Taking our point of departure from critical disability studies, this study explores affordances of a day activity centre with an artistic profile. The analysis reveals that this centre has two fundamental meanings to the participants; it is a place to create art, and it is a 'safe haven'. Our conclusion is that the desire to belong, to be in a community and to do artwork, entails a future need for flexible institutional environments, where the social milieu is characterized by increased influence and with an engaging focus, such as that which is offered in cultural work.

Western culture can be seen as permeated by risk-consciousness. In particular, parents are under scrutiny in their roles as risk managers. In this article, we address parental experiences of children more at risk than other children, children with food allergy, and the management of allergy risk in everyday life. Drawing on a notion of risk as ‘situated’ in local everyday life, we argue that a further exploration of parental understandings of child food allergy risk would benefit from an analysis of studies across different local contexts. In this article, we draw on a secondary qualitative cross-cultural analysis of interview data from several studies of parents in Sweden and Scotland through 2006–2010, which focused on parents’ understandings of the nature of food allergy and the children’s management of the allergy risk. We found some common themes in the different data sets. First, parents depicted food allergy as life-threatening, a ‘death risk’ lurking in the background, more or less constantly present in different everyday situations, amounting to an existential condition in parenting. Second, they talked about food allergy risk as a relational phenomenon, meaning that the risk emerged in the encounter between the young person’s individual competence to manage allergy risk and the understandings of allergy risk in others – thus depending on contexts and interaction between several actors. Finally, the analysis showed that unpredictability and risk in constant flux are the prominent aspects of living with food allergy. We also discussed the ways risk and trust are related, as well as how the involvement of others can be seen as both a risk and a safeguard. 

Potentially life-threatening food allergies are increasing among children in the Western world. Informed by childhood studies, this article explores young people's management of food allergy risk and highlights their agency in relation to food, eating and place. Drawing on individual interviews with 10 young people who took part in a larger multi-method study of young people's experiences of food allergies, the findings demonstrate that the management of health risks means, to some extent, trying to control the uncontrollable. A reaction can occur at any time and to experience a severe reaction entails a temporarily loss of control. The strategies the young people develop to avoid allergic reactions can be understood both as responses to this uncertainty and as manifestations of their agency. Their risk experiences vary with place; at school and in other public places they face social as well as health risks. What we see is not agency as a voluntary choice but that young people with food allergies experience tensions between their own competence to manage different types of risks and their dependence on others to adjust to their needs. Thus, the relational aspects of young people's agency come to the fore.

Food allergy is an illness that requires constant risk management in everyday life. To date, there is no cure or preventive treatment, and the only way to manage the condition is therefore careful avoidance of the offending foodstuff and treatment of reactions when they occur. This article draws on a socio-cultural approach to explore parents' understandings and management of child food allergy in the context of everyday life, as situated' risk. A focus group study was carried out with 31 parents of children diagnosed with food allergy at two children's hospitals. The analysis of the focus group material reveals how the management of allergy risk seems to permeate most aspects of everyday life as well as how the parents draw on a dominant norm of risk avoidance as well as a counter-discourse of calculated risk taking. The patterns of risk management found in this study are discussed in terms of how risk avoidance and risk taking are intertwined and balanced in the context of moral parenthood.

In Western society, food is debated and in various ways contested. Social science research has described various cultural imperatives related to food and choices of diet, that raises questions about how people understand issues of food and eating in their everyday lives. The aim of this study is to explore everyday notions of food and eating in urban Sweden. Drawing on social representations theory, qualitative interviews were carried out with fifteen men and women about their experiences and understandings of food and eating, also using a photo-elicitation method where visual material from cookery books and dietary advice were used as a point of departure for the interview conversation.

The interviewees categorize food into different sorts, such as ‘ordinary food’, ‘modern food’, ‘dangerous food’, ‘healthy food’, ‘ethic food’ and ‘festive food’, that are ascribed a meaning in relation to different arenas in time and space, for instance childhood, and related to health values as well as ethical and aesthetic values. Food is also discussed as different diets, such as mixed or vegetarian, and patterns of eating, which are in turn related to risk, health and the body. The analysis thus reveal notions about what food is and how we should eat, notions that are characterised by internal tensions and contradictions such as discipline contra pleasure, societal norms contra personal interests, everyday life contra ideals. These ‘fields of tension’ are analysed as a cultural repertoire of identity-positions. Finally, these results are discussed in terms of risk and opportunities, where the reflexive human being is depicted as able to both incorporate food imperatives and to challenge these imperatives in a process of striving for bodily and mental balance.

The health hazards of tobacco use are well-known, and it is considered particularly important to prevent tobacco use among teenagers. New generations of teenagers still start using tobacco. To develop a more profound understanding of tobacco use among teenagers, the purpose of this study is to explore representations of tobacco use, smoking as well as snuffing, at the age when young people often start using tobacco. Focus-group interviews were carried out with 14-15 year olds in two schools in the Stockholm area. The analysis reveals that teenagers are well informed about the health-hazards of tobacco use. At the same time they hold complex and conflicting ideas concerning the relationship between tobacco use, risk, the body and "human nature". At the most general level of "social thinking" there is a dynamic relation between the three main representations of tobacco use related to: (1) notions of risk, (2) "human nature" and; (3) society's efforts to discipline its citizens, which together can be seen as the social representation of tobacco use. These representations of tobacco use are discussed as related to the teenagers' identity-work and gender identities.