The democratic conditions in national states have change radically at the same time as the society has changed. Because of social and economic globalization processes, the states and government has lost power for the benefit of transnational and global institutions. That affects the democracy since the nation state earlier defined the domain of citizenship. At the same time, citizens? confidence towards political parties and politicians has gone down.

The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze the debate surrounding the construction of the 2011 years curriculum of the Swedish schools` religious studies. The debate is concerning whether or not Christianity should have a unique position in the curriculum against other religions. The method is to analyze the arguments by an argument analysis. The purpose is also to analyze the argumentation to see how secularization and pluralism have influenced the debate and the different standpoints. The essays material consists of debate articles from the four largest news sites on the internet.The most common argument for Christianity?s unique position is that Christianity has had an important role in the development of the Swedish society, culture and literature and is therefore important knowledge for understanding the Swedish society.

The discussion about high culture and popular culture in our society has been going on for decades. In few places is it as loud as within culture journalism and the critics? society, where the question of what is good taste and what is dumb entertainment constantly gets brought to the surface. Film is a particularly vulnerable area, since it is such a universally appealing and rather young medium. In America and England several studies have been performed of the reviewing society and reveiwers? use of high and low art-discourse in their writing.

My study focuses on how heterosexuality became, and still is, the norm for sexuality in Namibia. My aim is to through interviewing young academics from University of Namibia and by using discourse analysis, queer- and postcolonial theory, try to find out how these young academics perceive sexuality. My findings are that my respondents perceive heterosexuality to be natural, normal and given by god, and that they perceive homosexuality to be ?a big no-no?. There are certain institutions in the Namibian society that regulates how the Namibian people thinks about sexuality, and my findings are that these are Christianity, culture, family, government, and the traditional picture of a good man and a good woman.

The increased popularity of e-books in the Swedish publiclibraries started a debate in newspapers and library journalsbecause of the increase in costs, which this popularity hadled to. The main subject of the debate was the businessmodel provided by the e-book vendor Elib, which accordingto some ruins the libraries financially. In this thesis, opinionarticles have been analyzed using a theoretical model ofcultural politics by the Danish Library and Informationscience researcher Dorthe Skot-Hansen. The results of thestudy showed that people from the library field, publishersand authors were the ones contributing to the debate. Theanalysis of the articles showed that the model of culturalpolitics which consists of four general motives: socialchange, education, economic growth and entertainment wasvisible in the articles.

The past and ongoing structural change in Swedish agriculture has led to an increasing number of large-scale farms. The biological factors associated with large-scale farming operations may cause increasing variability, risk and reduced yields due to sub-optimal timing and management of field operations. The theory of economies of scale suggests that largescale production may benefit from lower costs due to scale efficiencies. Thus, large-scale farms may face cost reductions in terms of long term inputs factors, e.g. agricultural machinery.

The local wind band in Lilla Edet, Lilla Edets Musikförening, springs from work and activities in the late 19:th century. Since then, the band has developed from a brass sextet to mixed wind band. It has been an appreciated contribution to the society on festive occasions. Yet, it seems like the band more and more has lost it´s useful purpose. Also, the recruiting of new members has ceased, as the music school has trouble with attracting pupils to learn to play wind instruments.The reasons for this reduced interest are more then one.

This qualitative research study aims to investigate how eight members of the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) experience a divine presence in their Meeting for Worship. The purpose is also to find out how their identity as Quakers has been created, and to see how they look at their Meeting of Worship when it comes to ritual as a concept.The method used in this study is individual, semi-structured interviews and observations of Meeting of Worship. The results show a relatively homogeneous group of individuals from a secular upbringing who as adults sought out a community where silence is appreciated and used to achieve an experience of a divine presence. Berger and Luckmann's theories of socialization have been applied to the results and the discussion reveals how the secondary socialization has been essential in the process of forming the individual into being a Quaker. There is however one exception, in the form of one participant who grew up in the Society of Friends.

The real estate company Ihus is facing an expansion of its comfort cooling in Noatun,Uppsala, to provide the buildings in the block with cooling. The buildings in Noatunare mainly used for office premises, where the requirements for an accepted indoorclimate is great. However, it?s uncertain whether Ihus should continue, as currently,producing comfort cooling by themselves using a compressor chiller, or if they shouldconnect themselves to Vattenfall?s district cooling net.The purpose of this report is to examine which technique of cooling is best suited forIhus and their buildings in Noatun. It should also work as a guideline for othercompanies facing the same problem as Ihus.

This paper is the result of a case study conducted at Uppåkra Mekaniska AB during the spring of 2006. The task that was presented by Uppåkra was to develop a basis for a decision for the planning activities at the company, so that in the future they can create lot-sizes which are based upon a total cost perspective. Total cost in regards to lot-sizing is defined as the sum of the administrative reordering costs and warehousing cost per stock keeping unit.To collect data a series of interviews and observations were conducted. This data was then used during the lot-sizing simulation and analysis. The 15 units that the simulation was conducted on were grouped into three item classes depending how many different machine setups they required during the production process.

The aim of this essay was to deepen the knowledge of how child-protection-work is illustrated by massmedia. The essay takes it stand in discourse analysis to explain what image is displayed of social work concerning child-protection that is published in news media during 2007 in one of Sweden?s most read evening-papers. The result of the study is that social workers involved in child-protection-work often are categorized as either too zealous or too uncommitted, in the media. The result reflected the current discourse concerning how social workers do their duties in the modern society..

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine.Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten.The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the arrival of class society is expressed in the social dance of high society during the second half of the eighteenth century. The study is based on the idea that culture and society develope in interaction; that changes in the economic, political and social life determine the cultural expressions as well. What I wish to examine is whether cultural themes from the developing bourgeois culture ? individualism, to be precise ? is expressed in the social dance during the second half of the eigthteenth century. // The study shows that public balls definitely gave people a chance to show off on the dance floor in spite of social rank.

During the period after the Second World War Sweden underwent a quick transformation due to a strong economic development. Decades-long rule for the Social Democratic Party now led to the creation, in Sweden, of a modern welfare state. This period in Swedish history is often considered to be the time when ?the Swedish model? was formed. Tage Lindbom (1909?2001) was a historian and intellectual in the Swedish labor movement.

Global warming is going to affect our society in many ways. One can say that the problem we face has two different sides. One of those sides has received a lot of attention, namely how we can reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. However, because of the climate system's inertia the climate will continue to evolve over a period, no matter how much we will cut back on emissions. Because of this, we have to start adapting our society to the climate changes that we cannot influence.