Local politicians are key actors in the democratic system and their ideas concerning democracy plays a central role in local democratic politics. The study's point of departure is the notion that local politicians are dependent of coherence between practice and theory concerning democracy and in the study of their ideas we acquire knowledge about the democratic practice.This study examines the local politicians? view of Swedish democracy and explores the logic of the discourse that makes statements concerning democracy possible. Twenty local politicians have been interviewed and from the material a discourse have been established through the use of formulation of problems and cause, nodal points and chains of analogy which is compared with democratic ideals.The study comes to the conclusion that a hegemonic discourse exists, in which central nodal points are representative and listening. The idea of the representative system is hegemonic and is based in the liberal democratic ideal although the view of the citizens rather can be traced to the radical, communitarian and deliberative ideal.

The object of the thesis is to propose a new lighting plan for the square Fyristorg in Uppsala, and to describe the process which have led to it. It all started when I choosed the place together with the municipality of Uppsala. I have been doing research and analyzed how the place and it´s existing lighting works both during different times of the day and also in the evening. After researching the place and it´s existing lighting I´ve decided to put up the following goals fot the new lighting design. 1. The general light level of the place shall be experienced as higher than today. 2. The light level of the place shall be adapted to the light levels of surrounding places. 3. The lighting shall be free from glare. 4. The lighting shall be adapted to people passing by. 5.The lighting shall be adapted to the surrounding architecture. 6.

AbstractThis essay is about what rights that a consumer has, after it?s been to a beauty-shop getting a treatment somewhere on her body. We were interested to see what kind of regulations that could be useful if a problem occurred after or during treatment. There are several risks with these treatments.The last decade these kinds of treatments have increased, due to people being vain and so aware about there looks. We started to investigate what type of rights the consumer generally has when it?s about a service.

Den här kvalitativa textanalysstudien syftar till att undersöka vad det finns för ideal i samhället och vilka normer som motiverar dessa. Ur debatter på internet blottlägger jag samhällsideal om makt och politik och de normativa gränser som finns mellan privatliv, arbetsliv och svensk partipolitik. På så vis lyfter jag upp vad det är som upprör människor i Maxgate. Genom att visa vad som skapar den kollektiva upprördheten kommer det som tidigare var osynliga samhällsideal och normer i öppen dager. Studien syftar också till att visa på spänningar inom samhällsidealen och hur normer tolkas olika, men ändock beskrivs på samma sätt.

In this thesis I have criticized traditional nationalism theories formulated by Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Anthony D. Smith. The critique has been based on my belief that nationalism theories do not explain nations whose foundation is built on forward-looking, dynamic aspects such as economy, human and civil rights, and democracy. Traditional nationalism theories have been focused on historicizing perspectives whereas I want to draw attention to non-historicizing perspectives within the field of research. So far nationalism theories has had a shared past or a shared ethnicity as its focal point.

This thesis is a study of Parties as an outflow of societal changes where the aim has been to find out how parties are affected by societal changes and how they justify to new party formation. This is done by using a theory called Parties as an outflow of societal changes which is a theory developed by Swedish researchers in Political Science. To confirm the theory it is necessary to do an argumentation analysis of one external developed party?s electoral program. In this case the party selected is Feminist Initiative which brings a different view on how the society of Sweden should look like.Selected parts of the argumentative analysis will be examined with the purpose to give a perspective on how Feminist Initiative values the changes in society and how they describe their role as a new party.The main question of this study is; Are new parties an outflow of societal changes? The basic arguments includes that along with societal changes in Western Europe also changes the view of a representative democracy in which political parties play a central role.

The purpose of this master thesis is to describe and analyse Gerda Meyerson's educational project for young working-class women in Stockholm between 1898 and 1923. In 1898 Meyerson founded a home for young working-class women where her project could be implemented. It is the educational practises at this home and Meyerson's own words about working womens way of life thats in focus of this investigation. From a class and gender perspective the thesis examines the problems, the solutions and finally the goals of Meyerson's intentions for the young women. The problems were mainly the womens lack of self-esteem and bad moral reputation in society.

The purpose with this essay is to examine and create an understanding for what meaning graffiti and street art has for those who practice it. Furthermore, the practice of graffiti and street art is seen in relation to how urban space is produced. Five semi-structured interviews and one group interview has been made to answer the questions "What meaning does graffiti and street art has for those who practice it? Can it be seen as a way to construct identity?" "How do the artists relate to existing ideals about public space?" and "Does the artists see graffiti and street art as a resistance against the normative representation of the city, in that case, how?" The theoretical framework consists of Mitchell's ideas about public space, Tonkiss' definition of social order, Lefebvre's spatial triad, de Certeau's concept of strategy and tactics, the concept of appropriation and Castell's theory about collective identity. The results showed that the practice of graffiti and street art can be understood as a more complex practice than earlier research has shown.

