Sandberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 51522 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandberg |
| FAMILY NAME | Sandberg |
| SIGNATURE | SANDBERG |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1639-6164 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 86 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 678 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 86 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Crime as a Job: Risk Assessment and Desistance Within Professional Narratives Roles
Studies have shown that people who commit criminalized acts draw upon different narrative roles. This study highlights the narrative role of the professional and explores how such identities and self-understandings influence risk assessment and desistance. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 54 prisoners from Argentina, Chile, Honduras, and Mexico—all convicted of theft and robbery. The language of formal work and references to deta…
The street crime paradox: An ethnographic study of the attractions and repulsions of street culture
This article draws on ethnographic data from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to examine movement into and out of street crime. Based on participant observations and interviews with individuals involved in drug dealing and other street crimes, we show that some of the very same aspects of street life that attract individuals, most notably community, violence, and drugs, also motivate attempts to leave it. We conceptualize this dynamic as the street cr…
Protecting Parents, Idealizing the Past, Blaming Friends: Life Stories of Men Imprisoned for Violence
Life-stories emerge from a wide variety of facts and events in individual lives and weave a selected few of these together to make meaning in the present. They are crucial for constructing identity and influence action by establishing worldviews and a persona that narrators will seek to confirm. In this study we describe three main themes in the life-stories of six incarcerated men in Argentina: a) Protecting family, especially parents; b) recons…
Trust, nuance, and care: Advantages and challenges of repeat qualitative interviews
Most methodological discussions about the pros and cons of repeat interviews fall within qualitative longitudinal literature and are premised on project designs with relatively long intervals between encounters. Less attention has been paid to the practice and ethics of repeat interviewing as a stand-alone method, that does not follow participants long-term, but instead conducts several interviews over a short period of time. This article is base…
The future of interpersonal violence research: Steps towards interdisciplinary integration
Interpersonal violence is a high-priority issue for the general public, policymakers, and academics. It is commonly defined as the use of physical force - threatened or actual - with the intent to cause harm or injury (Dahlberg & Krug, 2002 ), and can be contrasted with collective or political forms of violence. Its negative consequences range from immediate effects, such as personal harm and injury, to longer-term consequences for offenders, vic…
The street-jihadi spectrum: Marginality, radicalization, and resistance to extremism
For over a decade, jihadi terrorism in Europe, and the recruitment of Europeans to fight for ISIS in Syria, have increasingly involved marginalized youths from a social context of street culture, illegal drug use and crime. Existing theoretical models of the crime-terrorism nexus and radicalization arguably do not sufficiently explain the fluid and dynamic ways by which the street cultural come to be politico-religiously violent. This paper provi…
A farewell to the lone hero researcher: Team research and writing
Criminology have long celebrated the lone hero researcher. Doing and writing up research in solitude has been the key to academic success and institutional promotions. However, the social sciences in general have increasingly moved towards more collaborative ways of doing research, and co-authorship has become more common. In this study, we summarize and discuss the pros and cons of working in teams when doing qualitative research. Drawing upon o…
Rasisme og motstand: Minoritetsungdom slår tilbake
Mange etniske minoriteter opplever rasisme som et stort problem i Norge. Dette gjelder spesielt mikroaggresjoner basert på kulturelle forestillinger om at «det norske» er overlegent. I denne artikkelen beskriver vi ulike former for rasisme og legger vekt på hvordan disse ble motarbeidet gjennom det vi kaller hverdagsmotstand. Studien er basert på 41 kvalitative intervjuer med personer med minoritetsbakgrunn, hovedsakelig svarte, som deltok i Blac…
Fear, helplessness, pain, anger: The narrated emotions of intimate femicide perpetrators in Latin America
