In a Man´s World Tolkninger av lovbrudd gjort i langtransportens yrkeskontekst

Abstract: Criminological studies have shown that economical and/or occupational crimes are committed within all examined trades and occupations. This is also a fact in the gendered occupational context the Norwegian and Swedish long-distance trucking trade constitutes. This dissertation sets out to determine, by qualitative in-depth interviews with 24 interviewees and field observations, what certain gaining occupational and economical crimes mean to trade actors and how to interpret the meaning criminologically. A hermeneutical orientation constitutes the methodological and epistemological basis of the interpretation.Analysis of the material shows two central consistent patterns in the interpretations made by interviewees and other trade actors:1) The actors´ explanations of why law violations are committed. These are influenced by the actors´ view of how wide the specific violations are spread and influence the violation’s acceptability.2) The actors´ normative evaluation of the law violations. The actors construct normative distinctions between normal, acceptable and unacceptable actions. The distinction is influenced by how the law violations are explained and how widespread they are considered to be.The first pattern; actors interpretation of why law violations are committed, corresponds with explanations in established criminological theories. The actors’ explanations are discussed as techniques of neutralisation. However, explanations of cause of actions are established also in the discourse of trade-actors who do not violate laws, and a deeper interpretation is called for. A discussion about law violations, based on interviewees discourse, as caused by criminogenic structures are developed. The actors identify the structures as criminogenic and this discourse of coersive structures implies conservation of law violations as part of normality. An interpretation of why several but not all individuals violate laws even if the law violations considers to be normal and acceptable, is developed in terms of differential association.However, solely use of established theoretical perspectives is not a sufficient interpretation of the law violations; the perspective of interpretation indicated by the second pattern will then be lost. Why is law violations considered both normal and deviant? This dissertation applies a gender-theoretical perspective and argues that actors constitute masculinity through acceptable law violations and that masculinity and normality are correlated. A cultural discourse of borders between normality and deviance is conserved and processed, and the actors discourses of law violations as without victims and as a necessity to continue as truckers, are central in the normalization of normative borders.