This study treats cultural policy, it´s view of the value of literature, and how this view varies within different fields of cultural policy. The aim of the essay is to find different competing approaches through an investigation of texts from three different fields within cultural policy. The fields investigated are: The publishing subsidy of the National Council for Cultural Affairs, which values above all quality literature. En bok för alla, concentrates on spreading quality literature to new groups in society. Centrum för lättläst, which values that the contents of a text are successfully delivered to, and understood by, the reader.

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.

The aim of my thesis was to examine if educators need to be critical of what they read to the children from a gender perspective. I examined how picture books depict gender and if the books enhances or breaks perception of gender roles. I also examined educator?s perception of gender and if they think picture books can affect children?s perceptions of gender, but also what educators think about gender equality through picture books. The study is based on analysis of five picture books and interview with five educators.The results of analyzes showed that picture books are stereotyped and enhances perceptions of gender roles.

The European Union is a self proclaimed leader in the field of climate change and has a common target for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. In spite of this, there are great differences between the member states capacity and dedication to the cause of implementing the Unions climate policy and reduce their emissions. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to an understanding of how different European states construct their identity in the context of climate change mitigation. By analyzing national documents from three European states and using tools deriving from discourse analysis, I aim to illuminate differences and similarities in their rhetoric. The result is that due to the states relationship to the European Union and the United Nations, there are great similarities in the way they construct mitigation and their identity.

International organizations are important actors on the stage of world politics, and how these actors securitize the climate change issue is of importance for how it will be tackled by actors on global and national levels. The purpose of this study is to contribute to research on climate security discourses and how climate change is defined as a security concern amongst different actors. This study, in contrast to previous research, focuses on systematically mapping the definitions made by different international organizations by asking: whose security is at stake; who is responsible for responding to the threat; how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested? By analyzing material consisting of a variety of documents and statements from five international organizations, I aim to identify differences between these actors ? in how the climate change issue is conceptualized from a security perspective. The result of the study shows that only one of the organizations shows clear elements of the national/geopolitical security discourse, while all of the other actors primarily use the human security discourse.

Discussions of structural racism has now moved to the forefront of the Swedish society, and many researchers have sought to understand what form it takes, how it is manifested, how it is exploited and challenged. At the core of this debate we find the media, and its logic embedded with mechanisms of simplification and polarization.Media is our key source of knowledge and information, why it also affects our norms, beliefs and preconceptions. Media thus has the power to mediate, amplify or challenge how we conceptualize the world, and subsequently our (unconscious) racist beliefs.To investigate how media content is influenced by underlying colonial or racist assumptions and stereotypes thus becomes a way to investigate our understanding of reality.In accordance with postcolonial thought, structural and symbolic racism is embedded in language and hidden in images, and surface in the form of domination and feminization, and the portrayal of the subaltern ?Other? as passive and irrational.This paper thus departs from postcolonial theory and media logic to undercover hidden patterns of structural, symbolic and historically contingent racism in one of Sweden?s most prominent in-depth foreign TV-magazines, namely Korrespondenterna.Adopting Critical discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores to what extent racist and colonial stereotypes are reproduced and/or challenged in Korrespondenterna?s representation of Sub-Saharan Africa.In line with postcolonial theory it is found that historically contingent racialized stereotypes are prevalent in Korrespondenterna, and that tendencies of portraying Africa and Africans as passive, feminine and irrational are prevailing.It is thus argued that media logic, imbedded with mechanisms of simplification, polarization and intensification, contributes to the use of colonial stereotypes in media, and thus to the mediation of structural and symbolic racism..

Today Europe is faced with an identity crisis concerning its borders. Turkey stands at the threshold for an EU-membership while the EU-Commission is trying to formulate what constitutes a European identity. This identity seeking process will determine the future not only for Turkey, but also for immigrants now living in Europe.In this thesis a discourse analysis, underpinned by socialconstructionist theory, is conducted to explore how the European identity has been constructed throughout history up until today. A starting point is that identity always is defined through a dialectical relationship to "otherness". Therefore the analysis is focused not only on what a European identity consists of but also what and who it excludes.

