Countries are increasingly shifting responsibility for large carnivore management from central to local government authorities. The three countries in FennoscandiaFinland, Norway, and Sweden-are no exception. In all three countries new approaches to large carnivore management have emerged, including some elements of decentralization, which is intended to increase efficiency, and improve the equity, participation, and transparency of the government to the citizenry. Although the three countries are similar in terms of their biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics, they have chosen three different decentralization strategies. In Norway a representative model of decentralization has emerged, whereas the Swedish and Finnish model has a corporatist character. This comparative study of policies relating to the large carnivores in the three countries focuses on the actors, and their powers and accountability, and demonstrates that the different strategies result in no significant increase in power at the local or regional level.

The author describes young Norwegians' use of alcohol in “russefeiring,” a special rite of passage to adulthood in the form of prolonged graduation parties. In this ritual, the young people wear special clothes, celebrate, and drink beer and spirits from the 1st through the 17th of May. The article argues that young people have invented rites of passage in which expressive individualism is stressed as a value. The article discusses the use of symbolic anthropology and sociology and field methods in research relating to this kind of ritual alcohol use and intoxication. Theoretically, the focus is on studying alcohol use as a ritual practice. Use of alcohol can be defined as a key symbol in these ritual processes, offering an opportunity to communicate meaning between members of the society and culture concerned.

The aim of this article is to present a social comparison of modern youth culture and the local traditions regarding the drinking of alcohol in Italy and Norway. We argue that the use of alcohol in `wet and dry drinking cultures' in northern and southern Europe has grown more similar. Young people, in both countries, drink beer and spirits at weekends, holidays and during the period of their final exams for intoxication, transition to a new phase of life and celebration purposes within the peer group. The modern innovations of practice combine a ritual structure of traditional forms of `rite of passage' (Turner, 1969; Van Gennep, 1960) with modern individualistic rites (Beck, 1997). In the modern local and global youth culture, use of alcohol for intoxication purposes is the key symbol for `free flow' in the phase of transition from childhood to the individual life project of creating one's social identity. This mixing of old ritual structures and modern reflexive individualization rituals has led to us coining a new concept of `rite of life projects'.

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