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This article focuses on credit consumption and increasing debt among Danish young adults by viewing this as closely related to new cultural concepts of money in credit based markets. Along with deregulation of financial markets and the introduction of new forms of credit, most OECD countries have in recent years witnessed a change in consumers' financial practices including an increasing role of credit in consumption. Young people seem particularly likely to obtain credit and to get into debt. Even in the relatively affluent Nordic countries we have witnessed an increase in problematic debt particularly among the youngest part of the population. Financial practices of contemporary young people, however, are still under-researched. Drawing on empirical data from Denmark, the article analyses the risk of debt among middle and upper middle class Danish young adults by relating individual financial practices to changing meanings and categories of 'money', 'credit' and 'debt' in contemporary 'credit-consumer culture'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that key values of child protection work are not the appropriate point of departure for contemplating the welfare of children in professional care. Central values, such as ‘comfort’, ‘recognition’ or ‘appreciation’ say very little about the social practices of residential care. Using data from an ethnographic study in Denmark, the article demonstrates that ideas about the needs of troubled children are realised in dissimilar ways, creating highly different living environments for institutionalised children. The principles behind these construction processes are explored, and the profound ambiguity of values in childcare is discussed as an effect of residential care’s being an ‘institutional’ or ‘human service’ type of organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a paradox that was identified during an ethnographic study of two Danish therapeutic residential institutions for children with emotional and behavioural problems. The key objective of these institutions is to provide specialized treatment for the individual child. However, the task of organizing everyday life for a group of troubled children is so demanding that little room is left for individualization. In practice, treatment takes the shape of a rather standardized package. Analysing individual treatment as a powerful kind of 'institutional thinking', the authors delve into the meaning of an apparent contradiction in terms: standardized individual therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]