Background: Honour-related violence and oppression (HRVO) became a public and a state concern in Sweden in the wake of murders of three young women of foreign origin in the late 90's and early 20's. The Swedish society's focus on girls' and women's exposure to honour-related restrictions and reprisals, overshadowed to some extent, boys' and young men's condition in the honour context. Yet in recent years boys' and young men's dual role as both victims and potential perpetrators in honour culture has received increasing attention in Sweden. In the discussion on how HRVO must be combated, attitude change interventions targeting boys and young men have been emphasized as an important measure. Purpose:The overall aim of this study is to elucidate and compare the participants' attitudes towards honour, masculinity and virginity in a retrospective perspective i.e. before and after their attendance in an attitude change program. Method:The study is based on a content analysis of individual in-depth and focus group interviews with participants and leaders of an attitude change project called "Sharaf Heroes".Findings: This study indicates that honour-based norms and values are very persistent which requires both an uncompromising and an arduously intervention targeting attitude change.

This article presents a description and analysis of the written narratives of problematic situations given by social workers and general practitioners (GPs) within the framework of the sociology of professions and organisations. The narratives were collected from 28 social workers and 24 GPs, working in several Swedish counties.Findings: Our findings show that the professionals rarely described lack of knowledge or difficulties choosing the right intervention or treatment as problematic. Rather, the problematic situations contained encounters with clients perceived as disruptive to professional routine practice. We conclude that there were three different types of problematic situations where the professional routine practice was disrupted:(1) Situations related to 'client-making work', where the professionals perceived it difficult to, e.g., gather enough information about the client to make a diagnosis, set a timetable or decide on adequate interventions; (2) Situations related to 'wicked work', where the professionals experienced clients unable to articulate their problems or understand and follow the interventions suggested by the professionals; (3) Situations related to 'dirty work' were only present in GPs' narratives and typically occurred when GPs perceived that they were dealing with clients who endangered their professional status.

General practitioners (GPs) and social workers (SWs) are professions whose professional autonomy and discretion have changed in the so-called risk and audit society. The aim of this article is to compare GPs' and SWs' responses to Evidence-Based and Organizational Risk Reduction Technologies (ERRT and ORRT). It is based on a content analysis of 54 peer-reviewed empirical articles. The results show that both professions held ambivalent positions towards ERRT. The response towards ORRT differed in that GPs were sceptical whilst SWs took a more pragmatic view. Furthermore the results suggest that SWs might experience professional benefits by adopting an adherent approach to the increased dissemination of risk reduction technologies (RRT). GPs, however, did not seem to experience such benefits.

This study aims to describe and analyze written accounts of non-problematic situations by 28 social workers and 24 general practitioners (GPs). The results show that non-problematic situations were connected to professionals' control of the intervention process. Non-problematic situations were described by social workers as situations where they had control of the relationship with the client either by the use of coercive means or by the client's active cooperation. GPs referred to nonproblematic situations as situations where they had control of the intervention process mainly by the use of professional knowledge. One main conclusion is that the ability to control the intervention process through control of the relationship with the client may be of significance to those professions where a central part of the professional jurisdiction involves changing clients' behaviors. This conclusion means that professional knowledge is not the only way to control the professional intervention process.

This chapter examines whom social workers and general practitioners regard as a client, and how they gather information about a client. These professions have two very different approaches. For example, an applicant and a client do not need to be the same person for social workers, and social workers put clients in a broad social context to examine whether there are other clients such as a partner or children who could be affected by the problem. General practitioners concentrate mainly on the medical problem and consider social relationships to clients as less important. The chapter argues that the “traditional” theoretical understanding of professional practice as a linear and rational process consisting of diagnose, inference and treatment, reflects general practitioners’ practice as a mono-client profession, but not social workers’ as a multi-client profession.