Female Entrepreneurship in a West African Context: Network, Improvisation and Dependency

This article addresses gender and entrepreneurship in a West African context. Through a case study of the network Les Femmes Entrepreneurs in Ngaoundéré, North Cameroon, gendered spaces and how these are being articulated, maintained and changed are analysed. The Cameroonian female entrepreneurs have a broad understanding of entrepreneurship, including all kinds of improvisation to survive and fight poverty. The network consists of women performing a multitude of activities, using Les Femmes Entrepreneurs as a social and economic safety net as well as to gain access to international financial support. Their entrepreneurial practices challenge established narratives of entrepreneurship. It is argued that telling stories of African women’s lives can contribute to a broader understanding of entrepreneurship processes. Analyses of how they negotiate their private and public spaces reveal gendered aspects of both marginalization and agency. The article argues for a relational perspective on entrepreneurship in order to grasp innovation that traditional entrepreneurship studies tend to miss

Performance Management of Coordinating Agencies: The Importance of Administrative Capacity in the Field of Societal Security

This article addresses performance management of coordinating agencies in the field of societal security by examining what kind of administrative capacity their parent ministries focus on. It examines the performance contracts issued to the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. Based on a structural-instrumental and a cultural perspective, the importance of coordination, delivery, analytical and regulatory capacities is analyzed. A main finding is that the different governmental models of Sweden and Norway affect the number of performance objectives, while tasks and external shocks have some effect on the distribution of the different types of capacity. Despite being set up to act as boundary spanners in the policy field, both organizations are hybrid and compound agencies combining coordination capacity objectives with analytical, delivery and regulatory capacity objectives.publishedVersio

Stories of reconciliation enacted in the everyday lives of Sámi tourism entrepreneurs

Reconciliation has gained political interest in Norway, where a commission was established in 2018 to investigate the injustices committed in the past towards the Sámi and Kven. In this article, we argue that reconciliation can also be found in the small stories and events enacted in everyday life. Our analyses are based on a collaboration with a Sámi reindeer herding family who, through objects, food and tales, invite visitors to get “A taste of Sápmi”. Through storytelling events, they bring the colonial past into the present. In communicating that “nature is our culture”, these events have become a way to explore and express the interdependency between Sámi practices and landscape. We seek to explore how the act of telling locally embedded stories enables the Sámi entrepreneurs to reconcile with their colonial past. The storytelling events also offer a space for engagement in which visitors can reconcile with their own participation in these encounters

Doctors are to blame for perceived medical adverse events. A cross sectional population study. The Tromsø study

Beskriver en survey hvor hensikten var å undersøke forekomst av legemiddelbivirkninger i en stor generell populasjon.Background: Most current knowledge of the incidence of medical adverse events (AEs) comes from studies carried out in hospital settings. Little is known about AEs occurring outside hospitals, in spite the fact that most of contacts between patients and health care take place in primary care. Small sample population studies report that 4-49% of the general public have experienced AEs related to their own or family members´ care. The purpose with the present study was to investigate the occurrence of experienced medical adverse events in a large general population. Methods: We invited 19763 inhabitants of a municipality in northern Norway, age 30 years and older, to fill in a questionnaire. Main outcome measures were life time prevalence of AEs experienced by respondents or their first degree relatives, perceived responsibility for and predictors of such events, as well as formal complaints as a reaction to the events. Results: The response rate was 66%. Nine and 10% of the respondents reported self-experienced adverse events, and 15 and 19% (men and women, respectively) that their relatives had experienced AEs. Logistic regression models showed that the strongest predictors of reporting self-experienced adverse events were: Having been persuaded to accept an unwanted examination or treatment, difficulties in getting a referral from primary to specialist health care, and inadequate communication with the doctor. Of the respondents who had experienced adverse events personally, 62% placed the responsibility for the event on the general practitioner, 39% on the hospital doctor, and 19% on failing routines or cooperation. Only 7% of men and 14% of women who reported self-experienced events handed in a formal complaint. Conclusions: The public predominantly place the responsibility for medical adverse events on doctors, in particular general practitioners, and to a lesser degree on the system. This should be emphasised by doctors and managers who communicate with patients who have experienced AEs, and in patient safety work. Only a small fraction of adverse events results in a formal written complaint. Therefore, such complaints are of limited value as a basis for patient safety work

Vulnerable Spaces of Coproduction: Confronting Predefined Categories through Arts Interventions.

