The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how gender patterns are described in the modern picture book. Focus is on the description of men and women and their emotions and living conditions. Do the descriptions follow stereotypes in the form of binary opposites strong/weak, active/passive etc. in which one component of the pair, often associated with masculinity, is privileged or are there examples of breach of normative gender? The analysis is based upon forty of 149 picture books that are presented in a children's book catalogue published by The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs Statens kulturråd, in the year of 2000.

The purpose of this essay is to examine Marjane Satrapi?s comic novel Persepolis from a gender and postcolonial perspective. To reach this I have used several theories from mainly three different fields of theory: gender studies, postcolonial theories and theoretical texts which focus on the form of comics.My analysis has shown that idols, heroes and other cultural symbols are important for the creation of the main character Marji?s identity, but that she at the same time has many Marxistic influences. These casts of mind do not stand in opposition, but become an expression for her hybridity.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women?s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood?s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 ? 2013.

Today it is common to state that we are living in an information overloaded society. But there are many different definitions of what can be said to constitute Information Overload and there is a lack of substantial research on the subject. Conclusions in the available literature on Information Overload are often drawn on anecdotal evidence and carries a dramatized picture of the causes and effects of the phenomenon.With the tools of discursive analysis this two years master?s thesis explores how the phenomenon Information Overload is portrayed in six popular science books that deals with the subject: Alvin Toffler (1970) Future Shock, Orrin Klapp (1986) Overload and Boredom, Richard Wurman (1989) Information Anixety, Andrew Keen (2007) The cult of the amateur, Maggie Jackson (2008), Distracted and Nicholas Carr (2010) The Shallows. The result of the analysis shows that there is a common discourse of how the subject of Information Overload is represented, which stretches in and between the books intertextually.

This is a study about engagements and motivation. Its purpose is, by looking at other motivational theories than Abraham Maslow?s hierarchy of needs, to find out why certain people choose to become engaged as student representatives. The question this study is working from is: why do certain people choose to engage themselves as student representatives?This study has a qualitative approach, which means that a number of interviews have been done and subsequently profoundly analyzed.

This thesis is an attempt to understand how the traditional female gender identity is constructed and what kind of structures that are maintaining it. I also study how this identity is reflected in young women's conception of themselves and in their views upon whether they should sign in to the military service or not.The theoretical framework that I use mainly consists of theories about gender construction, male dominance and the woman's role in the nation-state.The purpose of using this theoretical approach is to illustrate that the traditional female gender identity consists of characteristics that are in opposition to the male ones. The woman should be weaker, less aggressive and more caretaking than men- in sum she is defined as the Other. The structures that constructs this identity is the male dominance, also known as the gender system and the patriarchy.This traditional female gender identity and citizenship role that historically has been allotted to women in the nation-state is still today very vivant in Sweden and is reflected in the fact that the military service is optional for women. Certain parts of this identity is also reflected in the young women that I interview, in their sense of probably not fitting in to the military service, because of their sex and the characteristics discussed above, that are associated with it..

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the relationship between fiction and resistance from a postcolonial and feminist perspective. More specifically, the study is an examination of this relationship in ten novels by the Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta. The resistance is studied by examining the way it is depicted in the texts, as well as whether the texts can be seen as a form of opposition. Both the resistance and its context are studied.

Titel: Thinking outside the box: Goals and Salary boxes as motivational factorsAuthors: Anna Ceder and  Karin Barwinger PlogareSeat of Learning: Uppsala UniversityPurpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate if the imposition of salary boxes in Uppsala municipality has had any influence on the organisation?s employees? to improve their work motivation. The reason for the study was to look deeper into employees? motivational factors, this with a focus on salary as motivational factor in structures of salary boxes where it is possible for the employee to work towards goals which affect their salary. The primary purpose of the study was to look into if employees? ability to advance their performance had any connection to the impostion of salary boxes.Methodology: In order to collect as much data as possible for the measurements one of the largest occupational groups in Uppsala municipality was chosen, which represents the group of pre-school teachers.

