SummaryThis master thesis in ethnology examines the practices around the phenomena of vintage andsecond-hand clothing in the early twenty-first century. The resurgence of vintage and retro confirmsa craze for the style periods of the past and are linked to a more widespread interest in yesterday'sfashion and objects. Television and other media outlets showcasing vintage display that it issomething that interests many in society today. More vintage dealers are pushing to change theoutlook and perspective on an old, worn in object or piece of clothing. The idea is that this objector piece of clothing holds the magic of the past and therefore becomes valuable or sought after.

Mind the gap encourages you to beware of the interspaces. The project seeks to defend the gaps that occur in time and space and encourages the reader to care about the interruptions of the routine-like and planned, whilst also opening up a discussion about interaction and participation. Mind the gap is a project about the many opportunities the public space has in the contemporary city. What you have in front of you is the result of this project. As society constantly changes, new and different needs arise in the city and it is necessary that architects and planners understand and adapt to these changes. They have to be able to develop new ways of thinking and to challenge established perceptions of what the public space is and should be. This means being able to see that the public space could be different and to recognize the potentials for it to change. This project examines the underlying ideals of urbanism and investigates the potentials of the City when shaped by these ideals.

Rock singing - five vocal teachers´ experience of the female voice.The purpose of this study is to find out what different vocal teachers have to say about rock singing and the female singing voice. The method I have used to gather information is a phenomenographically inspired qualitative interview. The study begins with a few thoughts about my interest in rock singing, followed by a short overview about other research and literature that has been published on the subject. I have interviewed five vocal teachers in this study. All of them with many years experience of singing, both singing themselves and teaching professionally.

This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

This essay sets out to compare political participation in two e-petition systems: The Malmö initiative in Malmö, Sweden, and Better Reykjavik in Reykjavik, Iceland. The main question of the essay concerns the aggregative and deliberative qualities of the Malmö initiative and Better Reykjavik, as well as the relationship between aggregation and deliberation. This main question is divided into four subqueries that lead the empirical analysis. These are: (1) Which similarities and differences in terms of design are there between the Malmö initiative and Better Reykjavik? (2) To what extent have these systems mobilized an aggregative political participation? (3) What similarities and differences are there concerning aspects of deliberation? and (4) What is the correlation between aggregation and deliberation like in the two e-petition systems?The method in use is a comparative cross-sectional study with a 'most similar research design'.

This thesis concerns the term contemporary history and its role in landscape architecture. Today?s contemporary history is defined as the planning and architecture connected to the 60s and 70s, in Sweden carried out as a large scale planning project called ?Miljonprogrammet?, which set out to build one million new residences in ten years. Initially, the term contemporary history and its complex of problem are examined. To deepen the picture of today?s situation, a historical review has been made, starting in early 1900s ending in 2000s concerning how different planning and architectural influences has varied through the years.

The right wing party the Sweden Democrats is through their conservative and nationalist approach and socio-political heritage, connected to various extreme-right populist movements, which have all been in conflict with different branches of feminism. This connection is argued for in relation to the research survey. The party has likewise been accused of pursuing misogynistic, homophobic and racist politics, but differ from its ideological peers due to their outspoken equality policy. The party shows strong rejection of discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation or geographical, religious or ethnical background. In the analysis chapter of this study, texts produced by members of the party are analyzed by means of parts of Karlberg and Mral?s rhetoric analysis method, aiming to clarify what ideals of family and the roles within it are being constructed.

The purpose of this thesis is to do a critical review of the aid organization SOS Children?s Villages text- and video campaigns, from a postcolonial perspective. Our purpose is divided into two questions: Are there colonial values in the advertising campaigns? Which language- and image strategies are used by SOS Children?s Villages to put across their messages? Our material consists of 10 selected video clips, and four printed ads that are made up of an image and a short text, which are part of a campaign named: Inte ett enda barn ska behöva vara ensamt (translation: Not a single child should have to be alone). We have chosen to use text- and image analysis as a method in our review of the material.

As birch is one of the most common trees in Sweden, and probably one of the easiest for someone who lives here to identify, it is interesting to note that most people do not know how variable the genus is and how widely it is distributed across the northern hemisphere. One can find birch growing at both high and low elevations, demanding different soil conditions and preferring varying amounts of sunlight. Many people may also be surprised to hear that the colour of the bark can vary from bight white to almost black, and different shades of pink, orange and red can also be displayed. This, together with the astonishing beauty of the genus, the important role as a pioneer in many ecological systems and the difficulty in sorting out the taxonomy of the genus, constitutes the background of this thesis. The thesis is written at the Department of Landscape Development in Alnarp, Sweden with Kenneth Lorentzon, researcher at the Swedish University of Agriculture as a supervisor. The aim of this thesis is to highlight which species and cultivars within the genus Betula could be appropriate for horticultural use in Sweden.

