| 1. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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"Can we add a little sugar?" : The contradictory discourses around sweet foods in Swedish home economics
- 2023
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Ingår i: Pedagogy, Culture & Society. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1468-1366 .- 1747-5104.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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“You’re a sugar addict!” : Sweetness and Health in Home and Consumer Studies
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Because of possible contradictions between physical and psychosocial health, sweet foods can create social tension in home economics. To explore this tension, we observed 59 students and five teachers during 26 lessons. Discourse analysis of naturally occurring talk indicated four big ‘D’ Discourses about sweet foods, namely the coveted treasure, the superiority of the homemade, danger/disgust and the unnecessary extra. The treasure Discourse could spark conflict because of demands on extreme fairness or perfect results. It could also be used to mark both good and bad relationships. The unnecessary extra, home-made and danger/disgust Discourses could be used to stigmatize others and mark superiority. There was also a risk of demonizing sweet foods without offering realistic alternatives. To avoid this, teachers can a) tone down the focus on results, b) make sure students share their sweet foods with everyone, c) balance the negative aspects of simple carbohydrates with a more holistic, psychosocial view of the role of sugar in the human diet, and d) give the students concrete tools to create healthy snacks.
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| 3. |
- Kristoffersson, Emelie, 1986-
(författare)
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Är det bara jag? Om sexism och rasism i läkarutbildningens vardag : erfarenheter, förklaringar och strategier bland läkarstudenter
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Medical education is characterized by unequal conditions for women/men and white/racialized students. Even subtle interactional processes of inclusion and exclusion convey messages about who rightfully belongs in medical school. Insights into these processes, though, are scarce – especially in the Swedish context. In this thesis, the concepts ’everyday sexism/racism’ and ’gendered/racial microaggressions’ serve as a theoretical framework for understanding these processes.Aim: The main objective of this thesis is to explore and analyze how medical students experience, understand, and handle the norms, perceptions, and expectations about gender and culture/ethnicity that are expressed and (re)created in the specific contexts of medical education and clinical practice. In the analysis, a particular focus is placed on power inequalities. The role that the image of Sweden, which is characterized by equality, and the notion of medical education as characterized by objectivity and neutrality play in the participants' understanding and actions is discussed.Method: The four articles that make up this thesis are based upon three empirical studies conducted among medical students at Umeå University. In the first study, focus groups were performed with 24 students (15 women, 9 men) to explore their experiences of situations during clinical training where they perceived that gender mattered. The material was explored using qualitative content analysis. In the second study, 250 students’ written answers to two short essay questions were analyzed to explore the impact of medical school experiences on specialty preferences. Utilizing a sequential mixed methods design, their responses were analyzed qualitatively to create categories that thereafter were compared quantitatively between men and women. In the third study, generating two articles, individual interviews were conducted with 18 students (10 women, 8 men) who self-identified as coming from cultural or ethnic minority backgrounds, exploring their experiences of interactions related to their minority position. Inspired by constructivist grounded theory, data collection and analysis were iterative.Findings and reflections: In individual interviews and focus groups, many participants initially described the medical school climate as equal and inclusive. Still, in their narratives about concrete experiences they gave another picture. In interactions with supervisors, staff, and patients almost everyone had regularly encountered stereotypes, discriminatory treatment, and demeaning jargon. Simultaneously, a subtle favoring of male and white majority students was noted. Thus, values, norms, and hierarchies concerning gender and culture/ethnicity were crucial dimensions in their narratives.These experiences made female students feel like they were rendered invisible and not taken seriously, and marked racialized minority students’ status as ’Others’ – making both female- and minority students feel less worthy as medical students. However, most were unsure whether they could call their experiences “sexist”, ”racist”, or ”discriminatory”. Instead, they found other explanations for people's actions such as curiosity, fear, or ignorance. Participants strove to manage the threat of constraining stereotypes and exclusion while maintaining an image of themselves as professional physicians-to-be. They opposed being seen – and seeing themselves as – problematic and passive victims. The clinical power hierarchy, fear of repercussions, and lack of support from bystanders