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A decade ago, school sports in Sweden were shown to exist at the intersection of the fields of education and sport. A key reason for this was the fact that a valid teacher certificate, which is normally required for teachers, was not required to obtain the position as a teacher in school sports. Instead, other resources and competencies, such as coaching education and experience in specific forms of sports, were recognised as valuable symbolic capital. Since then, the Swedish school sports system has developed, with higher demands placed on teachers and new opportunities to earn a teacher degree in school sports. However, the question remains whether school sports has become more firmly embedded within the field of education or remains primarily part of the field of sport. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, this paper examines the conditions for school sports in Sweden by analysing the competencies, education and backgrounds of individuals who teach school sports. Based on a questionnaire answered by 216 individuals involved in teaching at 40 local schools with elite sports profiles, the results show that the teachers form a relatively homogeneous group: a majority are men of Swedish origin; they have high levels of education, and extensive elite sports experience. However, few have a teacher certificate in school sports. This indicates that coaching education and experience from elite sport are still valuable symbolic capital for teachers in school sports in Sweden. From an egalitarian viewpoint on education, this situation may jeopardise equality for pupils involved, especially regarding the opportunity to achieve national educational goals and fair grading. To strengthen school sports as a legitimate school subject, those in positions of authority need to determine whether the primary symbolic capital within the educational sub-field of school sports should be a valid teacher certificate or extensive experience of elite sport.

Sweet foods occupy an ambiguous position in many people’s diets, perhaps especially for children and adolescents. The twin expectation that they both covet and limit their intake can create a dilemma not only in the home, but also in the school subject Home Economics (HE), which among other themes has a focus on food and health. In this study, we explored how Discourses on sweet foods were formed, reproduced, and challenged during 26 lessons in northern Sweden. Overall, sweet foods were constructed as desirable but also as unhealthy, disgusting, and unnecessary. They were used as a form of capital where ownership, distribution, and fairness were important, and students could mark friendships by sharing and gifting. Conversely, they could also use sweet foods to police, ridicule, question, or punish each other. Conflicts could arise around less-than-perfect results and students could withhold sweet foods from each other as a form of social rejection. Vague limits to intake placed responsibility for intake on the students themselves. We suggest that a contextualisation of the social, cultural, and health aspects of sweet foods in HE might help students acquire a more holistic Discourse of sweet foods and mitigate their social weaponisation.

I antologin presenteras feministiska teorier och begrepp tillsammans med exempel på tillämpning i forskning. Kapitlet handlar om kropp och hälsa i relation till genusteorier och empiriska exempel från forskning. 

Little is known about restaurant professionals’ views on wine sustainability and how these beliefs are embedded in cultural norms of wine quality. Using wine spaces as an entry point, this ethnographic study sought to explore the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. The article depicts wine spaces as emblems mediating a particular wine culture with its own norms which guide such assessment. These spaces provide professionals with a setting to accumulate culinary capital as curators, and so wine spaces can be understood as the realm of experts. The results show that incorporating sustainability in wine assessment is challenging for restaurant professionals. First, there are inherent conflicts between environmental and sociocultural sustainability. Second, some norms and practices ingrained in heritage and tradition act as barriers to the adoption of, for example, more sustainable packaging. Third, the perceived sensory attributes of more sustainable wines are sometimes considered detrimental to wine quality. However, we argue that in their role as curators and intermediaries, restaurant professionals can use their expert status to challenge norms and give sustainability the same importance as other parameters such as acidity, tannins, and overall balance.

Background: In health education, there is a risk of giving overly prescriptive recommendations, potentially activating conflicting in-group norms that reduce message receptiveness. For example, the notion of ‘unhealthy youth’ is a stereotype which suggests that young people are expected to make unhealthy choices. If such in-group norms are activated as part of health education, the will to emulate healthy out-group behaviour may decrease.

Objective: The objective of this study was to explore how young people construct different types of eaters in relation to health recommendations.

Method: Group interviews were conducted with 31 students aged 10–16 years (from school grades 5 and 8) in northern Sweden and data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results: The analysis yielded eight ideal eater types: healthy-but-not-too-healthy; obsessively healthy; devil-may-care; destabilised; contextual; powerless; intuitive; and discontented eaters. Participants’ preferred types did not overly regulate their eating, bute intuitively ate what they liked and/or needed in a balanced way. They were also receptive to social and contextual cues without being completely guided by them.

Conclusion: Even in the current era of individualism, food retains its social meanings, and young people’s views of healthy eating are shaped by valued social groups. We therefore recommend the promotion of shared individualism as part of health education, where the expression of individual taste is encouraged alongside adherence to group norms. It is also crucial to highlight how healthy and unhealthy foods can coexist as part of a balanced diet.