While studies of femicide perpetrators have focused on background factors, such as criminal history and mental health conditions, little attention has been paid to their individual experiences. Perpetrators emotions and sense-making have often been overlooked and even dismissed. With a micro-sociological approach to violence, we identify the narrated emotions involved in the perpetration of intimate femicide. The data gathered are based on 33 ope…
Varieties of Violence in Street Culture
Violence is central to social life, especially for people at the margins of urban society. This article examines ethnographic data collected in Oslo among individuals who are involved in street life and crime. We propose the following typology for understanding violence in this population: respect-based violence, business violence, drunken violence, and family violence. We argue that from an emic perspective, these types are substantially differe…
Protecting Stories: How Symbolic Boundaries Reduce Victimization and Harmful Drug Use
Symbolic boundaries are used for establishing narrative identities and have critical impact on behavior and interpersonal interactions. Using data from a photo-ethnography of people who use methamphetamine in Alabama we show how women use stories and images to draw symbolic boundaries between themselves and others. These boundaries made sense of their meth use, but also guided behavior, controlled drug use, and aided in negotiating personal relat…
The soundtrack of criminal careers: On music, life courses and life stories
Music is ubiquitous in contemporary societies, and criminologists are paying increasing attention to it, asserting that it takes antisocial, prosocial and anti-establishment forms regarding criminality. Established approaches provide vital ways to understand the relationship of music and crime, but criminologists have yet to theorise the fluidity of music's roles for those who have committed criminalised acts. The life-story interviews we conduct…
Confluences of War and Crime: Trajectories into Paramilitary Groups in Colombia
The relationship between war and crime is complex and multifaceted. Still, insurgents, armed rebels, and paramilitary groups and the violence they perpetrate are often understood within either a framework of war or of crime. Based on repeat interviews with former members of Colombian paramilitary groups, we describe the role of economic motivations, security concerns, social relations, as well as identity and feelings of power in motivating peopl…
Pathways to Drug Dealing in the Middle and Upper Classes: Early Marginalization, Relative Disadvantage and Countercultural Opposition
Drug dealing is widespread in all sectors of society but is still studied predominantly in disadvantaged urban areas. We identify three main pathways to drug dealing based on qualitative interviews with middle- and upper-class individuals in Oslo, Norway. First, problems in the family and school and a lack of belonging in affluent neighbourhoods intersected with drug use and eventually led to recruitment into the illegal drug economy. Second, cri…
Confluences of Street Culture and Jihadism: The Spatial, Bodily, and Narrative Dimensions of Radicalization
Research on the new crime-terror nexus has focused on examining the confluences of criminal and jihadist milieus. This article contributes to this research, using insights from criminological theory and analyzing data from interviews with Muslim men who have been exposed to jihadism and have a background in street life and crime. We propose that the connection between street crime and jihadism can be seen in three decisive points of confluence: p…
This is My Story: Why People in Prison Participate in Qualitative Research
This study aims to understand why people agree to participate in qualitative research. While some studies have emphasized the motivation to participate in research, the nuances and underlying stories that favor participation have not yet been examined. Using data from repeated biographical open-ended interviews with men and women convicted of violent crimes in Argentina and Chile, we distinguish between stories emphasizing the interviews as a spa…
Ex Malo Bonum: Ambiguity in Stories of Organized Crime
Research on crime tends to emphasize clear-cut stories, either in support of or rejecting crime. Stories, however, are often ambiguous, mainly when they concern complex and multi-faceted phenomena. Based on qualitative interviews with Italian students, we explore how organized crime is viewed and evaluated by non-offenders. We found six widespread stories that highlight the moral ambiguity of organized crime, including such ambiguities as: people…
Cultural stigmatization and police corruption: Cannabis, gender, and legalization in Mexico
Mexico may well be the largest country in the world to legalize cannabis. Nevertheless, it is culturally conservative and a certain discrepancy exists between liberalization reforms and popular opinion regarding cannabis. Based on qualitative interviews with 100 cannabis users in Mexico City, we describe the gendered differences in perceptions and experiences of cannabis use. While the young women in the study stated that they used cannabis to de…
