In this paper I have examined how the structure of society affects the characters in the movies of Gus Van Sant, and what there is that characterizes Van Sant as an auteur. I have also looked at the thematics and how the characters develop throughout from his first movie Mala Noche (US 1985) until one of his latest Milk (US 2008). Van Sant is open with his Homosexuality and those perspectives are of major importance for this study. He presents how his characters try to live a normal life in a society that is not made for them. I have chosen to analyze five different movies.

Nationalism during the early 20th century, was often shaped around efforts to create feelings of fellowship within the frontiers. Fellow feelings was considered as a necessity to convince the people that their efforts served mutual goals.Beginning in the 19th century, the European nations experienced a great many projects for this purpose. In the early 20th century the efforts grew. The danger of war and the competition for economic power, contributed the increase of nationalist movements. At the same time, many influential intellectuals also expressed apprehensions about the urbanized way of life; measures were necessary to secure the future success of the nation.The national movements in Sweden, played a prominent role in the creation of a greater patriotic feeling.

Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008.Tutor: Michele Micheletti.?Civil Society in Singapore? can it make democratization possible?The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country.

The purpose of this Bachelor degree project is to design different types of services that can increase the amount of re-used timber within the building sector and by that means improve their environmental efforts. By examining how the sectors environmental work concerning recycling and re-using timber as a building material is getting on at present, conclusions have been drawn about what further could be done for improvement.The project has shown that there is a scarcity of information and statistics within the sector, but that there are efforts in progress to change this. Questionnaires have been sent to a number of companies working with demolition and utilizing re-usable materials in order to find out what kind of problems there are within the trade. Unfortunately the survey gave insufficient result due to the low reply frequency.It is obvious that active environmental work within the building sector is important and the knowledge acquired while working with the project has led to the design of three suggestions for services regarded as being of interest for improving the negative environmental impact caused by the sector:Suggestion 1 ? Sale of construction parts prior to the demolition of a buildingSuggestion 2 ? Re-utilization circulation when manufacturing buildingsSuggestion 3 ? Education in relation to the purchase of houses  The positive and negative qualities of the suggestions have been examined with SWOT-analysis and further adaptions and the results have been interpreted.

This thesis is a study of the history of cultural events in Norrköping from the Agriculturemeetings in 1897until today?s sailfestival, Sail Norrköping. The purpose is to see how the events have effected Norrköping as an eventcity, but also to examine the purpose with a cultureevent. The essay also discusses modernisation?s impact on society.

This paper studies how the ?Swedish model? has influenced the Swedish community during the first half of the twentieth century and how living with this model was like in the 1960s. During the ?60s the laws and reforms created by the ruling socialistic party, SAP, dominated the Swedish society. Their goal was to build Per Albin Hansson?s vision of a welfare state.

AbstractAt a time when the discussion of feminism is hot in the media, in the schools and in the cottages so I have been interested in how feminist worlds order might look like and what are the roads there. There are plenty of barriers in the community, some of them you easily could influence.This essay problematize and define the problems behind the difficulties of reaching a feminist world order, but also the factors that are important to achieve this world order. How colonization that began several hundred years ago spread and secured the patriarchal society and its influence all the way to the society of today. But even more immediate factors, on how we ourselves are involved in shaping our society in terms of where we live, how we educate ourselves, and what jobs we choose. Status symbols in society as economics, profession and political influence are all to be reckoned with when it comes to influencing society.

The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

Many companies are presently investing in different types of environmental strategies, and it is varying to what level they channel their resources to environmental efforts. It is also diverging to what extent organizations effort to profile themselves as environmentally conscious. This can be due to difficulties in reaching out to customers and to finding the most efficient method of green marketing communication. The aim of this study is to analyse how an insurance company more actively can communicate environmental matters foremost in their contact with customers. One can in different mediums daily follow debates and discussions concerning the environment. Many insurance companies have also identified their role in performing green work.

This paper analyzes governance of cultural and ethnic integration. The study has a comparative perspective between five municipalities in Skåne. One aim in this thesis is to clearify the ratio between the state and municipal authority and how municipalities exercise their autonomy. I analyze the advantages and disadvantages in different governance methods linked to how the municipalities are working in practice and what problem the integration policy is intended to eliminate. I also resolve the influence of officials and citizens in the policy process.My conclusion is that direct ruling to a large extent is limited by indirect control.

This master thesis aims to examine how public libraries in Sweden are practically and ideologically equipped to deal with e-books, outside of the dominant distributor Elib. The study also aims to find out what?s required of the book market and the public libraries to make further progress in the question of e-books. In Sweden e-books are still representing only a small amount of all the library loans and an even smaller amount of the commercial book market.The methodological and theoretical ground for the thesis is Grounded Theory, and the survey is based on interviews with publishers, librarians and distributors.The conclusions of this thesis are that the public libraries lack resources to invest in e-books, and that they also lack in knowledge about the media and its readers. It also exposes that both internal and external collaboration efforts need to be further developed.

Background and problem discussionThe temporary employment industry has grown extensively during the past two decades since the market was deregulated. Companies today need to be flexible to meet fluctuating demand and economic climate in society which has made the market expand. When using employees not directly employed by the company there is a risk that long term effects appears that the companies have not thought of.Aim of studyTo create a model of what negative aspects companies should consider when making the decision to use temporary employees.Methodological frameworkThe study performed through an abdicative literature study and with an empirical data collection method of a qualitative approach where we interviewed five hiring companies and one temporary agency on the decision of hiring temporary employees.Frame of referenceProblem areas with the use of temporary employments were identified through four perspectives of the organization; the structural, human resource, symbolic and political perspective. The problem areas we address are organizational learning, motivation, risk of eroding human capital, belongingness and conflicts. These will be described and presented together with management control to counter the problems.EmpiricsThe empirics are focused on what aspects the companies of the study considered when making the decision to use temporary employment, what the companies? different reasons for using temporary employment are and what they do to minimize possible negative effects.Analysis and conclusionsCompanies use temporary employees mostly to become more flexible, both numerically and in their competence.

This essay deals with how the development of society, the media society in particular, has an impact on the teaching of the subject of art. In the society of today, we are bombarded with more images than ever before. As an effect of this, the curriculum of 2011 emphasises the importance of the ability to orientate oneself in the modern society. Furthermore, it describes art not only as a practical subject, but also as a verbal and community-orientated subject. Because of sparse and dated research, the subject of art is in danger of marginalization as a school subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate art teachers? conception of the aim of the subject of art.