affected what modes of action seemed accessible. Consequently, participants tended to stay silent, creating emotional distance, and adapting to avoid stereotypes rather than resisting, confronting, and reporting unfair treatment. The school climate also had consequences for specialty preferences. Both women and men expressed that working tasks and potential for work-life balance were motifs for their specialty preference. These aspects, however, were often secondary to feeling included or excluded during clinical practice. More women than men had been discouraged by workplaces with perceived hostile or sexist climates. In contrast, more men had been deterred by specialty knowledge areas and what they thought were boring work tasks. Conclusions: Medical students experience everyday sexism- and racism or microaggressions, i.e., practices that, intentionally or inadvertently, convey disregard or contempt. However, the contemporary discourse, which confines sexism and racism into conscious acts perpetrated by immoral or ignorant people, and the pretense that these phenomena no longer pose a problem in Sweden or in medical school, obscure their structural and systemic nature. In fact, this limited view of sexism and racism leaves inequities normalized and disempowers those targeted by discrimination. Constraining stereotypes and exclusion are not caused by the actions of their recipients, that is, female or racialized/minority students. Consequently, their behavioral changes like avoidance and adaptation will not eliminate discrimination but, instead, tend to re-establish the white male medical student as the norm. As long as students who do not fit the norm, rather than the norm itself are regarded as the problem, the sexist and racist practices described in this study will remain part of the hidden curriculum and part of the process of becoming and being a physician. Simultaneously, formal commitments to equality are at risk of being only symbolic while inequities persist. To counteract these inequities, the medical community needs to acknowledge female and racialized medical students’ knowledge about sexist and racist practices within our institutions. Further, medical school leadership should provide students, supervisors, and teachers with an account of structural and everyday sexism and racism, encourage them to engage in critical self-reflection on their roles in sexist and racist power relations, and with strategies and training on how to intervene as bystanders and allies.
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| 4. |
- Sundqvist, Joachim, 1980-
(författare)
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Eat, Meet, Fly, Repeat : the contextuality of business travellers’ meals
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Meals are an important part of everyday life, both for the persons who engage in them and for the industry that makes them. For business travellers, meals are engaged in differently when they are travelling compared when they are home. Tens of millions of meals are engaged in each year by persons who are conducting business trips. Even though this group of people make up the largest group of customers for the Swedish hotels, research into their meals are virtually non-existent.The aim of this thesis is to extend and deepen the knowledge about business travellers’ meals. This aim is approached by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, through a survey study and an interview study.The results were then interpreted thought a practice theoretical framework. The results indicate that the meals of business travellers are contextual in nature and that their organisation is influenced by the practice bundle currently carried on by the business traveller. The meal is, furthermore, understood as part of practice-arrangement mesh, where the material arrangement conditions the facilitation of good meals. The meals of business travellers’ contain different ends than meals engaged in with friends and family, as such, a meal in which food of inadequate quality is served in an loud environment making the business traveller change behaviour could still be perceived as good due to the experiences of the business traveller’s clients.The thesis proposes that the industry should engage more with their customers in order to accumulate knowledge of the different ends existing in their meal practice as a way of facilitating good meals. It does, furthermore, contribute to the theory on meals and eating out as it brings about a new way to conceive of good meals. It has also, as it is basic research, opened up for future inquiry into the meals of business travellers.
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| 5. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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Balance, self-efficacy and collective individualism : young people's ideal eater types
- 2023
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Ingår i: Health Education Journal. - : Sage Publications. - 0017-8969 .- 1748-8176. ; 82:7, s. 752-765
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 6. |
- Carrillo Ocampo, Julia Cristina, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
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Restaurant professionals as curators of wine spaces : Norms and practices guiding wine quality and sustainability
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Wine Research. - : Routledge. - 0957-1264 .- 1469-9672. ; 35, s. 50-67
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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