This comparative case study, which is based on a most similar system design,investigates why the Chávez government has attained a lower degree of democracy than the Kirchner and the Lula governments. In order to develop asupplementary theory about why governments in general achieve various degrees of democracy I compare these governments and examine what policies that differ them and why. My results show that these governments? policies differ concerning the rule of law, militarization, and negotiations with economic groups and anti-regime parts of civil society. I have found numerous answers to why some of these governments (and governments in general) have democratic policies within these four areas and why some do not.

Debates about suitable content in children's literature occur regularly. In spring 2010 such a debate took place in Sweden. The purpose of this Bachelor's thesis is to analyse the debate to identify ideas concerning the role of children's literature in society. A second aim is to examine how children's literature is described and which concepts are used by the debaters. The empirical material used for the analysis consists of ten articles, blog posts, radio- and TV- features published in March 2010.

Health care costs in relation to GDP are escalating all over Europe and the Swedish health care industry is not an exception. Between 30 and 50 percent of resources used in health care are considered waste, in the sense that they don't contribute to increased health. This illustrates the big need for hospitals to become more efficient which is why many hospitals today are trying to move towards a process-oriented organization. This paper therefore aims to identify the elements necessary for this type of organizational change, the barriers encountered when moving from a functional to process oriented hospital as well as how to overcome them. The case study was conducted at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset and shows the importance of not just transmitting a sense of urgency but also communicating that the upcoming change is long term.

Folkhälsopolitiskt arbete bedrivs på flera nivåer i samhället vilket är nödvändigt för att lyckas med förebyggande och hälsofrämjande arbete. Folkhälsorapporter syftar bland annat till att ge politiker en grund i det folkhälsopolitiska arbetet. Den politiska organisationen och professionen påverkar i hög grad folkhälsan. Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka vad folkhälsointresserade landstingpolitiker i Stockholms län anser om, samt vilken användning de har av de folkhälsorapporter som publicerats av Centrum för folkhälsa. Sex kvalitativa intervjuer med landstingspolitiker genomfördes vilka sedan analyserades med hjälp av meningskoncentrering.Resultatet visade att folkhälsorapporten används vid beslutsfattande och prioriteringar i politiska beredningar.

Denna uppsats visar hur representationen av dekadent maskulinitet i svensk dekadenslitteratur från tiden strax innan sekelskiftet 1900 konstruerades. Genom att se till de tre författarna Ola Hansson (1860-1925), Emil Kléen (1868-1898) och Axel Wallengren (1865-1896) visas hur den dekadente mannen ? dekadenten ? skapas som karaktär och litterär figur. Dekadenten var, menar denna undersökning, extremt bunden av rum, socialitet och kropp, och kunde endast agera inom mycket snäva ramar skapade av dessa kulturella kategorier. Vad som framträder är närmast en schablon enligt vilken dekadensförfattarna arbetade, och rum, umgängesformer och kroppsligheter är så gott som utbytbara från verk till verk och författarskap till författarskap.

The aim of this paper is to describe the position of the Swedish welfare state within the shaping of a Swedish national identity. This is done through the study of Mångkulturåret 2006, and its rhetorical context. The point of departure is that history is formed continuously in current speech and a text analytical method has been used. Mångkulturåret was issued by the Department of Culture as an extended perspective of Cultural politics. The rhetoric used in the official document Agenda för Mångkultur is analyzed through a comparison with earlier official documents on the field of multiculturalism and integration.

This paper investigates the science fiction novels of Swedish crime writer Per Wahlöö, most famous for his collaboration with his writing partner Maj Sjöwall on the ten Martin Beck mysteries. During two important years, 1964 and 1968, Wahlöö wrote the novels Murder On the 31st Floor and The Steel Spring, set in a near future land ruled by a social fascist power structure where political opposition is eradicated. The pretexted notion of this paper is that these novels consists of extensive quantities of criticism against the Swedish welfare state and the monopoly-capitalistic Swedish press during the sixties. Through the lens of science fiction theory and the notion of the novels as historical sources this paper concludes that PerWahlöö´s science fiction becomes a bridge between the classic Swedish detective novel and the new social critic crime fiction in the style of Sjöwall-Wahlöö and others. The novels are also representations of the historical process in the mid-sixties during the radical turn: the sci-fi novels as social criticism of the contemporary society ? an utopian flare.