The present state of politics in contemporary Venezuela portrays a country of polarization, a chase for power and accusations of authoritarian and even undemocratic rule. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the democracy in Venezuela, in order to clarify the sometimes vauge perception of the political situation. By applying the theories of polyarchical democracy put forth by Robert Dahl, one of the most highly regarded theorists on the subject, accordingly the discussion will therefore follow a theoretical framework. Dahl requires seven nstitutions to be guaranteed in a democracy, amongst them the possibility to vote, run for public office and the practise of freedom of speech. Measuring Dahl's levels of institutions in Venezuela, it is made clear that the level of democracy vary in different areas.

The main issue of this master is to investigate what influence the phenomenon of postmodernity has on the Swedish public library. Is it possible to talk about the Swedish public library as postmodern, and if so, is it expressed by a postmodern discourse? The concept of postmodernity is defined as an open and inclusive value system where all kind of opinions and preferences take place. According to a postmodern point of view there is no such thing as an objective or general truth. A postmodern ideology does not talk about reality but about realities.

This Masters thesis concerns a series of ten police procedural novels, Roman om ett brott, Novel of a crime, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. These books are among the most translated Swedish novels and have been popular among audiences and critics all over the world. The books were produced 1965 1975, a period during which a left wing movement swept over the Western world. Besides from being detective stories Novel of a crime is an analysis of contemporary society, and this thesis will focus on the social and political ideas and the criticism expressed in the books. Theories used in this study are the Sociology of Literature and the Analysis of Ideas.

One of the most distinguishing features of contemporary globalisation is production fragmentation, a splitting up of the manufacturing of a good into several different stages. Production fragmentation creates new opportunities through vertical specialization; a country incapable of mastering the entire production process may specialize in the manufacturing of one separate part. The aim of this thesis is to examine to what extent international integration affects a country?s ability to engage in vertical specialization in an industry characterized by production fragmentation. The analysis focuses on the european integration process over the last decade, where countries in eastern Europe with relatively low labour costs have been integrated with more capital abundant western economies.

In this essay I compare the description of the Thirty Years? War in a number of German and Swedish encyclopedias published between 1854 and 2005. The essay is a historiographical research with focus on three areas; the description of the war background, the reason of the Swedish intervention in the war and the picture of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf with the consequences of the war and the peace of Westphalia. I want to analyze the differences and similarities in the way the history is being told in the German and Swedish encyclopedias. The research shows a transformation from a narrative, nationalistic, partial description with focus on individuals and specific events to a more analytical and objective description with focus on structures.

Film is a tool frequently used by teachers, but it is often limited to showing students how historical time periods looked like, or as a way for students to search for historical inaccuracies. The aim of this essay is to study whether it is possible to use two films based on the legend of Robin Hood as a way to teach students how to contextualize gender history. Through the use of film analysis and gender analysis of two different versions of Robin Hood, The adventures of Robin Hood and Robin Hood: Prince of thieves were analyzed. The study has shown that it is indeed possible to use film as a source material for the study of gender history, and that film can tell us a lot about the contemporary view of gender, masculinity and femininity. The didactical analysis concluded that there was no theoretical objection of using film as a source material; however, there are some things that a teacher should be aware of. Although film may be a good way to create a varied study environment and benefit students with reading- and writing disabilities, there is a risk that time-constraints and lack of knowledge of film and its methodology on, behalf of both teachers and students, may make it hard to implement.

In this essay, I explore the history of the ideas that have shaped the profession of landscape architecture, in a Swedish context. To this purpose, I have sampled the professional debate on landscape architecture at four points in time. These are the years around 1890, 1930, 1970 and 2010. Drawing on G N Brandt (1920), I make the distinction between two arguably crucial approaches, i . e., naturalism and formalism. By identifying these perspectives, and by dividing the arguments of each time period according to this classification, I am able to compare the course of the debate over time. I take on the task through hermeneutics.

