Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

This paper discusses honour related crimes and the judicial process within the legal system in a Swedish context. The empirical base of the study is four cases, with an honour background, and we have used discourse analysis as our method. We have developed four tools for analysing the sentences with which we observed aspects such as; language, the roles of victim and perpetrator that the involved can undertake, the different identities that the sentence might create and finally how the stories change when they enter the legal context. We connect our results to our theoretic backgrounds such as Kolfjord who discusses the legalization of conflicts, the holistic and individual perspective, the legal system as a theoretic background and finally the UN:s definition of honour crimes. These four theoretic perspectives have helped analyse the empiric base.

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a special unit for patients who is in the need for emergency life-sustaining measures and every patient has complex medical- technical equipment. The experiences of a critical illness and the needs of critical care are experienced in different ways. The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences from patients in the ICU and how this experience has an influence on the patients. The method was a study of literature with a qualitative inception based on eight scientific articles and the analysis of content has been inspired by Graneheim and Lundman (2003). The result of the study is presented by four categories: to loose the ability to make themselves understood, to be forced to adjust to the environment of caring, to have the lack of connection with reality and to be in an intensive care environment, The results showed that patients in the ICU are affected by the attitude from the staff, the equipment around them as well as the sounds and lights in the environment there.

The essay examines women's experiences of gender equality and how it is defined and done in heterosexual relationships, putting equality in a private, intimate and personal context. The essay was done through semi-structured qualitative interviews, where women told stories of their own experiences in romantic heterosexual relationships. The analysis is based on the women?s stories and partially through a discourse analysis and is, among others, theorized by patriarchy, defined by Sylvia Walby, as well as emotion work through Arlie Russell Hochschild. All the women did to some extent share having had a much larger role of work and responsibility in most discussed aspects of their relationships.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how gender is constructed in presentence reports written by social workers? as mandated by 11§ LUL. Young offenders are often assigned normative masculine or feminine attributes by personnel at treatment centers, girls are considered emotional and in need of support while boys are considered disorderly and in need of structure. Young female delinquents are victimized which affects their culpability; they are less likely to be held responsible for the crimes they committed. Young male delinquents are viewed as aggressive and in control; they are more likely to be held accountable for their criminal actions.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate whether the implementation of the Solvency II directive will create a competitive advantage for the Swedish insurance companies compared with other insurance companies in Europe.Therefore the theoretical perspective illustrates the specific requirements and risk culture of the insurance industry and defines the critical success factors for a successful implementation of the directive. The empirical foundation is built on the QIS 5 reports for Sweden and Europe, interviews with the financial services and If insurance company as well as information from a seminar organized by KPMG. The analysis shows that the Swedish insurance companies meets the capital requirements of Solvency II by a large margin and that they are accustomed to risk management and reporting requirements from the traffic light model. This implies that the three critical success factors for a successful implementation of Solvency II are met, although with some limitations, and that Swedish insurance companies could possibly have a competitive advantage.     .

Aims: Patient associations have been around for some time and research has shown that such associations can influence society, politics and how diagnoses are thought of. This study is a comparative analysis of two patient associations in Sweden. The first association called Attention represents people diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders such as ADHD. The other association called RSMH represents people diagnosed with mental illness such as depression. The aim of this study is to explore the social and political agenda of these associations and to explain their relation to biological, psychological and social models of explanation.Method and theory: The method used was a qualitative document analysis using documents produced by the associations themselves as well as documents from media and politics.

This study focuses on why people not longer want to be a part of a religious communion they have earlier been a part of. To examine this I have made seven interviews with people who have left their previous communions. Together with the methodological and theoretical discussions on discourse analysis, Richard Jenkins discussions on identity and theories concerning the post-modern society, I have made an analysis on how these people consider their previous communions and its members. They refer i.e. to the social control, the ?closed? culture and the non-questioning-culture that constitute the communions and its techniques.

Abortion remains a contentious issue, which greatly raises ethical problems. This thesis examines the leading arguments in the Swedish abortion debate around the ? in terms of legislation ? critical years of 1938 and 1974. With Foucault's genealogical method, Butler's theories of gender as a social construction in relation to power and doxa, the study examines what the development of the argumentation says about the views on morality, the woman's body, life, individual and state? How has the arguments pro and against abortion changed over time and what does this say about the norms that guide and orientate the arguments? The most obvious change in argumentation is seen in the shift from an absolute moral and conservative position into an increasingly relativistic and liberal position, and this study will argue that this shift has its prerequisites in the changing status of the citizen and state.

The aim of the study is to examine how religion legitimates outrages and it what ways we can regard religion as politics. The study uses the theory that Eickelman and Piscatori present in their book Muslim politics. They use the term ?Muslim politics? to describe the relation between Islam and politics. Eickelman and Piscatori divide Muslim politics in five elements that the essay uses to structure the analysis.

There is a clear difference between types of regions and forms of regionalization. This theoretical division can point out other division lines on different areas and levels, like the one of discourses. In this article is urged that regional political discourses may be divided in West and East European ones. To argue for West and East differences in regional discourse the article shows division lines both in the history of regionalization but also in ideologies. The regional policy of the EU is one example for today's regionalization as a West discourse and the Transylvanian in Rumania as an example for the East discourse.

The aim of this study has been to analyze how society is constructed in the workbook Möte med människor från andra kulturer, a popular material within the ?cultural competency? industry. The analysis has largely been carried out from the perspective of a pedagogy against oppression as it has been outlined by Kevin Kumashiro. I have found that the material combines discursive movements, which in complex and hybrid ways deconstruct, decenter, recenter and reproduce stereotypes and norms, through its normative language and pedagogy. A language constructing culture as cleanly demarcated, static and homogenous.

My own experiences as an upper secondary school teacher and the increase in research on masculinity in educational settings that occurred during the late 1990 emphasizing on the gender gap in achievement and grades is the point of departure for this thesis. The aim is to investigate how boys in upper secondary school are constituted and constitute themselves as motivated and achieving learning subjects. Another aim is to see what possibilities there are to form different teaching practices to create other possible positions for me and the pupils. The research questions are 1) How does boys´ construction of masculinity constitute how they see their own ability to be motivated and achieve in school 2) What significance do my shifting approaches and expectations on the pupils as well as teaching have on the boys constitution as learning subjects? To answer these questions I use a theoretical framework of feminist poststructuralist.

Vilken plats har lantraskor i dagens rationaliserade och högproducerande lantbruk och hur bidrar de till försörjningsmöjligheterna på landsbygden? Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur lantraskors egenskaper beskrivs, och hur detta positionerar dem som lämpliga för olika typer av produktion. Uppsatsen grundas i en intervjustudie med lantbrukare som bedriver produktion med lantraskor. Detta kompletteras med intervjuer med representanter från de respektive avelsföreningarna för lantraserna Fjällko, Rödkulla, Fjällnära ko samt allmogekor (Bohuskulla, Ringemålako och Väneko). Genom att analysera materialet med kritisk diskursanalys identifieras centrala teman i diskursen om lantrasernas produktion.

The two most controversial ends of life decisions are those in which physicians help patients take their lives and when the physician deliberately and directly intervenes to end the patients? life upon his request. These are often referred to as voluntary euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Voluntary euthanasia and physician assisted suicide have continued to be controversial public issues. This controversy has agitated the minds of great thinkers including ethicians, physicians, psychologists, moralists, philosophers even the patient himself.