1969). His works cover a broad spectrum of subjects, still of professional interest, such as: the foundation and fundamental concepts of sociology, the education of working-class people, industrial organization, class structure, stratification and mobility, social origin and functions of the intelligentsia, the sociology of law, critics of ideology and the nature of modern mass-society and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last five years space has been reintroduced as a fundamental dimension in sociology, amongst others by Giddens. Vivid discussions take place in Urban Sociology and Geography but clarity and agreement on the definition of space has not yet been reached. Is it more of a material, or more a social matter? To talk of socio-spatial relations is indeed a very complicated enterprise. This article suggests a definition and a model for socio-spatial relations, and illustrates this with data on the increasing local political activity of trade unions branches in Denmark. Especially the changing role of women in production and reproduction seems to contribute to interesting new forms of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]