In this thesis I analyse civilizations in South America. I construct civilizationalnarratives through the method of emplotment, to build a historic continuity, whichI subsequently connect to the theoretical framework. The theory emphasise that,when confronted with globalization and free market capitalism, civilizationsembark on different strategies to challenge the power of transnational marketforces. I find that South America is a polarised continent, and is divergingconcerning the relationship towards the USA and free trade agreements. On thesame time the issues that concern the social movements are not being reproducedin a significant matter at state level.

This study deals with some contested issues regarding prehistoric cultural development in Amazonia and the colonial impact on the native inhabitants of the area. It focuses on the relation between groups belonging the language families of Tupí and Gê, on one hand, and the different ecological zones that they inhabit, on the other. GIS mapping is used to visualise the distribution and movements of these groups in relation to ecology and the impact of European colonization. GIS is shown to be a useful methodology for analysing historical data derived from written sources and maps. The results of these analyses are discussed in the light of different theoretical perspectives.

?Problemet? immigration i ?möjligheternas? EU är en uppsats som ämnar analysera EU:s immigrations- och asylpolitik. Materialet består av olika policydokument, utgivna av EU-kommissionen. Det är en diskursanalys med syfte att söka urskilja bakomliggande mönster för den politik som formuleras i texterna. Diskursanalysen vilken är en breddad typ av textanalys utgör uppsatsens metod.

This is a study about how Swedish travel magazines write about tropical islands with a history of colonization. The study investigates how the islands of Mauritius, the Seychelles, Haiti, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Zanzibar and Guadeloupe are being portrayed in four Swedish travel magazines.Travel articles published in the travel magazines Vagabond, Allt om Resor, Res and Escape 360° during the period January 2004 to December 2009 have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis.The study concludes that the travel magazines tend to idealize and aestheticize the tropical islands. The islands are being presented as paradises on earth. They are described as fairy tales, magical, dreams and as playgrounds for Westerners. The inhabitants of the tropical islands are being judged by how well they attend to the tourists? needs and wishes.

The media plays a key role in constructing identities and categories, as its messages influence the way we understand the world. In the debate on integration issues, categories such as ?Swede? and ?immigrant? are often treated as obvious and unproblematic. ?Swedish?, being the norm, is seldom defined   and   frequently appears   with   subtlety.   This   paper   set   out   to   study   what   characterizes Swedishness in newspaper articles on integration issues, and how it is represented in relations to immigrants.

This thesis deals with the characterization of Japan and Japanese people by Swedish travelers during the Meiji period. It seeks to answer what aspects of Japanese people two Swedish travelers chose to highlight, and how these aspects were presented in their travelogues. This thesis also has a second aim. By applying Edward Said?s theory of orientalism, it wants to answer if Swedish travelogues were influenced by western 19th century ideas of Colonialism and imperialism.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the ideology behind Sida's cultural aid by using postcolonial theory. We want to analyse the discourse on cultural aid that is found mainly in Sida's publications. The interpretation of the sources is made with a hermeneutic base and by using postcolonial theory in combination with Paul Ricoeur's theories on the function of ideology: 1. ideology as distortion, 2. ideology as legitimation, and 3.

The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows:? How are the discursive usage of ?person centered? and ?society centered? expressions being used?? How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work?In our theoretical viewpoint we use ?post colonial theory?, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective.

In subsequent to Post-Colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

The rise of the Swedish Democrats, as a political party in Sweden, has been surroundedby controversy both within and outside of the media. As such a polarizingtopic, the party has been the focus of negative and positive attention. On onehand it has been considered a racist and xenophobic party due to its policies onimmigrants. On the other, it has also been seen as a solution to what has been consideredby some to be a constant problem in Sweden, for those same policies.These policies are motivated by what the party perceives as a threat to Swedishsociety. That is to say, immigrants are a threat to Sweden because of thechanges they impose on the Swedish identity.

The purpose of this study was to examine how SOS Children's Villages as an organization in Swaziland is affected by, and takes into account, the cultural, organizational and societal context in which it acts. Material was gathered through a field study during one month in one of the three SOS Children's Villages in Swaziland. The study has a qualitative approach and is based on the result from 12 semi-structured interviews with village mothers and other representatives from the organization. The other representatives were: social worker, program director, child and youth development coordinator, board member and educational manager. Since this study is both characterized by a specific historical, cultural and organizational context, we decided to connect the postcolonial perspective with an organization theory with focus on the concepts of culture, power and a children?s right perspective.

My goal with this thesis was to investigate how educational material in the subjects of history, geography and social studies relate to the fact that Sweden has a history marked by prejudice and racism.I have chosen to focus on four areas in the Swedish history that I think deserves some special attention, these four areas have been: the Swedish slave trade on the island of Saint Barthelemy in the eighteenth century, Swedish eugenics and oppression of the Sami people, forced sterilization services during the twentieth century and Sweden's aid and concessions to Nazi Germany during World War II. With these areas in focus I?ve studied three textbooks in the courses Geography A, Civics A and History A to se how they deal with prejudice and racism in the Swedish history.The result I have come to is that none of the books addresses all four of the areas I?ve focused on. Even if the books are taken as a whole the image that they convey is not adequate. In the event that the four areas that I?ve focused on been mentioned the information have been scant and rarely, if ever, has Sweden been paired with phenomenons like racism, slavery, Colonialism, eugenics, forced sterilization, etc.

This essay is called Imaginary non-community, How Swedish press portrayed the fight for freedom in Tunisia and Hungary 1955 and 1956 and it describes how two similar struggles for freedom are portrayed through the eyes of the most popular Swedish news papers Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and Expressen. In 1955-56 Sweden is a country where the focus lies within the nation itself with economic growth and the building of folkhemmet. The Swedish social program for a more improved living condition. Outside of Sweden the cold war is reigning and the Swedish international politics is careful and passive. The fear of communism makes Sweden side with the western powers and therefore they (Swedish politicians and news papers) do not object to the French military effort to strike down the rebellions by force in North Africa.

In the Swedish author, poet and critic Hanna Nordenhöks (1977-) novels Promenaderna iDalbyhage (2011) and Det vita huset i Simpang (2013) the literary characters are often portrayed asdiffuse shapes with a subtile closeness to other organic bodies, places and times. While the novelsaddress themes such as Colonialism and subjects becoming, they also explore the act of narratingthrough letters, journals, photographs and, in particular, fabrication. What emerge are two aesthetic,literary works that, on different levels, trouble our notion of borders between human and more-thanhumanbodies, an issue that?s essential for our understanding of human - environmentalrelationship.The purpose of this thesis is to show how the prose of Nordenhök can be read in the light of theterm porosity, where matter is understood as elastic and open for both creating and de-creatinginteractions. I will argue that the novels contribute to a deepened understanding of the relationshipbetween human subjects and more-than-human matter as elastic, and that they incorporate thisdynamic porosity within the narration itself.