Collaboration between researchers and artists is often held as particularly promising to enhance cross-cultural understanding. In this article, two researchers and an artist reflect on the potentials, as well as the pitfalls, of art-based interventions in integration of migrants. Through the performing arts youth project Here I Am, we discuss coproduction methodologies. We emphasize the discomfort in confronting the stereotypes inherent in our perspectives and categories. Exploring how various encounters among the researchers, artist, and participants in the performing arts project challenge the prevailing perspectives, we argue that art interventions have the potential to bring knowledge production beyond predefined categories and explanations. This requires moving beyond our comfort zones and entering vulnerable spaces of improvisation, where new understanding and “grammars” can be coproduced. This article shows how the reflections of such spaces alter the research project and the aims of the art intervention, including our understanding of integration

Enhancing Urban Encounters: The Transformative Powers of Creative Integration Initiatives

Sustainable cites require the capacity to live with difference. In a world of increased mobility and migration, our cities become more and more diversified. While national discourses on diversity are often problem-focused, social initiatives are emerging in diverse cities addressing the positive potential of the city as a cross-cultural meeting place. In Norway, such initiatives have increased in number since “the refugee crisis” in 2015, and we see creative approaches arising from civil society, the voluntary sector, private companies, and local governments aiming to facilitate encounters with difference. This article explores innovative integration initiatives in cities in the north, emphasizing how difference might be negotiated, engendering new forms of engagement and responsibility. Cities are seen as sites of experiments, where new relations across difference are developed. Framing encounters as emergent, transitory, fragile, yet hopeful, we discuss the transformative powers of such initiatives for planning in diverse cities

Bladder cancer and BCG-treatment In the course of treatment: what challenges do patients experience?

I Noreg vart 1410 menn og 442 kvinner diagnostisert med blærekreft i 2020. Av desse pasientane fekk 75% påvist ikkje-muskelinfiltrativ blærekreft (NMIBC). Behandlinga består av kirurgisk fjerning av svulsten (TUR-B). Pasientar som opplev tilbakefall, eller har ein hissig type blærekreft, mottar behandling med Bacillus Calmette-Guèrin (BCG). BCG-behandling er tidkrevjande for pasientane og mange vert plaga av biverknader. For enkelte er det vanskeleg å gjennomføre behandlinga. Blærekreftpasientar opplev utfordringar på fleire plan enn det fysiske når dei er under BCG-behandling. Tross dette så forbetrar livskvaliteten seg under vedlikehaldsprosessen. Sjukepleiarar som administrerer BCG må skreddarsy behandlingstilbodet for å dekke behova til pasientane. Det var utfordrande å finne tilstrekkeleg med litteratur, det er derfor naudsynt med meir forsking innanfor området

Fagfornyelsens betydning for tematiseringen av demokrati i samfunnsfagbøker

Tidligere læreplan- og lærebokforskning har resultert i funn som viser at demokratilæringen er sterkt preget av kunnskapsfokuset som ligger i LK06. Fagfornyelsen har ført til anbefalinger om å styrke dimensjonene av demokratilæring som forskyver vektleggingen av læring om demokrati til å inkludere læring gjennom og for demokrati i større grad. For å undersøke hvilken betydning denne ambisjonen har hatt for demokratiundervisningen, har denne studien basert seg på analyser av læreverk fra LK06 og LK20 med sikte på å finne ut av hvordan demokrati tematiseres i et utvalg av lærebøker. Studien av eldre læreverk samsvarte i stor grad med tidligere forskning om at bøkenes tilnærming til temaet demokrati er svært kunnskapsorientert. Studien av nyere læreverk viste derimot at selv om det finnes en kontinuitet i hvordan læreverkene viderefører kunnskapsfokuset forankret i liberal demokratiforståelse, så er tematiseringen av demokrati blitt vektlagt i en bredere forstand. Den bredere tematiseringen av demokrati i nye læreverk gir grunnlag for å påstå at den aktive elevrollen som vektlegges i LK20 også blir tatt hensyn til i lærebøkene. Dette kommer til syne gjennom hvordan nyere læreverk modellerer demokratiske prosesser og diskusjoner, samtidig som det faglige innholdet i større grad relateres til eleven. Lærebokforlagene svarer dermed på Fagfornyelsens utfordring ved å tematisere flere demokratiforståelser i sitt faglige innhold og oppgavetekster. Dermed blir Fagfornyelsens betydning for tematiseringen av demokrati i samfunnsfagbøker på ungdomstrinnet konkretisert til en bredere demokratilæring og et økt fokus på den aktive elevrollen

Everyday Hospitality and Politics

The article explores everyday hospitality and politics through inclusive forms of integration initiatives in everyday life and urban communities in Denmark and Norway. It investigates how local initiatives and creative social strategies by local actors can empower and include refugees and immigrants in local communities. This article is based on participant observations of urban communities in Denmark and Norway working to welcome refugees and create new cross-cultural meeting places. We argue that people mobilize and take action when faced with emergency, and that the many welcome initiatives organized around theatre, food, dance and music can rework difference. The cases relate to the discussion of hospitality, the production of meaningful meeting places in a local context and the embodied encounters promoted by these activities. This article discusses everyday hospitality and politics in light of the transition in the Nordic welfare states, which has made the debate around inclusion of refugees and immigrants in local communities and the welfare state centre