AbstractThe purpose of this study is to examine whether the individual influence at the working place leads to the perception of decreased stress. Also I looked at whether stress and individual influence is affected by the employees age, sex or employment years. Previous research shows that individual influence decreases stress but strangely enough do the research show that individual influence seem to decrease in today?s work environment. This research is quantitative with questionnaires, answered by 74 civil servants working in a department in the municipality of Karlstad.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive. With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things.

This thesis applies a discourse theoretical approach in order to examine in whatways and with what possible meanings the library at KVINFO participates in the overall gender discourse in society. This means that our reading takes place at a metatheoretical level, focussing on the library as a constructor of meaning in relation to society's gender discourse.Besides the actual reading, the thesis argues for the fruitfulness of using both a discourse theoretical and a feministic perspective in the field of Library and Information Science. By looking at libraries in general through a lens provided by these perspectives, libraries are staged as battlegrounds for competing discourses,that attempt to promote its particular knowledge claim on how reality should be perceived.The reading shows that it is possible to perceive the library at KVINFO as amaterial articulation that takes shape by and is part in a feministic counterdiscourse against the masculinistic hegemonic discourse, which throughout ?hisstory? has positioned women as ?the other?, and established men as the normative category in society, including the libraries. Through its practise KVINFO has contributed to a change in the collective identity ascribed to women.

This thesis investigates if privatization of the Swedish healthcare system influences our view on the meaning of equality. This system is based on the principle that all people are equals and that healthcare should be provided on the basis of need. I apply critical ideology analysis to investigate how our view of equality might change because of the evolvement of society. A critical view may be explained as an interest in exploring things that seem obvious to many. Important questions to answer are why equality is regarded as such a natural concept in the society and how healthcare is actually provided.

The aim of the study was to analyse relations between the school and the surrounding world and how these relations affects the schools? work for sustainable development. This was mainly an interview study but teachers? self-valuations have also been used. Totally six teachers at two primary schools has been interwied.

In this study our aim is to display a series of possible mechanisms which operateswithin the regions and societies were child soldiers were frequently andextensively used in combat tasks. Our study is based on the assumption thattoday's peace-building strategies are inadequate to describe certain problemsfaced by many post-conflict countries, especially in Africa. We argue that largeformations of child soldiers will, if not properly and immediately addressed, causeserve and structural problems in society, gravely hampering growth andinstitutional capacity. The Issues of Post Traumatic Stress and societal insecuritybrought on by the use of child soldiers poses a serious threat to society as a whole.In this study we use Uganda as an illustrative case to describe the mechanisms atwork..

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

 Prostitution has been intensely debated in Sweden for nearly four decades. Two major investigations have so far been initiated by the government and numerous propositions have been put forward in the Swedish parliament resulting in the sexköpslag from 1999 that criminalizes purchase of sexual services. The law aims at punishing the buyer and protecting the women in prostitution, thus making it possible for women to be helped by various social interventions rather than punished. Swedish society has undergone major changes in these decades. Globalization, the internet and the membership in the EU have changed the Swedish society and influenced the discourse on prostitution.This paper has a twofold aim, on the one hand investigating if and how these changes have had an impact on the prostitution discourse in texts produced by the government and analyze how female and male sexuality in connection to prostitution is constructed.

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

The number of elderly in Sweden is increasing due to improved living conditions and better medical care. It is important that society adapts to the increase and begins to work preventively to reduce the costs of the increase. An important aspect is the elderly accommodation, the cost of health care in specific accommodation is almost twice as high as those for ordinary housing. Therefore, it is important that we availability adapt dwelling to allow older people to live in ordinary housing for as long as they wish, instead of moving to assisted living before they need it. If we can fulfil the elder?s needs with home care instead, society can save a lot of money.In this report, three different forms of housing has undergone accessibility increases and been inventoried and analysed.

More recently, the number of elderly immigrants has increased. This means that Sweden is faced with new challenges. The purpose of this study was to illustrate how the elder immigrants general situation in Helsingborg looks like, as well as how social workers work to integrate this target group. Furthermore, I wished to have an answer on whether social workers feel that there is a continuing need to be concentrated on the integration of elder immigrants. To get answers to my questions, I have interviewed five social workers in Helsingborg who are working on issues that concern elder and integration.

The aim of the thesis is to explore how the human subject is depicted in contemporary posthumancinema and how these films effect our comprehension of human subjectivity. The object of analysis isJames Cameron?s Avatar (2009) and the method of analysis is cybernetic and intermedial. The conclusionis that Avatar is a film that depicts a posthuman network society where existence and subjectivity in a greatvariety of forms is possible. The film presents posthuman subjects in symbiosis with avatars, terminals,extensions and prothesis.

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.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how pupils with Swedish as a second language and school librarians perceive the concept of pleasure of reading and the feeling of being a part of society. Our research is based on qualitative interviews with eight students in grades 6-9 and from two different schools. We have also interviewed two school librarians in these two libraries. As a method of analysis, we used phenomenography because it is the informants' perceptions of the phenomenon of pleasure of reading that we investigate.

This thesis aims to explore and investigate the use of the cliché ?68 in a contemporary Swedish debate. The sixties and especially 1968 is a historically significant year,and it is marked by political murders, protesting students and political energy. InSweden one of the most notable happenings was the occupation of the student union?s headquarters in Stockholm.