Culture matters! Changes in the global landscape of cannabis
Resisting racism in everyday life: From ignoring to confrontation and protest
Racial discrimination takes many forms and so does opposition to it. In contrast to the dominant emphasis on institutional or state efforts to counter racism, we examine how members of racially minoritized groups resist racism in their everyday lives. Drawing on forty-one qualitative interviews with young, mainly Black, people in Norway, we identify five distinct ways in which they actively counter racism, as opposed to passively accepting or ada…
Narrative Analysis in Criminology
Crime is both storyable and storied, and narrative analysis is thus essential for criminologists. In this article I present four different ways of doing narrative analysis: thematic, structural, performative and dialogical. These forms of analysis have different research questions and are associated with very different research traditions. Narrative analysis varies depending on whether researchers are interested in the content of what is told, ho…
Everyday Prevention of Radicalization: The Impacts of Family, Peer, and Police Intervention
This study examines early intervention against individual radicalization. The data originate from interviews with young Muslims in Norway who had experienced interventions related to their own radicalization, or engaged in or witnessed interventions directed at a radicalized peer or relative. We find that informal interventions by family and friends were most prevalent in the data and played the most decisive role in interrupting radicalization, …
Women in Prisons
Before being locked up, incarcerated women are more marginalized, have higher rates of mental illness and substance misuse, and have more often experienced physical or sexual victimization than incarcerated men. Women experience prison differently. However, much of what we know about women’s experiences comes from research in the United States and the United Kingdom, providing little insight into women prisoners’ experiences elsewhere. This is un…
Street Culture Meets Extremism: How Muslims Involved in Street Life and Crime Oppose Jihadism
Many studies have examined why individuals with a background in street life and crime are drawn toward extremism. This paper examines why most people with this background reject extremism. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo, we found that Muslims involved in street culture were generally opposed to jihadism because they perceived jihadists as evil people who harm innocents; bad Muslims who defame Islam; and cowards who break the ‘code of the…
Black Lives Matter: The Role of Emotions in Political Engagement
In the spring of 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests shook the Western world. Spreading from the USA, demonstrations diffused globally, especially to Europe, calling out racism in its different forms. Emotions ran high and were pivotal in igniting protests. The role of emotion in social movements has received renewed scholarly attention during the last decades. It plays an important role at every stage of protest, but few studies have traced it…
Street capital: Ethnicity and violence on the streets of Oslo
Most of Pierre Bourdieu's work describes struggles over symbolic capital and hierarchies among the economic and cultural elite. However, his theories and concepts are not exclusive to studies of those with power. By using Bourdieu's conceptualizations of social space, capital and habitus, the article discusses the hierarchies and struggles over symbolic capital at the bottom of societies. The analysis is grounded in interviews and fieldwork with …
The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement
Anders Behring Breivik, a lone wolf terrorist, killed 77 people in two terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. This study uses framing theory from social movement studies to compare his Manifesto with the rhetoric of the anti-Islamic movement that inspired him. The anti-Islamic movement has a dual, and sometimes inconsistent, collective action framing. On the one hand, they portray Islam as an existential threat to the West and a warlike enemy; on t…
Gangster, victim or both? The interdiscursive construction of sameness and difference in self-presentations
The paper conceptualizes two contradictory discourses, both used by ethnic minority drug dealers in a street drug market in Oslo, Norway.Oppression discourseincludes personal narratives of unemployment, racism and psycho-social problems, often combined with stories about the government and city council being unwilling to help. Drug dealers use the discourse to justify drug dealing and violence, both for themselves and in meetings with welfare org…
The importance of stories untold: Life-story, event-story and trope
