Uniformity Without Uniforms: Dressing School Children in Norway

lisbethl on 12. May 2019

Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Kirsi Laitala and Silje Elisabeth Skuland

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relationship between Norwegian schools’ ideals of equality and the way in which school clothes are regulated. Interviews with a teacher in a transitional language learning group for newly arrived immigrant children, as well as with children and parents in immigrant families, are used to discuss whether school clothes inhibit or promote integration. The material shows great willingness of children to dress like the others, as well as understanding that clothing consumption is essential for integration in school, and thus society. At the same time, this is not easily achievable either economically, culturally or practically. Little is done to make Norwegian schools inclusive in this field of consumption.

This article is from the book Inclusive Consumption: Immigrants’ Access to and Use of Public and Private Goods and Services, edited by Anita Borch, Ivan Harsløf, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kirsi Laitala.

Click here to read the full article (idunn.no).

Clothing Reuse: The Potential in Informal Exchange

ingridha on 1. March 2017

Kirsi Laitala and Ingun Grimstad Klepp

Abstract

Reuse organised by non-profit and commercial actors is a strategy that recently received a lot of attention. This article discusses the question: what do we know about the amount of clothes that circulate outside the pecuniary markets? And is this amount increasing or declining? The questions are answered based on quantitative material from Norway. Almost twice as many had received used clothing as those who had bought used clothing, and our material do not indicate that this are declining. At the same time 59 per cent of Norwegian adults had neither received nor bought used clothing for themselves during the past two years. For children, inheritance is very common and the younger the children are, the more they inherit. The amount of the private clothing exchange is greater than the formal market in Norway. Therefore, when the goal is a more sustainable clothing consumption we need to include the parts of consumption that are not only related to money.

Click here to read the full article (oda.oslomet.no).

Reading Fashion as Age: Teenage Girls’ and Grown Women’s Accounts of Clothing as Body and Social Status

lisbethl on 15. September 2005

Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Abstract

If you don’t follow fashion, you wear, like, sorta childish clothes

(girl, aged thirteen)

I think about my age before wearing something that seems rather daring

(woman, aged forty-one)

This article discusses the similarities and differences in how women in two different stages of life describe the relationship between fashion and age. The analytical approach is basically discursive, based on Norwegian teenage girls’ and adult women’s verbal accounts of clothing and clothing practices in conversational interviews undertaken in the late 1990s.

Prevailing discourses as to what represents a breach of clothing conventions are to be found in the ways young girls and grown women talk about clothes. When clothes are used in accordance with conventions and norms, they are not noticed much. However, when clothes are used in a way that differs from the norm, this can attract attention and provoke reactions. By comparing narratives of clothing provided by respondents of the same sex and approximately the same class background but of different ages, we gain access to material that is particularly well suited to illustrate the significance of age in conventions governing clothing and fashion.

Click here to read the full article (tandfonline.com).