This Bachelor Thesis looks at the cooperation between the Swedish civil society and theEuropean Union (EU), and it aims at evaluating Swedish civil society organizations' influencewithin the EU's development work on policy level. It focuses primarily on eight civil societyorganizations, and it is based on empirical material collected in Stockholm and Gothenburg,Sweden. The material has been analyzed using three theoretical frameworks. The firstdetermines whether the structure of the EU allows bottom-up influence, the second looks atthe communication between the EU and civil society organizations, and the third assesseswhether the civil society has the ability to influence the political agenda within the EU?sdevelopment work.Conclusions of the thesis include determining the complex structure of the EU as a mainobstacle to influencing the EU's development work.

This essay revolves around partnerships established between local authorities and civil society to promote integration in segregated urban areas. The main focus is on who is active in formulating the local integration policy in these partnerships. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with representatives from the local public administration and from different parts of civil society in Rosengård and Södra innerstaden in Malmö. The conclusion is that local authorities to a large extent decide the content of integration policy. The authorities, in having the major responsibility of the integration projects, decide what parts of civil society to involve and what projects will promote integration.

A segmented market, according to traditional methods, appears increasingly difficult in mature consumer markets. A common explanation is that the mature markets are often characterised by over-supply which results in a great variety of choices for the consumer. Furthermore, the consumer of today has a more complex and flexible purchase behaviour which is difficult to catch. This makes consumer segmentation difficult. International studies indicate that dividing consumers into generation cohorts might be advantageous in understanding consumers of today.

The background to the work bases on the consumers view around Swedish and foreign meat products, and how the attitude around the meat products is pursued in the shops. The consumers request high meat quality and security . Many consumers value local produced and ecological meat products but the price is too high. We have done verbal interviews with consumers on three different shops, where we asked questions and had dialogues around Swedish meat products where the consumers have told us their arguments and opinions about Swedish and foreign meat. The result shows that the majority of consumers consider that it is important to know that meat is produce in Sweden.

Almost all Swedes today have access to the Internet, if not through the home then via the library or work. Despite this, around 20% of the population stand outside the information society in that they lack in knowledge, assistive usability tools or positive attitude towards technology and its influence on society. The main factors influencing the digital divide in today's society are age, disability and education, while the main reason for staying outside seems to be disinterest.The question about digital inclusion is important as we now stand on the breaking-point between a society where the industry has had a prominent position for private as well as national economy and a digital society where access to the Internet is no longer about prestige, but where significant differences between users' knowledge levels can create a power gap. Gaps in access and use not only reflects already existing socio-economic conditions, but can also maintain and enhance these.It is crucial for the future expansion of Internet usage how today's non-users feel about becoming users. To understand what underlies the motivations not to use computers is one of the keys to get non-users to embrace becoming users.

This study is an attempt to examine a hospital library's difficulties in reaching customers with consumer health information. The method was a case study of the consumer health service in the hospital library in Västerås, a town in Sweden. Qualitative interviews, observations and written material were used. The approach was from the actor's point of view with the intention to look upon the problem with the eyes of those who work at the hospital with information to patients, that is librarians and medical staff. Theories about marketing in service organizations and how to develop new services were used in the study, as well as theories about communication and different cultures within organizations of different kinds like the library and the hospital.

This survey is a text analysis of 4 teaching books during a ten years period in Social studies from a multicultural and intercultural perspective. Taking as a starting point that society and the school in today?s Sweden are multicultural and in need of more intercultural teaching I explore teaching books in social science to se how they relate to Sweden as a multicultural society and their way of relating to intercultural teachings and compare them. The questions asked are: How do the different books describe the multicultural society in Sweden? What kind of intercultural tools are found in the books? And are there any similarities or differences among these books? The theories used as a starting point are reformulated by the author after theories of Von Wright and Lahdenperä to fit in to the context of a text analysis of teaching books and the method used is a content analysis with its purpose of describing how the books are constructed.

This masters thesis aims at a discussion about whether the public library will be an educating and cultivating society institution in the future. The method used is a combination of interviews with library staff in leading position and studies of the public librarys relationship to cultivation and adult education in a changeable society. The work concentrates on two main questions. One is about what, and in which way, changes, that are important for the public library and that take place in society now or within the next ten years, affect the future activities of the library. The other is about the public librarys relationship to cultivation in general and in the future.

Using Varshney's theory about intra- and interethnic networks, this thesis examines how civil society in southern Thailand is built up.During 2004 the violence between Muslims and Buddhists rose in southern Thailand. The government tried to fight the insurgency using violent police and military forces, resulting in hundreds of deaths and part of reason why Thailand is loosing rank in Freedom House's democracy index. Varshney means that a civil society built up on intraethnic networks works favourable to violence between different ethnic groups. Sorting out and defining what is meant by ?ethnic? and ?civil society?, this thesis shows why to look at the insurgency in southern Thailand as an ethnic conflict surviving partly because of an intraethnic civil society.

In 2002 the local council of Lund, Sweden, decides to implement the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A number of actors, such as the state, the civil society, the political society and the bureaucracy, participate in the political process with different authority and points of departure. This thesis studies the actors´ interactions from an inside perspective by applying concepts such as political power, democracy and implementation. The methodological departure is action research from within, a local NGO, the local board of Save the Children Sweden. The results of the study indicate that governance and steering of the implementation process at the communal level is weak.

The purpose of this essay was to reflect on previous made research, on examining how youth?s identity is formed by living in an area that society looks at negatively. The theoretical benchmarks that have been used in order to provide a better understanding are: identity, exclusion, ethnicity and adaption. The study is a qualitative study, since there is an aspiration in increasing the knowledge and understanding, of the conception that these individuals experience, as deviants in the society. This is a literature-based study, focusing mainly on written analysis, which consists of reports, theses and case studies.

In the early 1990?s more and more companies of the Swedish public sector were exposed to competition, and this started the debate on how such actions might affect the business and even society.The first chapter examines how the public sector and especially health care, is financed and managed. We also explore what it means to be exposed to competition and find that there are many different ways of exposing the public sector to competition. The study examines dental care as an example of a market with both publicly and privately owned companies. The purpose of this paper is to explore how publicly and privately owned health care companies view their relationship with their consumers.

Every year 67000 tons of food is wasted by Swedish retail stores. The waste implies financial losses for the retailer and it has a huge impact on the global environment. Reducing in-store food waste is thus a win-win situation for both retailers and society. The most effective way to reduce waste is primarily by optimizing the logistics of supply, but customers expect a store with a wide range of products and stuffed shelves. Thus there will always be products about to expire.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how consumer advertising has an effect on other groups than the intended, the so-called extended audience of advertising. Previous research shows that consumer advertising can influence investors and employees of a company as well as affect the attractiveness of a company as a potential employer. In addition, research shows that more perceived cognitive effort in advertising results in positive signaling effects for consumers. This study aims to further build on these concepts in order to gain additional understanding of how consumer advertising can influence extended audiences. More specifically, it examines if more (versus less) effort in advertising can improve the future prospects on the labor market for an employee of the advertising company, by looking at recruitment consultants as an extended audience.

Product development is a risky business; many products never yield profit, but it is also ne-cessary for a company?s survival in a competitive business where the costumers change their requests constantly. Consumer-led product development is developed from the wish to fill the consumer?s needs and expectations and thereby be more likely to succeed. Lindell?s Gårdsslakteri AB is a local slaughter and meat processor in Västergötland.