With discourses of ’crisis’ and ’disaster’ featuring strongly in contemporary discourses on contemporary society, this book brings together critical perspectives from across the humanities and social sciences to explore the idea of ’crisis’ as inherently related to power dynamics and the formation of different subjectivities and identities within the Nordic countries and globally. This volume emphasizes the importance of investigating the interrelationship of three crises - social, economic and environmental - as these address the interlinked surfaces of the same reality, and it examines the negative connotations of the notion of crisis, whilst also raising the question of when and why something becomes identified as crisis, and for whom. With chapters on media representations of crisis and the global context of crisis discourses, the crisis of national identities and their mobilization in response, and environmental crisis, as well as the interrelationship between the social and the environmental and the different positioning of individuals in relation to power, this volume offers an understanding of crisis as a multivocal symbol of the present. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, literature and political science.

This book analyzes the failure of the EU's peace-through-trade policy in Iraq and Iran between 1979 and 2009 from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The author adds to the trade-peace theory debate and provides evidence supporting the need to review the EU's peace-through-trade-policy towards Iraq and Iran, and in general.

Nutritional and Health Aspects of Food in Nordic Countries provides an analysis of traditional and ethnic foods from the Nordic countries, including Norway (and Svalbard), Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands). The book addresses the history of use, origin, composition and preparation, ingredient origin, nutritional aspects, and the effects on health for various foods and food products in each of these countries. In addition, readers will find local and international regulations and suggestions on how to harmonize regulations to promote global availability of these foods. - Provides insight into the varieties of food and food products available in the Nordic countries - Presents nutritional and health claims that are either based on opinion and/or experience, on scientific evidence, or on both - Contains a framework to determine whether these northern European foods meet local and international regulatory requirements - Offers strategies to remedy those foods that do not meet local and international regulatory requirements

Since the late 1960s, the novels of Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck detective series, along with the works of Henning Mankell, Hakan Nesser and Stieg Larsson, have sparked an explosion of Nordic crime fiction--grim police procedurals treating urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the contemporary world. Steeped in noir techniques and viewpoints, many of these novels are reaching international audiences through film and television adaptations. This reference guide introduces the world of Nordic crime fiction to English-speaking readers. Caught between the demands of conscience and societal strictures, the detectives in these stories--like the heroes of Norse mythology--know that they and their world must perish, but fight on regardless of cost. At a time of bleak eventualities, Nordic crime fiction interprets the bitter end as a celebration of the indomitable human spirit.

This volume strengthens interest and research in the fields of both Childhood Studies and Nordic Studies by exploring conceptions of children and childhood in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). Although some books have been written about the history of childhood in these countries, few are multidisciplinary, focus on this region as a whole, or are available in English. This volume contains essays by scholars from the fields of literature, history, theology, religious studies, intellectual history, cultural studies, Scandinavian studies, education, music, and art history. Contributors study the history of childhood in a wide variety of sources, such as folk and fairy tales, legal codes, religious texts, essays on education, letters, sermons, speeches, hymns, paintings, novels, and school essays written by children themselves. They also examine texts intended specifically for children, including text books, catechisms, newspapers, songbooks, and children’s literature. By bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines who raise distinctive questions about childhood and take into account a wide range of sources, the book offers a fresh and substantive contribution to the history of childhood in the Nordic countries between 1700 and 1960. The volume also helps readers trace the historical roots of the internationally recognized practices and policies regarding child welfare within the Nordic countries today and prompts readers from any country to reflect on their own conceptions of and commitments to children.

This book discusses that the genre of crime fiction is suitable for the presentation of the crises, conflicts, and indeterminacies present in the plot of the selected works. This book exposes the darker side of Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, as the writers and works selected for the book are based on Swedish society. Though as a matter of fact, Scandinavian countries are considered to be the most egalitarian and progressive welfare societies all over the world. The present book explores how popular culture may prove to be a significant thematic approach to studying Scandinavian crime fiction (also called Nordic Noir). The Swedish authors use popular culture as a tool through which they try to convey their concerns regarding various serious issues like anti-immigration, racism, xenophobia, violence against women, the violence of human rights, crimes like the drug trade, human trafficking, etc. By assigning the central place to Sjowall and Wahloo’s Roseanna (1965), The Laughing Policeman (1968), The Terrorists (1975), Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers (1991), Sidetracked (1995), The Fifth Women (1996), Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl who kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007), this book enunciates the notion of popular culture and crime fiction genre in the propagation of the socio-critical reflections of life in the welfare state. Hence, this work also analyses the plot, characters, and themes in the aforementioned works to locate the elements of popular fiction in Scandinavian crime novels by representing this genre’s ubiquitousness in the twenty-first century.

This volume examines the ways in which bordering practices influence the everyday lives of racialized parents in the changing welfare states of Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Focusing on the need to negotiate, adjust, and reconcile family life, parenthood and parenting practices in the face of national, material, ideological, cultural, religious, and moral borders, it considers the manner in which these processes are complicated by recent changes in the legitimation of Nordic welfare states. The case studies centre on migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker parents, as well as parents of the indigenous Sámi communities. The book considers the ways in which the welfare state and its services construct borders of respectable parenthood, and examines the efforts on the part of racialized parents to negotiate such borders and organize their transnational everyday lives. Uncovering possibilities and obstacles that exist for families seeking to enact citizenship in the Nordic welfare states, Family Life in Transition will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of the family, children, parenting, and the welfare state.