There is a need for improved knowledge about how workplace conditions and organisational factors may obstruct or facilitate work in late life. By means of both quantitative and qualitative data, this study aims to explore retirement preferences among employees (aged 55 and older) in a large Swedish health-care organisation and to identify work-related motives influencing their retirement preferences. The quantitative analysis showed large variation in retirement preferences in the organisation. The qualitative results were  summarised into two overarching types of motives for late and early retirement preferences, general and group-specific. The general motives were shared by the early and late preferencegroups, and included recognition, flexibility, health and work motivation. The groupspecificmotives were exclusively related to either an early or a late retirement preference. Criticism towards the organisation and strenuous working conditions were specific motives for an early retirement preference, while positive accounts of work and a wish to utilise one’s own competencies as well as being financially dependent on work was stated as specific motives for wanting to retire late. The results illustrate the need to improve organisational practices and routines, as well as working conditions, in order to make an extended working life accessible for more than already-privileged groups of employees.

The aim of this study was to explore and analyze how cultural/ethnic minority students at a Swedish medical school perceive and make sense of educational experiences they viewed as related to their minority position. We interviewed 18 medical students (10 women, and 8 men), who self-identified as coming from minority backgrounds. Data were collected and analyzed simultaneously, inspired by constructivist grounded theory methodology. The concepts 'everyday racism' and 'racial microaggressions' served as a theoretical framework for understanding how inequities were experienced and understood. Participants described regularly encountering subtle adverse treatment from supervisors, peers, staff, and patients. Lack of support from bystanders was a common dimension of their stories. These experiences marked interviewees' status as 'Other' and made them feel less worthy as medical students. Interviewees struggled to make sense of being downgraded, excluded, and discerned as different, but seldom used terms like being a victim of discrimination or racism. Instead, they found other explanations by individualizing, renaming, and relativizing their experiences. Our results indicate that racialized minority medical students encounter repeated practices that, either intentionally or inadvertently, convey disregard and sometimes contempt based on ideas about racial and/or cultural 'Otherness'. However, most hesitated to name the behaviors and comments experienced as "discriminatory" or "racist", likely because of prevailing ideas about Sweden and, in particular, medical school as exempt from racism, and beliefs that racial discrimination can only be intentional. To counteract this educational climate of exclusion medical school leadership should provide supervisors, students, and staff with theoretical concepts for understanding discrimination and racism, encourage them to engage in critical self-reflection on their roles in racist power relations, and offer training for bystanders to become allies to victims of racism.

Business travellers are a significant component of the hospitality industry and range from the managerial to the operational level of the firms they work for. These different positions come with different contextualised reasons for engaging in eating situations or meals when travelling. Research has begun to map out the activities related to those meals, although the sense-making and organisational aspects are still largely unexplored. Thus, this article aims to elucidate the organisation of business travellers’ meal practices. The study is theoretically framed within Schatzki’s social practice theory and semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine business travellers of different ages, working in different sectors, and at different levels within their firms. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. It was found that the meals were organised around, and understood through, two themes; significant social interactions and meaningful material properties, that was related to the teleoaffective, organising, structure of the practice. The interactions described in the first theme were mainly driven by how the interactions were perceived within the group the business traveller represented, as well as interactions between the group and the restaurant staff. Moreover, business travellers could find themselves in the role of acting both as a host and a guest within the same context. In the second theme, the material properties that influenced the understanding, and thus the sensemaking of the meal were focused on the physical environment, such as the interior of the restaurant, the food and drinks, as well as the economic circumstances of eating out. As illustrated through business travellers’ meals, the study mainly contributes to our understanding of the contextuality of meals as contexts and how those are experienced as good meals.

Projektet ”Nycklar till ett längre arbetsliv. Individuella och organisatoriska perspektiv” är ett av FORTE finansierat forskningsprojekt som startade hösten 2014 som ett samverkansprojekt med personalenheten vid Västerbottens läns landsting (VLL). Projektet, som baseras på olika enkätundersökningar, studerar medarbetares syn på pensionsålder (pensionspreferenser) och hur olika arbetsrelaterade faktorer påverkar pensionspreferenser och motivationen att arbeta längre. Projektet har bestått av tre olika delstudier. Delstudie ett baseras på kvantitativa analyser av en enkät riktad till samtliga medarbetare från 55 år och uppåt kring önskad tidpunkt för pension. Studien utgår från teoretiska bestämningar av arbetsvillkor och arbetsmiljö och dess effekt på pensionspreferensen. Delstudie två baseras på kvalitativa analyser av fritextsvar från samma enkät kring de arbetsrelaterade motiv som medarbetare angett i relation till sin pensionspreferens. De kvalitativa analyserna kompletterar de kvantitativa fynden genom att medarbetarna själva definierar motiven till sin pensionspreferens. Delstudie tre studerar erfarenheter av och motiv till att fortsätta arbeta efter 65 års ålder. Studien baseras på kvalitativa analyser av fritextsvar från en enkät riktade till medarbetare som arbetar efter 65 års ålder. I föreliggande rapport redovisas resultaten från de två kvalitativt orienterade studierna. Rapporten inleds med en kort bakgrund till forskningsprojektet därefter presenteras de övergripande resultaten från de två fristående delstudierna tillsammans med återkopplingar till tidigare forskning på området. Rapporten avslutas med ett kort diskussionsavsnitt där de två studiernas resultat relateras till varandra och till de implikationer resultaten kan ha för organisationen.