The aim of this study is to examine the media coverage of gender-neutral marriage from an intersectional perspective ? with particular regard to gender, sexual orientation and religion. By focusing on the spokespeople who appears in the articles we have made an attempt to answer questions regarding who was heard in the debate on gender-neutral marriage and how the homosexual couples are portrayed in relation to the above criteria.The collected material consists of 89 articles, published in 2009, in Swedish newspapers which have been analysed by using quantitative content analysis. Ten articles have also been selected for a critical discourse analysis based on Norman Fairclough?s approach.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the Swedish laws regulate the proactive work of employers to prevent employees from getting sexual harassed or harassed on the basis of sex. The purpose is also to investigate how employers are supposed to handle employees whom have been sexual harassed or harassed on the basis of sex. Sweden has a segregated labor market which means that women and men tends to select different professions. This leaves marks on the equality for women and men, which also has effect on the fact that women and men are being harassed in the workplace or situations associated with the work. By investigating genderresearch I am hoping to find out why more employees get sexual harassed or harassed on the basis of their sex in segregated professions.The definition of sexual harassment is unwanted behavior that alludes on sex, and thereby violates the person?s dignity.

The use of the robust and durable woody ground covers is increasing, not in the least in public places. The group includes low shrubs of different height that effectively build low, tight vegetation that covers the ground. Despite all the good qualities the knowledge about them is quite low and there are ideas about them of being dull. The woody ground covers manage to struggle against weeds effectively by competing for nourishment and water, but above all, by the canopy of the ground covers that prevent the weeds from getting enough light. In that way the woody groundcovers can effectively compete with the annual weeds.

AbstractDetta är en uppsats i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap och har för avsikt att undersöka den amerikanska kontroversiella realityserien Toddlers & Tiaras som handlar om skönhetstävlingar för barn i USA. Serien har blivit utsatt för mycket negativ kritik, denna har främst riktats mot barnens föräldrar, deras barnuppfostran och sätt att handla samt det att skönhetstävlingarna tillåter en sexualisering av väldigt små barn. Syftet med denna uppsats är således att undersöka på vilket sätt skönhet gestaltas bland deltagarna i skönhetstävlingar i TV-serien Toddlers & Tiaras samt på vilket sätt föräldrarna i serien och tillika coacherna uppfostrar och kontrollerar sina barn. De frågeställningar vi valt att besvara är följande:? Vilken syn på föräldraskap produceras i programmet?? Vad finns det för likheter i representationen av skönhet i de båda avsnitten?I analysen har vi utgått ifrån två hela avsnitt av serien och har med hjälp av narrativ och semiotisk metod analyserat berättelsernas händelseförlopp samt fördjupat oss i kortare scener där vi trott oss kunna få svar på våra frågeställningar.Genomgående i uppsatsen har vi utgått ifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt teoretiskt perspektiv och därför menar vi att kön och genus är kulturellt skapta produkter.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how swedishness is constructed and narrated in two Swedish documentary series that picture the Swedish participation in the international ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The main focus lies on how the Swedish soldier as such is portrayed, on which values, characteristics and qualities that they are said to embody and how these are linked to notions of swedishness, particularly the strong historical narrative, formed during the second half of the twentieth century, that defines Sweden as a peaceful, neutral and humanitarian state, with peaceful, enlightened and democratically minded citizens. Theoretically it draws on the concept of metanarrative to explain how ideas of shared national origin translates in to a broad organizing discourse, that defines, interprets and communicates notions of what it means to be a Swede and what is needed to make claims on swedishness. Another concept, that of national bodyscape, is also used to further define and explain how ideas of nationality are embodied and take the form of specific characteristics and  personal qualities. The meaning-making in these two series makes use of the above mentioned definition of swedishness as defined by humanitarian concerns, democratic ideals and moral superiority to construct an image of the Swedish soldiers as on the one hand soft, humanitarians, who are needed in Afghanistan because of their especially strong sense of justice and moral, and, on the other, as tough soldiers, who are able to participate in every aspect of the war as fighters.

This study is about how videogamecompanies and Swedish newspapers represent masculinity and femininity in the covers of the games Assassins Creed 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, Bayonetta and Tomb Raider along with the reviews being done in conjunction with the game. The reviews has been published in the following newspapers: Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen and Göteborgsposten. The image that is formed in our society about how a man and a woman should be and behave will be the basics of this study. The covers of the games often represent what the game itself is about and what it contains and the reviews also conveys what the consumer who buys the game gets. The video game industry has grown in recent years to become one of the largest entertainmentindustries, but despite this, there has not been many studies on how this media represents masculinity and femininity.