The risks and insecurities emphasised in contemporary societies have given rise to diverse forms of policing, such as transnational, intelligence- and operative-based police collaborations. The purpose of this ethnographic study is to analyse the collaborative work among intelligence and operative personnel from different border authorities in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. The focus of this study is how the collaboration activities created an in-group mentality among the participating officers which was contrasted with another category, that of the “norm-dissolving Russian”. This category included concepts such as being a spy, a criminal and a potential military threat, and became a sort of "Other" that reinforced their own in-group bonds. Intelligence and operative personnel present in the analysed collaborative sequences create their professional identities by contrasting themselves with these categories. They build up a kind of group feeling and present a particular moral order that is created and re-created during their collaborative work. The norm-stable and the threatening norm-dissolving moralities are created within the interaction – especially when meeting work groups that differ from their own normative code. Morality is thus created and re-created in the encounter with people that are associated with being the “enemy”, present in the situation both in physical and invisible form.

Introduction: This article explores explanations for attitudes towards the acceptability of transactional sex. The sparse research investigating attitudes towards transactional sex uncovers a link between gender equality, or feminism, and a lack of support for the trade in sex. However, there are no research agendas that attempt to explain variance in attitudes towards transactional sex where support for gender equality is widespread throughout a population.

Methods: We estimate regression models utilizing the 2017 Danish Values Survey (Den Danske Værdiundersøgelse) in order to predict views on the acceptability of transactional sex.

Results: While the trade in sex is legal in Denmark, we find that a majority of respondents hold negative attitudes towards transactional sex, which conveys a lack of congruence between public opinion and policy. Further, gender is a powerful predictor of attitudes towards transactional sex, with women finding it less acceptable. In addition, the analysis uncovers that general attitudes towards sexual behaviour are the largest predictor of views on the acceptability of transactional sex. That being said, we find that men’s views on the acceptability of transactional sex are more of a function of their general attitudes towards sexual behaviour than they are for women.

Conclusions: The findings indicate that, unlike men, women appear to differentiate between their attitudes towards general sexual behaviour and their views on sexual behaviour that they may associate with negative societal implications.

This study explores the relationship between local government dissemination of COVID-19 information and partisanship. The unit of analysis is all official county government websites in the United States. In particular, we investigate if there is a correlation between the overall partisanship of a county and whether a county government’s website 1) mentions COVID-19, and 2) provides safety instructions concerning COVID-19. We hypothesize that mass partisanship will impact the probability that a county government’s website provides information related to the coronavirus. We find that a larger share of Democratic voters in a county is associated with an increase in the probability that a county government’s website mentions COVID-19 and provides safety instructions for their residents. The results hold even after controlling for population density, internet subscriptions, and COVID-19 cases and deaths. The finding indicates that citizens’ access to information, even on matters of public health, are partially a consequence of partisanship.   

Sedan flera år förs ett arbete i Sverige för att motverka ”våldsbejakande extremism” och ”radikalisering”, samtidigt som delar av detta arbete har kritiserats både utifrån sin hur det har definierat sina begrepp och hur det praktiskt har genomförts. Av denna anledning är det av intresse att närmare granska detta arbete, denna undersökning har undersökt frågeställningarna (I) hur olika typer av politiskt våld har betraktats över tid, (II) vad inbegrips i termen ”våldsbejakande extremism”, samt (III) hur den svenska statens arbete mot våldsbejakande extremism ser ut. Detta har gjorts utifrån en kritisk diskursanalys av flertalet dokument framtagna på det offentligas initiativ (däribland rapporter, handlingsplaner och direktiv), samt en översiktlig idéhistorisk genomgång menad att ge en historisk bakgrund till analysen. De statliga dokumenten har främst undersökts utifrån hur de definierar sina begrepp samt vilka förslag som förs fram för att motverka politiskt våld, medan den idéhistoriska genomgången görs som en del av uppsatsens teoridel. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna för arbetet är framförallt Pontara, Benjamin, Žižek, Galtung och Weber. I undersökningen framkommer att staten framförallt agerar ur en hegeliansk och dualistisk uppfattning om staten som den aktör som kan överbrygga samhällets motsättningar samt att statens agerande inte bör betraktas efter samma måttstock som andra samhällsaktörers. Begreppet ”våldsbejakande extremisms” definition varierar i de olika dokument, men den vanligaste definitionen är att våldsbejakande innebär ett aktivt eller passivt stöd till ideologiskt motiverat våld, medan extremism definieras som att inte acceptera en demokratisk samhällsordning där politiska mål och samhällsförändringar kan påverkas genom politiken och demokratiska processer. Vidare beskrivs tre miljöer som pekas ut som våldsbejakande, vit makt-miljön, den utomparlamentariska miljön samt den islamistiska miljön, dock tonas ideologierna ner till förmån för individuella och miljömässiga riskfaktorer till så kallad radikalisering. Fokuset i de statliga dokumenten ligger på förebyggande arbete i olika form, och ofta på lokal nivå. I de statliga dokumenten diskuteras överhuvudtaget inte statens egen våldsanvändning, vilket kan tolkas som att det våld som utövas av en demokratisk stat per definition är legitimt och lagligt. Detta osynliggör statens laguppehållande våld. Bland de olika våldsbejakande miljöerna finns en bredd av uppfattningar kring våld, moral och politik, vilket leder till en problematik då de klumpas ihop till en generaliserad modell över all våldsbejakande extremism, och risken är att förståelsen blir grumlig och åtgärderna ineffektiva. Därutöver är det problematiskt hur grupper och individer reduceras till att vara en potentiell risk, samt att offentliganställda uppmanas att närmast åsiktsregistrera dem som de kommer i kontakt med professionellt.

