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The three main categories that were found mirror the crisis which becoming ill entails and the process gone through when the individual takes control again of his or her life. The patients saw coming home as an important factor for their recovery and rehabilitation. The health care system needs to develop strategies to make use of the power of this attitude with the patients and to use the patients' own milieu in rehabilitation after stroke.

Previous research has shown that white males have a relatively low perception of risks, known as the 'white male effect' (WME). Many of the explanations of this effect refer to the privileged position of this particular demographic group in society, adducing white males' socio-economic resources, sense of control, worldviews etc. It can thus be argued that inequality leads women and ethnic minorities to have higher risk perception than men and the ethnic majority. Therefore the aim of this study is to investigate the WME in a gender-equal country, Sweden, to see if the pattern is similar to previous studies from the comparably less gender-equal US. The empirical analyses are based on a national survey (n=1472) on the perception of risk conducted in Sweden in the winter of 2005. The results show that in Sweden there is no significant difference between men and women in risk perception, while people with foreign backgrounds perceive risks higher than native people. The chief finding is that there is no WME in Sweden, which it is concluded results from the relative equality between the sexes in the country. On the other hand, ethnicity serves a marker of inequality and discrimination in Sweden. Consequently, ethnicity, in terms of foreign background, mediates inequality, resulting in high risk perception. Equality therefore seems to be a fruitful concept with which to examine differences in risk perception between groups in society, and we propose that the 'societal inequality effect' is a more proper description than the 'white male effect'.KEY WORDS: the white male effect, risk perception, gender and ethnicity, equality How to cite:

The aim of the study was to empirically test whether grouping people according to their general beliefs, combined with positional factors, can explain environmental concern, and whether there are country differences in this respect. The study is based on the United States, Canadian, Norwegian, and Swedish parts of The International Social Survey Program (ISSP) survey 2000 on environmental concern. The four countries were paired resulting in a comparison between North America and Scandinavia. The results showed that general beliefs, together with education and political affiliation, were the most stable predictors of environmental concern, and that adding general beliefs to the analysis improves the explanatory power in a significant way.

At the end of March 2020, international media present Swedish management of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic as soft and irresponsible. Thus, Sweden, which is usually regarded as exceptionally risk averse and cautious, has chosen an unexpected risk management approach. The aim of this article is to reflect on how the Swedish government has managed the Covid-19 pandemic until early April 2020 from two theoretical perspectives, the risk society thesis and governmentality theory. We make a brief review of how previous pandemics have been managed compared to Covid-19 and try to understand the consequences of the Swedish handling of present pandemic with a particular focus on the governance of the pandemic and the exercise of power rather than definite risk management strategies during the pandemic.