Stories make harmful actions both plausible and compelling. They provide a lot of what qualitative researchers consider data, but as a discursive form have received only scant attention in criminology. From interviews with imprisoned drug dealers in Norway, this paper identifies three forms of narrative: first, life-stories summarizing and reducing the immense complexity of individual lives; second, stories about particular events such as narrati…
Narrative Criminology as Critical Criminology
Stories of Violence: A Narrative Criminological Study of Ambiguity
Violence features in human life, not only as actual physical confrontation but also as stories. Stories of violence are particularly important in violence-prone subcultures and among those partaking in the illegal drug economy. Drawing on narrative analysis, this study examines stories of violence among a population of incarcerated Norwegian drug dealers. Four widespread story types are identified: business narratives, intimidation narratives, mo…
Are self-narratives strategic or determined, unified or fragmented? Reading Breivik's Manifesto in light of narrative criminology
Anders Behring Breivik carried out two terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011, killing 77 people. In a 1500-page Manifesto, he justifies the attacks, describes his ideology and presents his life-story. The Manifesto is Breivik's attempt to present a coherent story, although one that shifts between different, sometimes competing, characters and narrative tones. He relies heavily on the narratives of an anti-Islamic or 'counter-jihadist' social moveme…
A Narrative Search for Respect
This article examines narratives of the self used by stigmatized people searching for respect on the streets of Oslo, Norway. The three narratives-"it was my own choice," "I'm decent," and "we're the same"-are embedded in conventional discourse. They are utilized in claims to be morally decent selves. Three different narratives-"I'm interesting," "I'm smart," and "I'm dangerous"-are embedded in the gangster discourse of a violent street subcultur…
A repertoire of everyday resistance: Young Muslims’ responses to anti-Muslim hostility
Research has shown widespread discrimination and hostility toward Muslims in Western countries. There is less knowledge of how Muslims resist, oppose, or challenge such behaviour. Based on in-depth interviews with 90 young Muslims in Norway, this study explores responses to anti-Muslim hostility. We describe a repertoire of everyday resistance: talking back, entering dialogue, living the example, denying significance, and talking down. The first …
Cannabis culture: A stable subculture in a changing world
In criminological and sociological studies of illegal drugs, the thesis of normalization suggests that when a drug goes from being a marginal to a widespread phenomenon, theoretical and methodological approaches that rely on subculture theory fall short. This article argues that normalization theory fails to recognize the existence of a distinct cannabis culture because it has a traditional understanding of subcultures as ‘groups of people’. The …
The Importance of Culture for Cannabis Markets: Towards an Economic Sociology of Illegal Drug Markets
Journal Article The Importance of Culture for Cannabis Markets: Towards an Economic Sociology of Illegal Drug Markets Get access Sveinung Sandberg Sveinung Sandberg * *PhD, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, PO Box 1096, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway; sveinung. [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 52, Issue 6, November 2012, Pages 1133–1…
I'm Not One of Those Girls: Boundary-Work and the Sexual Double Standard in a Liberal Hookup Context
Sexual morality is not keeping up with the new sexual practices of young people, even in cultures oriented toward gender equality. The Norwegian high school graduation celebration constitutes an exceptionally liberal context for sexual practices. Many of the 18-year-old participants in this three-week-long celebration engage in 'hookup' activities, involving kissing, fondling, and sexual intercourse. Through an analysis of qualitative interviews …
Black Drug Dealers In A White Welfare State: Cannabis Dealing and Street Capital in Norway
Journal Article Black Drug Dealers In A White Welfare State: Cannabis Dealing and Street Capital in Norway Get access Sveinung Sandberg Sveinung Sandberg * *Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Rosenbergsgaten 39, 5015 Bergen, Norway; [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 48, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 604–6…
Habitus, capital, and conflict: Bringing Bourdieusian field theory to criminology