This study analyzes the discursive content of four history textbooks in order to demonstrate how national identities are formed and how they differ from each other. This was done through discourse analysis guided by social constructivism and John M. Hobson?s dichotomy of East and West. The study shows that textbooks mainly construct national identities in three ways; first by making a clear distinction between ?The Self? and ?The Other?, second by preserving a world order based on the notions of the invariant hegemony of the nation-state, and third by utilizing stereotype based dissimilarities in order to accentuate existing differences between nationalities. Implicit ideals and values in the historical discourse play an important part in the construction of identities; however sends a contradictory and ambiguous message.

Local history collections are fairly common among the Swedish public libraries and these collections often contain older or rare material. There are no national policies concerning the preservation of rare books at the public libraries, and the librarians of public libraries may lack that knowledge. The aim of this study is to examine librarians? attitudes toward their libraries? local history collections. We interviewed five librarians in the county of Västra Götaland and also made a small observation study of their local history collections.

Domestic weekly magazines in Sweden are characterized by an emphasis on practical editorial material such as cooking recipes and knitting patterns, and also contain a comparatively large share of reader material. This makes it possible to study the readers through texts produced by themselves. The aim of this study of columns of readers' tips on domestic work is to analyze how readers embody a specific femininity centered around the woman as responsible for the home, in the sense of everyday maintenance as well as aesthetic development. The author defines this femininity as "home maker". The theoretical framework for the analysis is the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and Jonathan Potter's and Margaret Wetherell's model of interpretive repertoire is also used where modality is discussed.

Lately information- and communication technology (ICT) has been seen as an important tool to vitalize democracy. What kind of democracy it generates is however debateable. The objective with this thesis is therefore to examine what democratic ideal that dominates the use of ICT in Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen and what kind of citizenship it brings. The two case studies were chosen because the Swedish regional level is facing a reorganization with democratic ambitions which in relation to ICT is fairly unexplored. To fulfil the objective there are two perspectives; e-democracy and e-administration, which are defined and integrated with democratic theory including Premfors´ "Fast, Strong and Thin" democratic ideals and Marshall´s three citizenship rights.

Syftet med detta examensarbetet var att ta reda på och jämföra hur pedagoger i förskolan arbetar med jämställdhet och begreppet "hen", samt hur barnen bemöts och om det finns skillnader härledande till barnens kön. För att studera detta användes de kvalitativa metoderna, observationer och intervjuer. Här jämförs Karlskronakommun och Markarydkommun genom fyra observationer och 13 intervjuer med pedagoger och förskolechef. I studien framkom det att pedagogerna vet vad jämställdhet är och menar att de bemöter barnen lika oberoende av kön. Men omedvetet stimulerar pedagogerna de traditionella könsmönstren istället för att motverka dem.

The purpose of this study was to examine how five preschool managers are looking at theirleadership and what difficulties they see in their leading. To live up to my purpose I askedthe following research questions: Which parts in their mission do the five preschoolmanagers see as problematic in relation to the curriculum for preschool and the schoolsinspectorate quality investigation? How do the preschool managers describe their leader styleand leader ideals, and is their any difference between the two of them?The method of this study was qualitative interviews with five preschool managers. Theresults that I found was that the most of the preschool managers see their leadership as coproduced(like in Ludvigssons research 2009) with the teachers and that the preschoolmanagers often find other difficulties in their mission compare to the quality investigation(School inspectorate 2012). I also found that three of the five preschool managers thoughtthat they weren?t present enough in the preschools because of their many tasks.When I tried to classify the preschool managers leader style I found that they vary betweendemocratic and authoritarian leader style in decision-making like in Tennenbaum andSchmidt?s (1973, p.

Borderlands. A study of the aesthetic-practical environment, its pedagogical and therapeutical properties based on the outline of two practices/institutions: the workshops at Hagastiftelsen and the bookbindery at the Kristofferschool. The perspective on education, pedagogy and therapy taken is an existential one where the main aims of an educational-therapeutic intervention is to support biographical development and integrity. In the process action research in my own bookbinding workshop as well as hermeneutic research at the workshops at Hagastiftelsen where adults with autism and other neuropsychological disorders work have been the sources of primary empirical data. Secondary sources are patient-histories written by Oliver Sacks as well as autobiographical narratives of some adults with autism.