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Drawing on accounts from 22 lesbian couples with children conceived using donor insemination, this chapter explores how the respondents’ selection of parent terms, such as “momma” and “mommy,” influences day-to-day negotiation of parenthood. Term selection was affected by personal meanings respondents associated with terms as well as how they anticipated terms would be publicly received. Couples utilized personalized meanings associated with terms, such as terms used by families of origin or reflected in a parent’s cultural background, to help non-biological mothers feel comfortable and secure in their parenting identities. Some families also avoided terms that non-biological mothers associated too strongly with biological motherhood and felt uncomfortable using for themselves. Families also considered whether parent terms, and subsequently their relationships to their children, would be recognizable to strangers or cause undue scrutiny to their family. However, not all of the families selected terms that were easily decipherable by strangers and had to negotiate moments in which the personal meanings and public legibility of terms came into conflict. Overall, these accounts illustrate the importance of parent terms for lesbian-parent families, and other nontraditional families, as a family practice negotiating both deeply personal meanings surrounding parent–child relationships and how these terms, and the families, are normatively recognizable in public spaces.

This chapter reports from a qualitative study on how identity categories, including gender and ethnicity, are experienced and constructed through video gaming among immigrant youth in Norway. The aim here is to explore the manifestations and contestations of gendered power and hegemonic practices among the young immigrant girls and boys. This chapter builds on research about everyday media use especially video games, and our analysis is based on theories of hegemony, power, gender, and ethnicity. Three key findings are observed from the study: (a) video games acting as a bridge between ethnic minority boys (not so much with the girls) and ethnic Norwegians, (b) hegemonic gendered practices, emphasizing the “otherness,” in particular for girls adhering to the category of gamer, and finally, to a lesser degree, (c) marginalization within video games on the basis of being a non-Western youth in a Western context. As such the study simultaneously not only confirms but also challenges dominant discourses on video games by suggesting that, although some positive strides have been made, the claims of a post-gender neutral online world, or celebrations of an inclusive and democratic online media culture, especially video gaming, are still premature.

This paper evaluates the modern baseline presumption of nonconsent in sexual assault (rape) cases in light of different theories of sexuality (feminism on the one hand and sex positivism/queer theory on the other) and in light of how sexuality manifests itself in the lives of contemporary young women. The authors analyze social science literature on contemporary heterosexual practices such as sexting and hook-ups, as well as contemporary media imagery, to inform a contemporary understanding of the ways in which young people perceive and experience sex. Using this evidence as a foundation, the authors reconsider the ongoing utility of a baseline presumption of nonconsent in sexual assault cases. This paper demonstrates the complex relationship between women’s sexual autonomy, the contemporary culture’s encouragement of women’s celebration of their own sexual objectification and the persistence of high rates of unwanted sex. In the end, it demonstrates why a legal presumption against consent may neither reduce the rate of nonconsensual sex, nor raise the rate of reported rapes. At the same time, it shows how the presumption itself is unlikely to generate harmful consequences: if it deters anything, it likely deters unwanted sex, whether consented to or not.

Up until recent years, all agricultural production in Norway was strictly regulated through spatial policy (location), production quotas and other price and market regulations. Prices and products were handled by the farmers’ cooperatives. International (e.g. WTO agreements) and domestic pressure has gradually loosened the governmental regulation of chicken and eggs. Economic (e.g. new ownerships), technological (innovations throughout the whole chain), political and institutional (liberalization) and cultural (e.g. in consumption and farming) changes have reconfigured the landscapes of chicken meat production, opening up new opportunities for the chicken industry. Chicken therefore makes a particularly good case for exploring recent major changes in the agri-food system. In this chapter, we investigate evolving rules, risks, challenges and opportunities in and around chicken meat value chains. Empirically, we build on interviews, document studies and statistics on the structural development of the chicken industry and we discuss how these changes are developing in other parts of the Norwegian agri-food system.

We examine the influence of the self-assessment and self-enhancement motives on the choice of comparison organizations in two experimental studies. Study 1 shows that: (1) self-assessment generally prevailed over self-enhancement, guiding decision makers to choose organizations that were more similar and had better performance; (2) self-enhancement was more pronounced under conditions of low performance, leading participants to more frequently choose organizations that were less similar and had lower performance; and (3) self-enhancing comparisons inhibited perceptions of failure and the propensity to make changes. Study 2 extends the results of Study 1 by showing that participants were more likely to choose comparison organizations that had lower performance and were less similar when they were in a self-enhancement mindset than when they were in a self-assessment mindset. The combined effects of self-assessment and self-enhancement on the choice of comparison organizations are discussed in relation to the broader organizational literature on learning from performance feedback.

Purpose – In this chapter, we expand the definition of disaster through combining the tenets of disaster studies with the literature on risks and consequences of war and conflict-related displacement and dislocation, with a focus on the challenges that drug misuse and changing drug markets present in these contexts. We conclude with policy recommendations for successful community rebuilding with relation to drugs and drug markets following various forms of disaster, gleaned from the combination of these areas of inquiry.

Design/methodology/approach – We discuss the concepts of risk, social vulnerability, and consequences as related to traditional conceptualizations of disaster, and highlight how they can also be applied to the study of veterans returning from war. We focus the on the similarities related to drugs and drug markets.

Findings – Overall, the similar vulnerabilities, potential for trauma, and drug-related consequences experienced by both disaster survivors and veterans suggest that the experience of war and return from such an event could be considered a disaster and analyzed as such.

Originality/value of power – Few scholars have examined how to expand the definition of a disaster and what is examined in the field of disaster studies. This chapter does this by examining how war could be analyzed as a disaster. It demonstrates the parallels between war and traditional disaster.

Purpose – Drawing on Transformative Learning (TL) theory, the authors suggest a new and novel way to approach the study of violent radicalization.

Methodology/Approach – First, their argument is supported by the development of a Transformative Radicalization (TR) framework that borrows and adapts the core tenets of TL theory. Second, they provide a preliminary illustrative exploration of TR using two autobiographical accounts of militant radicalization (Islamist and Anarchist) from the UK and Canada.

Findings – Radicalization is a cognitive and emotional process of change that prepares and motivates an individual to pursue violent behavior. That process of change is incremental; individuals learn and adopt novel political, social, ideological, and/or religious ideals that justify and legitimize indiscriminate violence. The TR framework provides a more nuanced appreciation for the cognitive aspects involved in this process. The authors’ empirical illustrations provide guidance on how subsequent research might use original interview data on individual radicalization processes to develop more in-depth, cross-case comparisons.

Originality/Value – This theory builds a cross-disciplinary understanding of violent radicalization that highlights the way adults learn, alter their meaning perspectives, and change their behavior.