Bachelor essay in political science by Marie Åberg, autumn 2011. ?Harm or benefit? A critical view of the theoretical grounds of the international development aid?. Supervisor: Professor Mats Lindberg. The first of the dual purpose of this essay is to present international aid policy ideas and the theoretical grounds of international development aid.

The purpose of this study is to understand and analyze why individuals develop and manage to leave drug abuse. The material consists of interviews with eight individuals who have gone through a life of addiction and managed to change their lifestyle. We contacted the participants through the organization called KRIS (Criminals Redress with Society). The results indicate that the participants have had a troublesome upbringing and been labeled by society as outsiders which have led them into addiction. The results also show that they have all gone through a social conversion from the life as an addict to become sober.

Natt i marknadstältet is considered as one of Lars Ahlin?s most significant works of fiction. The novel is complex in structure and meaning, containing numerous stories and characters entangled with the main story. One of these stories is the subject of this essay:?Berättelsen om Hedvig och hennes son?.

This study examines how a couple of Swedish daily newspapers construct the hacker network Anonymous, with an aim to discuss its possible effects. The question was: In which ways is the network Anonymous constructed in a few Swedish newspapers?                      26 articles from four chosen newspaper were analysed, but because of many similarities in content, only 10 were chosen for deep analysis. With Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis as chosen method, constructions varying from the images of heroes to villains were found as a result. The most common construction was that of Anonymous as a threat, which was most often exaggerated compared to what actions were actually described in the texts.

The aim of this study is to elucidate the process in which psychology was separated from philosophy and established itself as a distinct academic discipline in Sweden. I argue that the concept of will, as well as the concepts of thinking and emotion, have a lot to tell us about the rise of academic psychology in Sweden. This is done through an analysis of psychology textbooks, encyclopaedia-articles and academic texts on the themes will and psychology, from around 1800 till 1950.Prior to the establishment of the first chair of psychology in Uppsala 1948, the discipline was above all a part of the philosophical discipline. For psychology to become a science of its own, it was crucial to obtain a position among the empirical sciences. It thus had to distance itself from philosophy, and in particular from metaphysics.

Discourse Analysis of editorials from Danish and Pakistani newspapers related to 'Cartoon Controversy'. The study examines the intercultural dimensions of media ethics, focusing on the meaning of freedom of speech and CSR as it is perceived by the journalists in the respective contexts.

The distribution of work related tasks depending on gender leads to different appraisal depending on which gender is performing a task. This aim of this research is to study how gender differences influence task allocation within the restaurant industry. The study is inspired by a discourse analysis perspective complemented by constructivist and critical pragmatic theory. Interviews were conducted in two focus groups with seven participants in total. The analysis is divided into four sections which answer six discourse analytical questions using the interview material.

The purpose of this study is, based on theories of gender and hegemonic masculinity, to studyhow masculinity and femininity is constructed and reproduced in one of the most popularSwedish podcast: Filip & Fredriks podcast. The main theory in this study is that gender issocially created and sustained by humans through language and interaction with others.The study's research questions is: How are gender roles/gender portrayed in Filip & Fredrik'spodcast? What characteristics are attributed to men and women in Filip & Fredrik's podcast?How does Filip & Fredrik's podcast represents conditions and power relations between menand women?Through an linguistic textual analysis, which is an application of discourse analysis, I seek toget beneath the surface meanings of texts and examine more implicit social meanings andideologies regarding gender. It includes an analysis of metaphors, word choices and syntax.The analysis shows underlying values and ideologies that indicates gender structures in abroader societal context. Choice of words and metaphores in Filip & Fredriks's podcastexpresses symbolism where men and male-typical attributes are highly valued, whilst womanand female-typical attributes is being devalued and representative of the opposite.Masculinities and femininities are also constructed and represented in various ways throughsentence constructions that guides the listeners in certain directions.

This essay deals with the rationale and aims for doing cultural or aesthetic activities and projects in schools, and gives special focus to a specific group of students, attending schools provided at special residential homes for young people (sa?rskilda ungdomshem). These homes receive young people with psychosocial and substance misuse problems and who show tendencies towards criminal behavior. The essay investigates how working with a cultural project in schools at these residential homes is justified and also elucidates how this specific group of students and their problems are constructed in the documents surrounding the project. The essay will further ponder over possible educational and pedagogical consequences of these constructions.The investigation has its theoretical frame work in curriculum theory.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if the reading habits of teacher students are influenced by merit and descent. The empiric material consists of six questionnaires answered by students at the teacher training with Swedish at the upper secondary school as their first topic. The questionnaire comprised questions about reading habits in the childhood and today and information concerning merits and descent.Pierre Bourdieu?s sociological ideas about cultural capital transmitted from parent to child and the concept of habitus are used as a theoretical framework regarding descent.

How can we use modern X-ray technology to raise awareness of the information that is hidden in historic upholstery? The materials and techniques add information to the history object in question and  about a profession that is sparsely documented in our country. The knowledge we have today has largely been obtained by studying damaged upholstery, or by removing the show cover and upholstery, a technique which involves high risk of damaging the upholstery. X-ray technology offers  a non- intrusive way to examine historical upholstery.Through case studies, I examined four artefacts. The artefacts went trough an inititial visual exam before being transported to The National Heritage Board in Visby where they underwent a thorough X-ray exam.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and analyse the antagonism between conservation and development which occurs in historical towns.The base of the study is theories in destination development and cultural heritage tourism in historical towns as well as the consequences expressed in these theories concerning conservation and development. The standpoint was that an empiric study needed to complement the theory. This filed study took place in Dubrovnik in Croatia. The thesis identifies the antagonism between conservation and development based on the theoretical research. Moreover the study adds a perspective to the research through the identification of further dimensions of this antagonism.

The purpose of my research has been to analyze the communi-cation of three cultural heritages and how they are being ex-posed on their respective webpages. The essay has also touched the subject as to how webpages can, through marketing of cul-tural heritages, create a connection to the marketed locations and their cultural environment. A phenomenon you could call ?creating a location?. My study has also resulted in an under-standing of how historical sites as cultural actors position them-selves to attract visitors to the location.

I have with this thesis sought to understand how chick lit could be useful in the classroom in the teaching of Swedish B-course in high school. Based on the model of critical literacy I am arguing that this genre would help to meet the objectives of the policy documents which, among other things, are to critically examine and analyze various types of texts.I have found that some of these texts could be used for analyzing and critically examine the ideological dimensions of texts and cultural heritage by the model of critical literacy, and also as a counterweight to the more traditional teaching of the canonical literature as a literary historical stuff that students should learn. I have also wanted to create a basis for discussions about literature in the classroom based on the chick lit genre. To do this I have, based on three themes and questions from the model of critical literacy, tried to focus on issues that might emerge from the ideological analysis and critical review. The model aims to deconstruct norms of society, and in the work of chick lit, I wanted to show how you could deconstruct norms around gender..

This essay consists of a heuristic analysis of referents in the Swedish educational act, leaning on the methodological guidelines of discourse analysis. The overall aim of the essay has been to analyse in what way language in the educational act works as guidelines and law in relation to teachers? work. To correspond to this aim an openly structured questionnaire has been used, providing an empirical view of how teachers understand certain words, or referents, in the educational act. This empirical data has then been shaped to a spectrum view of the definitions of the referents showing a number of deductable facts, including the significance of the apparent use of institutional and professional language, which then have been viewed from two theoretical perspectives.