This study concerns digital stories told by five young Romani students and one teacher from Roma Culture Class in Stockholm, Sweden. The theoretical framework draws from theories concerning identity, culture,Romanipe, the Romani value system and social semiotics. The material for the study is the digital stories that were analyzed qualitatively. The results show that the young Roma in the study demonstrate pride in their Romani background and culture, but also signs of changes and development in their culture. Some of the participants do not show external signs of Romani traditions, for example in the ways of dressing.

Kindergarden - How can we create different synergies between different fields that they can benefit from each other? What different activities will suit the kindergarden? How will our perception of the kindergarden, of its need and function in society, change?In this Degree Project in Architecture I will be investigating the combination of the kindergarden together with a restaurant and a dance studio. I believe these activities will harmonize since they have overlapping benefits: We all eat, move and grow.With the new architectural activities in mind, I will further investigate the importance of the kindergarden as a part of society, more specifically our perception of what function it may, may not or could fill. I share the idea with a lot of authors, scientist that we are headed toward a society where children are kept too safe, thus minimising their chance to experience and learn to cope with a harsh reality when they grow up as adults. It's ok to get hurt to an extent, as long as they do not endanger their lives..

People?s perceptions about health are very complex. In today?s society there is a moral value in being healthy, and a healthy person is seen as a person with strong willpower and self-discipline. But people also tend to go against the norm in the society to experience autonomy and therefore choses to live unhealthy.

Levnads- och arbetsförhållanden har i mindre svenska småorter under det senaste seklet genomgått stora förändringar. Fjelie, den lilla byn i sydvästra Skåne var i början på seklet ett aktivt jordbrukssamhälle med egen järnvägsstation, lanthandel, smed, post och skola. Idag finns få spår av detta bevarat och Fjelie ger ett stillsamt intryck för den besökande. Syftet med examensarbetet är att undersöka Fjelies identitet och fysiska karaktär. Vidare undersöker vi möjligheter för att öka attraktiviteten och utvecklingen av byn.

This thesis is covering my design of an architectural object for the use in a pedagogical setting. The purpose is to create contextual premises for students, making possible the testing of designs, involving plants suitable for the urban environment. Hence, the main features in the object design is suggestive to the urban outdoor rooms - rooms that are formed amongst the city facades. The thesis is also about the design process set out from a technical reality, based on camera imagery. To a large extent, the thesis consists of reflections concerning the object's function towards pedagogy, perception and materials. Furthermore, the object claims to be a hybrid between architecture and landscape architecture.

The purpose of this study is to examine how participants perceive virtual agents shown on a computer display. In particular, it is explored to what extent participants transfer gender and attraction stereotypes that are commonly applied in the physical world to virtual agents. Previous related studies have often explored only text or voice interfaces, without any visually appearing agents, and here indeed found evidence for a transfer of gender stereotypes. Our hypothesis was that the addition of a visual agent interface would reinforce this effect. The results support our hypothesis that participants transfer human gender and attraction stereotypes onto virtual agents, as well as that these processes are affected by the visual representations of the agents..

The foundation for this thesis lies in whether or not, and how, the body representation in printed commercials, specific products directed to the body (shampoo, body lotion etc.), has changed during the last fifty years. Four years have been chosen because of the changes in society that we believe might have had an impact. The commercials that have been picked out are the ones that best represent the general view of the body. We have found that the changes when it comes to body presentation has followed the social development to a certain degree, but it is difficult to say how much the society has had an affect on the body ideal in advertising. Representations of the male body is something that has escalated since the early 70?s, fifteen years earlier few commercials was made with male models, and the few there were, never showed more than the face.

Previous research has indicated that intellectual disabilities and parenting is not socially accepted and compulsory care of children often occurs in families where one or both parents have an intellectual disability. This study aims to, thru a document analysis, investigate ideas and representations of parents with intellectual disabilities that emerge in Swedish legal cases. The legal cases is about children who are taken care of according to LVU § 2, where one or both parents have a intellectual disability. The results of the study revealed that people with intellectual disabilities are seen as not capable of developing parenting ability, in some cases aroused concerns about parenting during pregnancy, these suggesting stereotypes of parents with intellectual disabilities. Of the documents reveals that social workers word overrides in the decision-making, this leads to a position of power where the parents are at a disadvantage..