Bourdieu’s key conceptual tools, including the forms of capital and habitus, have recently come to be deployed with greater frequency in criminological research. Less attention has been paid to the concept of the field, which plays a crucial role in Bourdieu’s vision of how the social world operates. We develop the concept of the “street field” as a tool for scholars of crime and deviance. The concept serves as a guide for research and an instrum…
Street talk and Bourdieusian criminology: Bringing narrative to field theory
The work of Bourdieu has increasingly gained interest in criminology. His theoretical framework is rich and arguably the most sophisticated approach to social inequality and difference in sociology. It has however, been criticized for bias towards the structural aspects of social life, and for leaving little space for the constitutive, and creative role of language. We argue for the inclusion of narrative for understanding street fields. Based on…
The medicalisation of revolt: A Sociological Analysis of Medical Cannabis Users
In a qualitative study, we investigated the medical motives of 100 Norwegian cannabis users, none of whom had legal access to medical cannabis. Cannabis was used therapeutically for conditions such as multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and rheumatism, as well as for quality of life conditions such as quality of sleep, relaxation and wellbeing. The borders between medical and recreational cannabis use were blurred. This a…
Putting a price on drugs: An economic sociological study of price formation in illegal drug markets
Prices in illegal drug markets are difficult to predict. Based on qualitative interviews with 68 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore dealers’ perspectives on fair prices and the processes that influence their pricing decisions. Synthesized through economic sociology, we draw on perspectives from traditions as different as behavioral economics and cultural analysis to demonstrate how participants in illicit drug distribution base their…
Laughter in Stories of Crime and Tragedy: The Importance of Humor for Marginalized Populations
Humor is essential to social life, but it is often overlooked in the study of crime and other social problems. We introduce and make use of humor theory, emphasizing the theories of superiority and relief. Based on interviews with incarcerated men, we demonstrate how humor is used to criticize authorities, for self-aggrandizement, and to alleviate the pain of tragic experiences. Funny remarks and stories are often ambiguous and evade simple categ…
Ex Malo Bonum: Ambiguity in Stories of Organized Crime
Research on crime tends to emphasize clear-cut stories, either in support of or rejecting crime. Stories, however, are often ambiguous, mainly when they concern complex and multi-faceted phenomena. Based on qualitative interviews with Italian students, we explore how organized crime is viewed and evaluated by non-offenders. We found six widespread stories that highlight the moral ambiguity of organized crime, including such ambiguities as: people…
The bullying-school shooting nexus: Bridging master narratives of mass violence with personal narratives of social exclusion
This study examines the narratives that people who are deeply interested in school shootings tell about school shootings and their interest in the subject. Data come from 22 qualitative online interviews with individuals from 12 countries across the world, and the study is based on a framework of narrative criminology. We find that the theme of bullying weaves together personal narratives and the master narrative of school shootings. We discuss h…
Black Lives Matter: The Role of Emotions in Political Engagement
In the spring of 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests shook the Western world. Spreading from the USA, demonstrations diffused globally, especially to Europe, calling out racism in its different forms. Emotions ran high and were pivotal in igniting protests. The role of emotion in social movements has received renewed scholarly attention during the last decades. It plays an important role at every stage of protest, but few studies have traced it…
A bene placito: Narratives of sex work
Sex work is often interpreted through master narratives that see women as victimized and subjected to stigmas and negative attitudes. This paper offers an insight into narratives that challenge or can be seen as an alternative to these narratives. Data are from a sample of 15 interviews with women who show an interest in sex work, conducted in a netnographic context. While widespread master narratives about sex work tend to revolve around the not…
Female Cannabis Users and New Masculinities: The Gendering of Cannabis Use
Cannabis is sometimes associated with feminine or gender neutral values. Still, most cannabis users are male, and in our data cannabis use is associated with masculinity. In qualitative interviews with 19 female users and a larger sample of male users in Norway, four aspects of cannabis using practices were described as feminine: not providing cannabis, being less involved in cannabis user networks, not handling the drug effects and being concern…
