This essay examines how age, power and agency is represented and reproduced in contemporary Swedish picture books.This is done through a combination of discourse analysis and literary analysis.It uses theoretical perspectives from sociology, and views childhood as a social construct. It sees discourse and language use as both representing and constructing social reality in the tradition of Norman Fairclough and critical discourse analysis. The main results is that the discourses of childhood in the material construct children as a separate group in society, and childhood as a special time in life. Children is portrayed as both social actors and in need of protection from adult themes and worries..

The aim of this thesis is to form a theory of the green consumer power and to distinguish whether this phenomenon could indicate a movement toward the ecological citizenship. To do so, scientific theories regarding the responsibility of companies have been used, as well as the public choice theory, to link individuals as citizens to individuals as consumers. The motives of corporate environmental responsibility, along with consumers ability to bring pressure in different dimensions, are later drawn on as indicators applied to empirical information. The largest producer of ecological products in Sweden, Arla Foods, is employed as case study to explore if the green consumer power can and does exist. The ecological citizenship uses the ecological footprint, to define in what ways we can minimize our part of environmental degradation.The study seems to strengthen the theory, consumers do have a power to make companies go green and they tend to use it increasingly.

This addresses the problems when a film doesn?t easily fit in to one specific genre. Using No Country for Old Men as an example the study analyses the film from a Western perspective. Is it possible to say that it is a western? To determine that, I compare a number of acknowledged westerns, on the basis to list a number of generic conventions.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the religious testimony in the following works of the Swedish poet Majken Johansson (1930-1993): Liksom överlämnad (1965), Omtal (1969) and Från Magdala. Fragment ur en självbiografi (1972). A part of the purpose is also to investigate how Johansson phrases this testimony using a contemporary aesthetics. The thesis also studies how her works were received by the contemporary critics. The result shows that they tended to deprecate Johansson?s religiosity but were generally appreciative when it came to her poems.

In todays' society e-commerce is growing at a rapid speed. 4,6 % of all retail sales on the Swedish market are done on the Internet. In the makeup category, which will be the category of focus in this study, 9 % of all the sales were done on the Internet during the last quarter of 2011. As it is today many suppliers do not have enough knowledge about e-commerce and instead of focusing on the development of the channel the focus should instead be on the development of the users of the channel.The purpose of this study is to understand the buying process with respect to the existing theories. The focus will be on the two stages information search and evaluation of alternatives.

In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the influencing factors on the businesspotential of products with health claims, using PrimaLiv as an example. And togive recommendations on how a dairy producer, which is present in the Swedishmarket, could improve the sales rates of products with health claims. We have chosento put a main focus on the consumer, as he or she determines the business potential.This is an unusual approach since most studies cover the producer?s perspective. Wethereby wish to contribute with new knowledge on the area in question.

ABORT ?n GO is a design project within the crossing boundaries of Critical Design and IndustrialDesign.The contemporary discourse on abortion is problematic, and infected by double norms. Thesenorms may cause feelings of guilt and shame in women who have an abortion. The abortion rightis built upon conflicting standpoints; one is that women have right to have an abortion, withoutbeing questioned. Second is the notion that abortion is something that should be avoided, implyingthat you?ve done something wrong if you have had an abortion.With this project and physical product I want to explore and discuss the contemporary discourseon abortion in Sweden.

The relationship to professionals has proved to be a helping factor for personswith severe mental illness, but it is also a relationship characterised by anunbalanced power relation. The aim of this study was to compile and analyze theknowledge of what persons with severe mental illness themselves consider to behelping in the relationship to professionals, and to specifically analyse this from apower perspective. The analysis was conducted using Foucault?s ideas of powerand knowledge, and an empowerment perspective. The method used was anarrative review.

The purpose of this master thesis is to understand how busy moms experience their grocery shopping trips and the in-store environment. In gaining this knowledge, we aim at being able to suggest ways to improve the grocery shopping experience of busy moms; and present insights that can help food retailers in targeting this consumer group in-store. Methodology: We use an iterative approach, and work with photo elicitation interviews. We let our respondents capture their experiences in photographs, which then aid in recalling their memories in follow up interviews. Theoretical perspective: We base our theoretical perspective on environmental psychology where we use the original M-R model, and include personal and situational variables suggested by Bäckström and Johansson (2006); where the latter variable includes the views by Turley and Milliman (2000).

In today?s competitive market, design is an important element for the companies. They must succeed with delivering an increased value and an experience for the consumer to be able to survive. The Swedish company?s have become better in the design area, the higher standards the consumer?s demands forces the company to invest more in design.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze and understand how producerbrands are able to communicate their brand through today's marketing channels, also how development and changes that occur in the society can affect the producers communication abilities. We have seen a tendency that many retailers have created their own brands that are competing with the producers, this leads to the fact that producers in some cases are having trouble communicating their brand to the end-consumer. The fact that the producers marketing through retailers now is more limited than before, the producers now have to capture the consumers wants and needs through other channels.This essay is based on a qualitative method involving seven interviews. The persons that we've chosen to interview are carefully selected based on their specific knowledge about the subject in question..

Foods that stimulate health and satisfy consumer expectations are needed. In a consumer´s perspective, products that provide several kinds of health benefits, without any call for major changes in their behaviour are needed on the market. With this increasing interest in health promoting food product, one of the biggest challenges for the food industry is to find the conditions and right position on the market and find the opportunities to enter the market successfully. New products with added health values can be developed to cure and counter welfare diseases as in this case for diabetics type 2. Swedish food companies have a desire to respond to welfare diseases and one welfare disease is diabetes type 2. Many of them have an ambition to develop new products to respond to the growing population and find a supply that could suit their customers.

This case study examines the new media presentation system in Alby public library. The aim is to explore if the contemporary Zeitgeist, wich according to the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, could be described as liquid modernity, has affected how the system was formed. The purpose is to find out how that would affect users and staff of public libaries of the contemporary. Interviews were conducted with the library staff, and plans and documents concerning the media presentation system was examined.The empirical part of this thesis starts with a study of the process that resulted in the new presentation system while the second part examines the system as such. I discovered that both the media presentation system, and the process which preceded it, contained aspects that could be traced to liquid modernity.

When Sweden acceded to the European Union in 1995 the term social economy was introduced to the Swedish context, gradually replacing the term civil society. This replacement can be seen as an indicator of a changing meaning of what the concept of civil society used to stand for.The aim of this essay is to study if it is possible to identify changing perceptions of the role of civil society for democracy in Sweden in government bills between 2002 and 2008, and, if so, what effect does this have on the delineation between the civil society and the government.An analytical model is proposed consisting of two dimensions which both capture the roles of civil society for democracy and the model examines how those roles relate to the government.The conclusion is that the government still sees the main function of civil society as a democratic school and a change agent for democracy. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the civil society is increasingly regarded as more of a welfare producer than a fosterer of democracy..