This thesis analyzes contemporary Swedish discourse on Russia, i.e. the ways Russia and Russians are perceived in Sweden today. After a summary of historical Western and Swedish perceptions of Russia, and a discussion about the treatment of these tensions within modern research, contemporary Swedish discourse is reconstructed based upon analytical articles in three major newspapers during the period 1992-2007. It is argued that the prevailing image of Russia contains the reproduction of old stereotypes and prejudices. The five major representations of Russia in contemporary Swedish discourse are: non-Western, unreliable, authoritarian, threatening and eternal, with the last one being a meta-representation functioning both as a representation of its own and a mechanism for the reification of the others.

This study has the purpose to reveal whether gender stereotypes are manifested or challenged in the children comic Bamse - världens starkaste björn based on six different stories widespread over 40 years. The results will be studied in the light of the contemporary gender development in society and emanate from theories about power, discourse, representation, queer and gender. An eclectic analysis based on semiotics and critical discourse analysis will be the method to reveal the underlying gender perspective in Bamse. The conclusion of the study shows an ambiguous perspective in the comic where both men and women occasionally are represented in a manifested as well as a challenged stereotypical role. In some of the stories the gender is erased and all characters are represented based on their individual attributes instead, meanwhile in some stories men are represented as active heroes while women are portrayed as passive nurturer.

The Sand Catcher                                                       The thesis project The Sand Catcher investigates the encounter between permanent structures and an ever-changing landscape. The migrating sand dune Råbjerg Mile in northern Denmark is 40 meters high and moves more than 15 meters every year. By introducing a solid structure on the site, the fast movement of the sand dune is emphasised and thereby our view of time and space.Through intuitively building models with varied openings and densities I investigated how architectural elements react with sand. From these experiments a series of spatial features and effects were found, generated from the meeting with the sand.The Sand Catcher is a solid and permanent structure. The sand is the liquid element that generates new spaces, circulations and experiences.

This essay will discuss the process of drawing a restaurant ? the position of the house lot, requirements from the authority and architectural quality.During the summer months are many people celebrating their spare time in the beach in Jönköping, by the shore of Lake Vättern. There is some existing buildings in this area that is not used by a general public. In cooperation with the municipality of Jönköping and a person who wants to operate a restaurant on the beach, is this essay a proposal of how this part of the shore of Lake Vättern can look in the future.The focus of the work is to design a restaurant. This is made on the basis of the interviews that have been made with the operators of the area and a thought building, and from the existing rules of the performing and designing of a restaurant.The planned restaurant is placed in an area where it today is a public toilet.

Urban planning is not only a matter of architectural trends; it is first and foremost political. This thesis seeks to understand the links between political ideas and visions for the city and the physical structure of the city. The study aims to construct a model to help understand these links, a helpful tool in analysing a city, focusing on the one hand at the physical structure of what I call "The City as a Welfare Provider" and on the other hand at "The City as a Growth Engine". It also sets out to test this model in an empirical study of Stockholm and the soon-to-be built district of Norra Station in the same city.The analysis shows that Stockholm has ambitions to be a welfare provider to its citizens, but have also adopted to a discourse of interurban competition which stresses the importance for the city to enhance economical growth. What is interesting is that the physical structures promoted in the planning documents of Stockholm are nearly exclusively those associated with the model of "The City as a Growth Engine"..

In this essay, I explore the history of the ideas that have shaped the profession of landscape architecture, in a Swedish context. To this purpose, I have sampled the professional debate on landscape architecture at four points in time. These are the years around 1890, 1930, 1970 and 2010. Drawing on G N Brandt (1920), I make the distinction between two arguably crucial approaches, i . e., naturalism and formalism. By identifying these perspectives, and by dividing the arguments of each time period according to this classification, I am able to compare the course of the debate over time. I take on the task through hermeneutics.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the female reader of science fiction literature, a genre by tradition dominated by men. Through qualitative interviews with seven female science fiction readers, the relation between the reading and the readers? lives, as well as their concepts of the science fiction genre and the community of science fiction readers, was examined. The main theoretical framework used for the analysis was Yvonne Hirdman?s gender theory, Judith Butler?s concept of identity and Louise M.