AbstractThis paper is a comparative study of the final reports of the Norwegian and Danish power studies performed in 2003. While the Danish study found that democracy is thriving, the conclusion of the Norwegian power study was that democracy is in a crisis. The purpose of this paper is to find explanations to why the studies in two Nordic countries arrived at such different results.Methodologically, the paper consists of an ideological text analysis and critical analyses of the discourse. In order to study how the results of the power studies can differ so considerably, the following aspects have been surveyed; 1) external contexts (government inquiries); 2) work process (the researchers? background, role and co-operation); 3) the problem areas and themes studied; and 4) power perspectives.

Youth unemployement in Sweden is at an all-time high, a fifth of all university and college students live in poverty and the number of young on welfare is increasing. This study attempts to answer the question of how youth deprivation has been made possible as a consequence of political action, focusing on youth unemployment. I critically examine the role of the Swedish government, the Swedish Labour Organisation (LO), and the various government departments through text analysis, in order to answer the question of how the current discourse on youth position in the labor market. Because youth unemployment is not an isolated phenomena the analysis covers several policy areas, such as education policy, labor market regulation and housing policy. I use discourse theories drawn from Laclau and Mouffe to expose how language is used as an instrument of political power. I conclude that the current situation is a result of policy choices where the young have fallen behind due to lack of political organization. Their situation is not problematized to the required degree and is often explained on an individual level rather than on a structural level. .

Sonja Åkesson is one of Sweden?s most well known poets. Her most productive period was from 1957 to 1977, and besides poetry she wrote novels and drama. Today, Sonja Åkesson is famous for criticizing society, mostly in a feministic way. But she was not aware of her critical approach until she became successful among her feministic readers in 1960, with poems like ?Äktenskapsfrågan? and ?Självbiografi (replik till Ferlinghetti)?.This essay examines professor Yvonne Hirdman?s theory about women?s inferior position in relation to men?s between 1930-1960 in Sweden.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

The company Somas, Säffle, has assigned Fredrik Kjellin the project of finding out how ?KVTF DN250?, one of their own valves, reacts on cutting forces under production. They wish to know if and then how much it?s possible to minimize the wall thickness of the valve with neither plastic nor to big elastic deformations caused by processing.The most critical processes have been identified as rough lathing. The study has shown that the marginal for a wall thickness of two millimeters, to fall short of the yield stress in the most critical process, is good.

This study is a comparative analysis of how Hollywood portrays people from the Middle East before and after 9/11. The films used to conduct this study are True Lies (1994), The Siege (1998), The Kingdom (2007) and Body of Lies (2008). With a qualitative methodology, discourse analysis and postcolonial theory this study analysed not only how people from the Middle East is portrayed, but also how the Americans in the films are presented and how the characters in the films changed in the movies produced after 9/11.     The results show that people from the Middle East are portrayed in a negative way and that Hollywood uses stereotypes. However, people from the Middle East are more gradated in the films post-9/11. There is a bigger focus on Islam in the movies produced after 9/11 and the study also shows that family values play a less central part in the story in the films made after 9/11 and that work is of more importance.

This is a qualitative study based on interviews with teachers, social workers and school counselors ? with aim to analyze how norm critical social work is in schools. Gender and sexuality norms are in focus which is analyzed in a intersectional and queer theoretical perspective. The study shows that what is defined as a norm in the society varies both socially, historically and culturally. School is a reflection of its society and therefore also reflects its norms, such as heteronormativity and gender roles.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the media discussions of the rape in Bjästa 2009 and to reveal how stereotypical illusions of ethnicity, religion and gender affect how media understands and defines violence. The rape in Bjästa occurred in a ?Swedish context? but has been defined as honor related in other arenas outside media. This discussion occurred because the whole village turned against the woman that was raped and supported the perpetrator? a phenomena that speaks against the idea of an equal society and a behavior that is usually understood as honor related and something that the ?others? do.