The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study between the photography?s of Leila Khaled and Shirin Neshat in order to observe if the woman are able to recede from an conventional formation to become the bearer of the veil and not only reduced to that whichneeds to be concealed. From a feministic perspective I have observed how the symbolic of the veil moulds the woman and how the woman in her context moulds the veil.In the description of the news photography of Khaled and the art photography produced by Neshat the mechanisms that lies as a foundation for the modelling of the portraits becomesthe essays primary entrance. Mechanisms that evolve around the creation of the woman as aconcept, a subject shaped for being looked at and the woman?s self-image through others.The textual discourse is visually enhanced through a comparative picture material visually enhanced and explained through photographs by the contemporary artist photographers Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, Laurie Simmons, Robert Mapplethorpe and Elin Berge.

This thesis explores how art produced in the former GDR has been looked upon, handled and exhibited after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Swedish Art History has paid little attention to art in the GDR. The debate starting in the 50s between the spokesmen for abstract art and the defenders of figuration restrained for a long period the ability to look upon art from the GDR without prejudices. This led to a rejection of all figurative art in the GDR and sweeping judgmental attitudes, like it´s all ?kitsch?.

Laura Mulvey was the first to suggest that women and men have different positions on the screen; men drives the plot forward, and the women are objects of masculine desire and lust.The purpose of this report was to look at and compare the two characters from the 70?s - and 80's with two characters from the 00?s - and 2010?s to gain a deeper understanding and insight into how female action heroes are presented. This will be done with the help of the questions; How is the female action heroes that are analyzed in the paper?What are the differences and similarities between the past and the present-day action heroes? Just how stereotypical are the women in their genre? The four female action heroes that were analyzed were; Princess Leia Star Wars, Sarah Connor Terminator and Lisbeth Salander Men Who Hates Women and Katniss Everdeen The Hunger Games.The four female action heroes were analyzed based on Rikke Schubarts categories (Moderarketypen, Amazon, Dotterarketypen, Ha?mnerskan and Dominatrix), the character's personal development, the character's violence and the reason for the character's.Characters from the past were more often presented as more uncertain and fragile than the modern confident characters. The female action heroes of modern times was more independent, strong, and in no need of a man in comparison with contemporary female action heroes.

The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

Film is a tool frequently used by teachers, but it is often limited to showing students how historical time periods looked like, or as a way for students to search for historical inaccuracies. The aim of this essay is to study whether it is possible to use two films based on the legend of Robin Hood as a way to teach students how to contextualize gender history. Through the use of film analysis and gender analysis of two different versions of Robin Hood, The adventures of Robin Hood and Robin Hood: Prince of thieves were analyzed. The study has shown that it is indeed possible to use film as a source material for the study of gender history, and that film can tell us a lot about the contemporary view of gender, masculinity and femininity. The didactical analysis concluded that there was no theoretical objection of using film as a source material; however, there are some things that a teacher should be aware of. Although film may be a good way to create a varied study environment and benefit students with reading- and writing disabilities, there is a risk that time-constraints and lack of knowledge of film and its methodology on, behalf of both teachers and students, may make it hard to implement.

The intention of this final thesis is to look into the improvement of small and run down railway stations. Many railway stations are today derelict and decaying. The purpose of this essay is to propose alternative strategies of action by discussing the ecology, the history and the social function of the railway station. There is also an overview of projects already completed. In the analysis part of the thesis, the genius loci or the spirit of place is put forward as means of reaching a solution.

In contemporary encryption the vast amount of text subject to cracking has brought about the demand for methods distinguish files more likely to be encrypted. The encryption software Truecrypt can encrypt files that are not possible to identify with a file signature. To solve the detection problem, an algorithm sensitive to the absence of structure in the very code of files was developed. The program was written in the programming language EnScript which is built into the forensic software suite EnCase. The essential part of the algorithm therefore deployes the statistic of a chi-square test for deviance from a uniform distribution to distinguish files with contents that appear to be random.

The purpose of this study is to show what melancholy and irony in my poems express and what techniques that are used to accomplish these effects. Many theorists, among them Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, characterize melancholy as an experience of loss, and therefore one of my questions is what kind of losses appear in my poetry. In search for an answer I analyze the texts from both a psychoanalytic and a sociological point of view. In the latter perspective I discuss the postmodern society using concepts from contemporary thinkers like Zygmunt Bauman, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Finally, I also examine if melancholy has an influence on the form of the poems.