Dag Leonardsen

Bio: Dag Leonardsen is an academic researcher from Lillehammer University College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Competence (human resources) & Social exclusion. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 7 publications receiving 103 citations.

Planning of Mega Events: Experiences and Lessons

Abstract: As the Olympic Games have turned gradually into a mega event, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have tried to professionalise the planning process related to the Games. As a part of this endeavour the IOC has launched the OGGI project (Olympic Games Global Impact Study), which aims to safeguard three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, social and economic values. Host cities are asked to monitor developments along these dimensions by means of social indicator analyses. In this article the author welcomes the monitoring efforts but raises critical questions regarding the strong focus on social indicator analysis. Using examples from past mega events, he argues theoretically and empirically for the use of qualitative data in impact studies.

Empowerment in social work: an individual vs. a relational perspective

Abstract: Social workers with only an individualistic understanding of empowerment will easily end up as moralising agents rather than as facilitators for their clients. It is in the complex interaction between a given socio-material situation and the individual capacity to interpret and act that one finds the key to an empowerment worthy of its name. This presupposes two things: that social workers have as a part of their education theoretical knowledge about organisational structures, and that they themselves have been empowered in ways that give them practical competence to act in relation to situations. They need the competence to identify the complexities of interests and power relations in society. The implication of such a recogni-tion should be clear for the education of social workers: the ideology of empowerment has to be contextualised. To discuss this topic the author makes a distinction between an individua-listic and a relational perspective and between social problems conceived of as a ‘lack of money’ vs. a ‘lack of meaning’.

Japan as a Low-Crime Nation

Abstract: List of Tables Preface PART ONE: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CLARIFICATIONS The Western Welfare Paradox. Or: Why is Japan an Interesting Case? Is Japan Really a Low Crime Nation? Why Has Modernisation in the West Been Synonymous to Increased Crime? Is Rapid Social Change Synonymous to Loss of Moral Sentiments and Loss of Community? PART TWO: JAPAN AS A LOW-CRIME NATION A Cultural, Sociological and Criminological Description of Japanese Society Look to Japan?

Inequality and punitivism in late modern societies: Scandinavian exceptionalism revisited

Abstract: In The Culture of Control, Garland (2001) suggests that whilst not inevitable, it is likely that late modern societies will experience increased punitivism. Certain critics have questioned to what extent Scandinavian countries should be included in that assumption, given their unique welfare systems and public/media reactions to crime, and this article comments on one in particular – Green (2008), in a comparison of child murder by children in England and Norway. We argue that punitivism is indeed increasing in Norway along the lines already identified in Anglo-American countries, albeit at the slower rate acknowledged by Green. However, the relevant benchmark for testing Garland’s thesis is not only to compare between countries but also to look for changes within countries. We argue that there is a link between late modernity and increasing punitivism in Norway, that the main cause of the comparative ‘uniqueness’ of Norway is its low rates of inequality and that ‘cultural’ explanations, though relevant, are secondary.

The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary, society

Abstract: Nos últimos trinta trinta anos, houve profundas mudanças na forma como compreendemos o crime e a justiça criminal. O crime tornou-se um evento simbólico, um verdadeiro teste para a ordem social e para as políticas governamentais, um desafio para a sociedade civil, para a democracia e para os direitos humanos. Segundo David Garland, professor da Faculdade de Direito da New York University, um dos principais autores no campo da Sociologia da Punição e com artigo publicado na Revista de Sociologia e Política , número 13, na modernidade tardia houve uma verdadeira obsessão securitária, direcionando as políticas criminais para um maior rigor em relação às penas e maior intolerância com o criminoso. Há trinta anos, nos EUA e na Inglaterra essa tendência era insuspeita. O livro mostra que os dois países compartilham intrigantes similaridades em suas práticas criminais, a despeito da divisão racial, das desigualdades econômicas e da letalidade violenta que marcam fortemente o cenário americano. Segundo David Garland, encontram-se nos dois países os “mesmos tipos de riscos e inseguranças, a mesma percepção a respeito dos problemas de um controle social não-efetivo, as mesmas críticas da justiça criminal tradicional, e as mesmas ansiedades recorrentes sobre mudança e ordem sociais”1 (GARLAND, 2001, p. 2). O argumento principal da obra é o seguinte: a modernidade tardia, esse distintivo padrão de relações sociais, econômicas e culturais, trouxe consigo um conjunto de riscos, inseguranças e problemas de controle social que deram uma configuração específica às nossas respostas ao crime, ao garantir os altos custos das políticas criminais, o grau máximo de duração das penas e a excessivas taxas de encarceramento.

Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality

Abstract: Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.

The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Mega Sport Event Legacies

Abstract: This paper focuses on the legacy of mega sport events. First, the concept of legacy is defined before the problems of measuring and forecasting legacy are discussed. Benchmarking and the use of macro data do not correctly reveal legacy. Hence a bottom-up approach is introduced which identifies the event legacy by evaluation of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ event-related changes in a host city. These changes are defined as ‘event-structures’ (infrastructure, knowledge, image, emotions, networks, culture). Many of them change the quality of location factors of the host city in the long-term. The benefits/costs through the transformation of the host city are the legacy of a mega sport event. Here a particular focus is put on tourism legacy.