Shared housing is a rather unusual phenomenon in Sweden. However, due to the decreasing availability of affordable housing and a large share of single-person households in urban areas, sharing is on the rise and new forms of shared housing have entered the market. By analysing how shared housing overlaps with existing patterns of socioeconomic segregation and by interviewing developers of diverse forms of shared housing in the cities of Stockholm and Malmö, this article aims to evolve the understanding of sharing housing from a perspective on housing inequality. We find that while many households are sharing housing because there are no other options, others share because they have the possibility to share certain spaces and facilities, which makes life easier and enhances a sense of togetherness. While the first category is concentrated in marginalized and racialized areas of the cities, the other category is concentrated in well-off areas. Developers offering shared solutions in marginalized areas are few but do so based on a discourse of ‘receiving less for more’, while developers offering shared housing in wealthier districts are doing so based on ‘sustainability’ and ‘making life easier’, as the shared housing includes private facilities and services that aim to support an effortless lifestyle in districts with existing urban assets. The conclusion is that sharing housing is no longer solely built on community spirit and de-growth, but sharing housing is also a reflection of contemporary housing inequality.

The economic growth of Brazil in the early and mid-2000s has created opportunities for people like my interlocutors, the young and media-savvy residents of Brazilian favelas to consume and partake in a global market of the production of the self. These have nourished their pursuit for diversity and difference and shaped the eclectic qualities of their consumption practices. In its plural forms, consumption, or eating, which will take centre stage in this article, has enabled an expanded palette and palate of being, acting and relishing life in the favela. I argue that eating can be understood as a method of becoming; it can be used as an active attempt at asserting agency over one’s body and, by extension, at asserting subjectivity in a lifeworld open to multiple dimensions of uncertainty and insecurity.

Background Energy communities are emphasized by the EU as important for developing sustainable energy systems that include and engage many people. While many renewables are highly compatible with a more decentralized energy system, research indicates that participation in ‘desirable’ energy activities and energy decision-making is influenced by social and economic factors, including gender, economic status and home ownership. The overall aim of this article is to contribute to this line of inquiry by exploring how and under which conditions energy communities allow for broader participation in the energy system. This article examines how gender, as a more specific condition, influences the extent to which parties can or cannot engage with collective solar ownership models by means of a qualitative study of 11 solar energy communities and one housing association in Sweden. Results The study revealed that despite the relative potential for inclusion that they hold, energy communities can raise justice concerns in terms of inequities concerning access, capacity, and opportunity to engage in decision-making. Conclusions While solely focusing on gender offers a limited view of the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in renewable energy projects, it is our position that integrating it into the analysis will provide insights into possible measures to remedy limitations and accelerate the renewable energy transition.

Sweden is considered an environmental sustainability pioneer, targeting a 50% reduction in energy use in buildings by 2050. This ambitious goal requires the active engagement of municipal actors and the building sector. Dialogue processes have been identified as a way to mobilize such engagement, but in earlier research, there has been a lack of studies where dialogue practices are analyzed in real-time and on location and where the role of leadership has been scrutinized. Taking two cases in Malmö as a starting point, the aim of this paper is to analyze the interconnections between dialogue models and the local context and to examine how the role of process leadership affects exchanges between included actors. The results show that it is difficult to create guidelines useful in the local context and that learning was embedded in the doing and was transferred through the process leaders.

This chapter analyzes instances of refusal to eat or drink due to the fear of poisoning and contamination amongst favela youth in Brazil. These particular occurrences of refusal shed light on refusal’s potency as a way of managing complex social entanglements and instrumental in asserting agency. Considering that interlocutors had come of age without many formal institutions present, they needed people. This artful skill had a flip side, for the proximity of people and the intensity of relationships could at times drain them and their emotional, social and economic resources. Discourses around poison, bad hearts and vampires thus emerge as aids towards the regulation of exchange involved in social relationships.

The housing sector is important for achieving ambitious environmental targets. In the European Union, buildings account for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions. Considering the scale of the housing sector’s environmental impact, interventions in how new housing is built and existing housing is renovated have great potential for sustainable transformation. However, the sector has not been timely in implementing energy-efficiency measures, as it has a conservative culture with established actor roles that require renewal, and a lack of interest in environmental issues. Drawing on the identified literature, this article reviews the research examining the interactions of property-owning and property-developing actors with municipalities. Particular attention is paid to the utilization of dialogue processes in projects targeting sustainable urban development. Based on the reviewed literature, this article identifies barriers to and enablers of such dialogues, as well as the factors that promote their success. The study finds that the following research avenues should be explored further: the causality between innovation and dialogue processes; the mobilization of interests among stakeholders; the links between dialogue and consensus; the effects of socio-cultural context on dialogue and project outcomes; and the impact of process leadership on dialogues.

‘You do not know what it means to me, to be at this kind of party, to talk to these kinds of people’, my research assistant Rodrigo told me after a soirée in the elite South Zone of Rio. ‘É uma viagem’, it’s a journey. Rodrigo, who had already worked with three anthropologists by the time I came to be his employer, thrived with the affordances of friendship, in the face of the volatility of his favela life. He relished ‘mixing groups up’, and this fetish was fed by the overflow of journalists and researchers who in 2015 were covering mega events, favela removals, and policing programs. As the year elapsed, violence in favelas escalated, ‘visiting others’ came and went, and so did Rodrigo’s appetite to befriend the ‘other’. While research on the enabling aspects of friendship’s lack of fixity have been extensive, by exploring our relationship, I seek to address how problematic fluidity and dynamism can be for those who engage in friendship. I will argue that demanding fixity and setting up boundaries can be understood as an enabling process, particularly in the post-colonial, globalized and gravely unequal context of contemporary favelas.

Contemporary social and cultural conditions in Brazil, together with technological developments and social media have enabled more young people of the favela to participate in different spheres of public life. These social and cultural changes have brought diversified new images of what it means to be an embodied subject. In this article, I explore the ways in which the body holds a seemingly paradoxical role as a locus of agency while being the primary site of attempts to be read, classified, and controlled for Brazilian favela youth. I explore the essential role of the body in enabling agency, as they deal with shame, fat, and exercise. Through an examination of the ways in which they were vulnerable, as a subjective experience, and its connections with their social context, this article aims for a nuanced understanding of their agency, as it intersects with gender, class, and race.