The phenomenon of toxicity, which in this context refers to aggressive, harassing and/or insulting communication and behavior in online gaming, is a well-known problem in the gaming industry. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the discourse about toxicity in online forums about the first person shooter game Overwatch. How is toxicity described in the online forums? What themes can be identified in the forums? What experiences of toxicity are discussed, and what explanations are offered in the forums? Thus, it is a qualitative study of the discourse about toxicity in Overwatch in the online forums about the game. The empirical material consist of approximately 150 pages of downloaded forum discussions, from the period 2017-2018. In the forum discussions, several analytical dimensions may be discerned. The concepts of anonymity and social deindividuation are often highlighted and regarded as important explanative factors by the participants in the forums. Due to the inherent anonymity in online gaming, it is argued that players may engage in aggressive and harassing behavior, which they normally would not do in face-to-face interaction. Another important dimension concerns what may be conceptualized as the normalization of toxic behavior. Sometimes, toxicity is described in the forums simply as a fact that players must learn to deal with: “Welcome to the internet” as one forum participant wrote. Other times, it is described as a problem that toxic practices are so widespread that they have a negative impact on the gaming experience. Finally, gender aspects of toxicity in online gaming are also discussed. Female gamers may sometimes be harassed by players using words with sexual connotations, and by calling female gamers “bitch” or similar gendered derogatory remarks. 

This article contributes methodological reasoning on how researchers can not only make social problems more sociologically relevant but also make sociology more relevant for research on social problems and social work. Using what David Silverman has described as a “two-step trick”, social problems are made more sociologically relevant, and also sociology is made more relevant for research on social problems. By moving in and out of the sociological territory, researchers may reframe and redefine the object of their studies to gain new insights and perspectives. Three specific examples from different contexts are discussed, in which sociology may function as such a perspective-generating device: institutional treatment, the deaf world and the problem of corruption.

This presentation deals with the notion of "the sensitive interview". Many subjects in the field of criminology may be considered "sensitive"; they involve actions (one’s own or others) that may be deemed unlawful or immoral. In this presentation it is argued that the presumed sensitivity of a given subject must be considered potential rather than given beforehand. It is not an intrinsic, essential part of a given subject. Rather, it should be viewed as a result of the interaction which occurs during an interview. It is through the very act of treating a potentially sensitive subject in a cautious way that the subject is made sensitive. Viewed in this sense, the delicate or sensitive nature of a subject is in fact constituted as such during the interview and not by the subject matter. In this presentation, the notion of the sensitive interview is discussed and analyzed from an interactional perspective and by using concrete research examples. Traditional advice on how to deal with sensitive subjects during interviews is discussed. Normally, the interviewer is supposed to treat the presumed sensitive subject with great caution and care during an interview. The interviewer is supposed to start with less threatening questions, be sympathetic and accepting during the interview, not "pushing" the interviewed person into talking about issues that he or she wants to avoid, and so on. Although advice like the above naturally may be valid in some cases, if one follows them without discrimination they can also mean not getting the most from an interview. In fact, by treating a subject as sensitive the interviewer may end up with an impoverished and less interesting material. By avoiding treating a given subject as sensitive beforehand, it may be possible to obtain a less trivial and more rewarding interview material.

Dokumentering av varierat slag har kommit att bli ett vardagligt inslag för anställda i en rad offentliga verksamheter. Inom sjukvård och socialtjänst är detta synligt i checklistor, manualer, bedömningsinstrument och inte minst i mycket omfattande datasystem som ska bemästras av personalen. Vi kallar denna typ av administration dokumenteringspraktiker, ett samlande begrepp för arbetet med redan etablerade såväl som nya administrativa rutiner. Vad händer med det vardagliga arbetet när dokumenteringspraktiker expanderar och görs till ett alltmer framträdande inslag i den dagliga verksamheten? Vad gör professionella med dokumenten och vad gör dokumenten med de professionella? I en jämförande studie undersöks olika enheter inom både socialtjänsten och sjukvården med hjälp av observationer och intervjuer. Det ökande kravet på mer och/eller bättre dokumentering omfattar både sjukvård och socialtjänst vars verksamheter kan beskrivas som präglade av en allmän dokumenteringskultur. Det finns dock lokala variationer i hur dokumenteringen hanteras. Tre exempel: 1) Dokumentationskraven kan bemötas utifrån ett utforskande förhållningssätt eller ett byråkratiskt sådant; 2) dokumenteringen tycks inordnas i olika prioriteringsordningar (t.ex. juridiska, moraliska, ekonomiska) vilka betonas i vissa sammanhang men utelämnas i andra; 3) dokumentering kan utövas som en integrerad del i arbetet eller som ett extraarbete vid sidan av "egentligt" arbete. Med ett jämförande perspektiv kan vi urskilja specifika lokala dokumenteringskulturer och avser presentera gemensamma och särskiljande drag i det vardagliga (dokumenterings)arbetet inom socialtjänst och sjukvård.

This paper discusses modern organizational meetings in the public sector, with a focus on time, specifically the planning and scheduling of time among managers . In this qualitative analysis, data were gathered through an ethnographic study of managers in several public organizations, all in Sweden . During interviews and field observations, managers told about their time work involving strategies for dealing with their fully booked calendars, or for handling what they described as boring or meaningless meetings . These strategies can be conceptualized as a form of ”meeting resistance” among the managers in these organizations . Their retold experiences and strategies raise issues of meeting resistance in relation to the meetingization of contemporary work life and, in a wider sense, questions of power and control over time at work . By using a variety of strategies for negotiating and resisting the rule of the calendar, managers may achieve a greater sense of control over their time . Nevertheless, despite their strategies and resistance, the machinery of meetings is hard to stop due to an Eigendynamik of meetings.