High Speed: Amphetamine Use in the Context of Conventional Culture
While the use of cannabis is often anchored in subversive values, and the use of heroin is situated at the social margins, the use of amphetamines appears to be associated with more conventional values. Interviews with 55 Norwegian amphetamine and/or methamphetamine users reveal that the substance is used for three main reasons. First, amphetamines are used by binge drinkers to "keep the party going." Second, amphetamines are used by segments of …
Trajectories to Mid- and Higher-level Drug Crimes: Penal Misrepresentations of Drug Dealers in Norway
While the Nordic countries represent a zone of penal moderation, drug offences remain subject to harsh punishment. Based on 60 interviews with incarcerated drug dealers, we present four trajectories and turning points to the higher tiers of the illegal drug economy. The first trajectory is characterized by criminal entrepreneurship, but three other trajectories were equally evident: (1) Many drug dealers experienced poor parenting, parental subst…
«Hvis hun er fornøyd, så blir jeg det også» – Unge menn, maskulinitet og seksualitet
Tunge kyss – lette identiteter
Fighting Neo-liberalism with Neo-liberal Discourse: Attac Norway, Foucault and Collective Action Framing1
Snow & Benford (1988, 1992; Snow et al., 1986 Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B., Wordon, S. K. and Benford, R. D. 1986. Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51: 464–481. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have been important in developing framing theory in the studies of social movements. This tradition has offered new insights into the study of social movements, in par…
«Joint, joine, dele, være sammen». Hasjmarkedets konsekvenser for bruk, risiko og avhengighet
Bokomtaler
A magnet for curious adolescents”: The perceived dangers of an open drug scene
Black Drug Dealers In A White Welfare State: Cannabis Dealing and Street Capital in Norway
Journal Article Black Drug Dealers In A White Welfare State: Cannabis Dealing and Street Capital in Norway Get access Sveinung Sandberg Sveinung Sandberg * *Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Rosenbergsgaten 39, 5015 Bergen, Norway; [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 48, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 604–6…
Street capital: Ethnicity and violence on the streets of Oslo
Most of Pierre Bourdieu's work describes struggles over symbolic capital and hierarchies among the economic and cultural elite. However, his theories and concepts are not exclusive to studies of those with power. By using Bourdieu's conceptualizations of social space, capital and habitus, the article discusses the hierarchies and struggles over symbolic capital at the bottom of societies. The analysis is grounded in interviews and fieldwork with …
Street Capital: Black Cannabis Dealers in a White Welfare State
Street Capital is aimed at postgraduates and academics in criminology, race and ethnicity, sociology, social theory and methodology. It will also be of interest to a wider social science audience, particularly those interested in using Bourdieu as a theoretical model.
Gangster, victim or both? The interdiscursive construction of sameness and difference in self-presentations
The paper conceptualizes two contradictory discourses, both used by ethnic minority drug dealers in a street drug market in Oslo, Norway.Oppression discourseincludes personal narratives of unemployment, racism and psycho-social problems, often combined with stories about the government and city council being unwilling to help. Drug dealers use the discourse to justify drug dealing and violence, both for themselves and in meetings with welfare org…
A Narrative Search for Respect
This article examines narratives of the self used by stigmatized people searching for respect on the streets of Oslo, Norway. The three narratives-"it was my own choice," "I'm decent," and "we're the same"-are embedded in conventional discourse. They are utilized in claims to be morally decent selves. Three different narratives-"I'm interesting," "I'm smart," and "I'm dangerous"-are embedded in the gangster discourse of a violent street subcultur…
What can “Lies” Tell Us about Life? Notes towards a Framework of Narrative Criminology
(2010). What can “Lies” Tell Us about Life? Notes towards a Framework of Narrative Criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice Education: Vol. 21, Qualitative Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice, pp. 447-465
Is cannabis use normalized, celebrated or neutralized? Analysing talk as action
In qualitative interviews with 100 cannabis users in Norway, three discursive repertoires were particularly frequent. The first emphasized how users were 'normal' with statements, such as 'everyone smokes cannabis' or 'cannabis users are not different from others'. The second discursive repertoire emphasized the fascinating difference of both users and the drug. Many cannabis users, stated that cannabis was used by 'free-thinking, open people' an…
Utbredt men annerledes
Blant unge menn i slutten av tjueårene har en av tre prøvd cannabis. Det er også en utbredt forståelse at hasj er blitt et “normalt” rusmiddel, på linje med alkohol. I forskningslitteraturen er dette kjent som kulturell normalisering. I artikkelen utvikler vi en ny teoretisk forståelse av begrepet subkultur og bruker dette til å forstå den sosiale og symbolske meningen knyttet til cannabis. Vi forstår subkultur som en samling av ritualer, narrati…
Why small-scale cannabis growers stay small: Five mechanisms that prevent small-scale growers from going large scale
Cannabis culture: A stable subculture in a changing world
In criminological and sociological studies of illegal drugs, the thesis of normalization suggests that when a drug goes from being a marginal to a widespread phenomenon, theoretical and methodological approaches that rely on subculture theory fall short. This article argues that normalization theory fails to recognize the existence of a distinct cannabis culture because it has a traditional understanding of subcultures as ‘groups of people’. The …
The Importance of Culture for Cannabis Markets: Towards an Economic Sociology of Illegal Drug Markets
Journal Article The Importance of Culture for Cannabis Markets: Towards an Economic Sociology of Illegal Drug Markets Get access Sveinung Sandberg Sveinung Sandberg * *PhD, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, PO Box 1096, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway; sveinung. [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 52, Issue 6, November 2012, Pages 1133–1…
Intoxicating stories: The characteristics, contexts and implications of drinking stories among Danish youth
Are self-narratives strategic or determined, unified or fragmented? Reading Breivik's Manifesto in light of narrative criminology
Anders Behring Breivik carried out two terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011, killing 77 people. In a 1500-page Manifesto, he justifies the attacks, describes his ideology and presents his life-story. The Manifesto is Breivik's attempt to present a coherent story, although one that shifts between different, sometimes competing, characters and narrative tones. He relies heavily on the narratives of an anti-Islamic or 'counter-jihadist' social moveme…
The medicalisation of revolt: A Sociological Analysis of Medical Cannabis Users
In a qualitative study, we investigated the medical motives of 100 Norwegian cannabis users, none of whom had legal access to medical cannabis. Cannabis was used therapeutically for conditions such as multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and rheumatism, as well as for quality of life conditions such as quality of sleep, relaxation and wellbeing. The borders between medical and recreational cannabis use were blurred. This a…
Case Study
An ethnographic study of a group of young black men dealing cannabis at a drug scene called The River in Oslo demonstrates that accumulation and use of street capital can be seen as responses to processes of social and economic exclusion. In Norway, as elsewhere, many immigrant youths are marginalized by ethnic discrimination, racism, lack of education and job opportunities, and immigration policy. Street capital is a means to gain respect, statu…
Bad boys telling sexist stories
Stories in action: The cultural influences of school shootings on the terrorist attacks in Norway
Terrorism is a cultural bricolage and terrorists are inspired by a wide range of political ideologies and stories. In this study of the terrorist attacks that occurred in Norway in 2011, we reveal how the perpetrator was influenced not only by political rhetoric, but also by the cultural script of school shootings. Anders Behring Breivik was socially isolated and lived his life online. He targeted young people in educational contexts and tried to…
Simon Hallsworth, The Gang and Beyond: Interpreting Violent Street Worlds
Trajectories to Mid- and Higher-level Drug Crimes: Penal Misrepresentations of Drug Dealers in Norway
While the Nordic countries represent a zone of penal moderation, drug offences remain subject to harsh punishment. Based on 60 interviews with incarcerated drug dealers, we present four trajectories and turning points to the higher tiers of the illegal drug economy. The first trajectory is characterized by criminal entrepreneurship, but three other trajectories were equally evident: (1) Many drug dealers experienced poor parenting, parental subst…
Sociology (62 works) · Psychology (53 works) · Criminology (44 works) · Political science (37 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (32 works) · Law (28 works) · Narrative (28 works) · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control (23 works) · Social science (23 works)