The aim of this study is to investigate wether the participatory democracy is a threat or a complement to the representative democracy. To achieve my purpose I will focus on two different lokal councils, the civil council in Hovsjö and the youth council in Västra Skogås, which have been objects of the urban policy in 1998. The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of the participation democratic theory, representative democratic theory and implementation theory. By problemizing these theoretical frameworks in comparison with eachother I will mapp how these two lokal councils were implemented. The research question is: In what way was the civil council and the youth council a complement or threat to the representative democracy? In which way was it difficult to implement them?The method used for this purpose is a qualitative comparative case study.

Building on the concept of constructive iconoclasm as a creational force of iconicity, this thesis examines how the contemporary iconoclastic discourse is related to artistic process. Studies have shown that the performative act of destroying art that is an historical phenomenon is highly present within the contemporary art discourse today. Due to the many dimensions of contemporary art, the ways in which iconoclastic deeds appear may differ from the historical narrative. While iconoclasm and iconicity are being reciprocal processes that can only exist in relation to each other and their context, there are signs that the destructive act itself is being recontextualized by contemporary artists. Guided by the framework of Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, the thesis examines the processes of conceptual and constructive art destruction by analyzing the discourses of two case studies situated in the contemporary art market.

Businesses role in society is changing. Corporations are expected to take responsibility, not only for their traditional business conduct, but also for social and political issues. A rise in globalization and international trade has led to an increased interest in the concept of CSR. Accordingly, stakeholders are expecting multinational companies to be accountable for existing issues in developing countries. New business models are needed to meet increased expectations of responsibility and shared value creation. Based on an understanding of the need for new business models a multinational corporation is studied in a local context, where a radically new way of doing business is developed.

This essay deals with the topic options costs and whether such costs would arise for smaller companies now when they have the opportunity to choose not to have an auditor. Small companies are defined as companies that fulfill at least two of the following three criteria?s: less than 1,5 million SEK in balance sheet, less than three employees and turnover less than 3 million SEK. The decision regarding internal revision does not only affect the company itself but also other parties such as the taxation authority, banks and others that can be influenced by the decision. This essays main focus is on the influenced parties, especially the taxation authority and the banks as these have been highlighted in debates in media and because the small companies themselves may have difficulties to foresee the consequences of the new changes. The opinions from accounting companies will be considered in the essay as they can be considered as experts regarding the different aspect within this area.

The present research examined both automatic and controlled processes in newpapers ability of priming racial stereotypes via the portrayals of people of foreign extraction. The automatic process were examined through articles which; a) involved an illegal act or b) the act was not illegal but morally questionable. Swedish-born subject?s explicit opinions against foreign people were also measured through ?The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale?. In the experiment participants read four different articles which included; Swedish person/noncrime, foreign person/noncrime, Swedish person/crime and foreign person/crime.

The swedish law against female genital mutilation (FGM) prohibits procedures that removes parts of the female genitalia and thereby makes permanent changes in the body. The problem with the wording of the law is that it may also apply to the western phenomenon cosmetic genital surgery. This paper therefore examines if cosmetic genital surgery should be covered by the swedish law against FGM, by making a critical comparing analysis. The paper begins with comparing FGM with cosmetic genital surgery to prove that there are more similarities than differences between the procedures. By using the theoretical perspectives universalism and postcolonialism, the paper then examines why, particularly in the West, there is a different approach to FGM than to cosmetic genital surgery, regardless of the similarities of the procedures.

In this study, we aim to analyze how the terms documentation and pedagogical documentation respectively are portrayed in the curriculum (skolverket 2010) as well as in the curriculum complementary material (skolverket 2012). The analysis is performed by use of critical discourse analysis. We used published research as a theoretical base to analyze the empirical data against. Our aim is to increase the understanding of how the terms documentation and pedagogical documentation are used in the various policy documents and what messages these documents relay concerning the aforementioned terms.We aim to give some answers to the following questions:How to interpret the term documentation in relation to the term pedagogical documentation.How to interpret the ways the terms are promoted in the policy documents. We conclude that the term documentation is vastly more open to interpretation than the term pedagogical documentation. We note that the curriculum exclusively use the term documentation and stress the importance of using a variety of documentation forms.

Today, we can see that social navigation is embedded in different kinds of websites, but there is still little support for social navigation in the web browser. Our main concern has been how we construct a tool that fills this hole in the web browser. By letting the theory, the prototype and the focus group serve as input/output to each other we could create a better overview of how the different pieces were intertwined. This has been a crucial mental model for us to obtain since it has helped us to understand how we could realize the theory through our prototype and thereby come to the conclusion of what aspects of the theory that we should put forward to further development. After constructing the prototype we thought that it would support social navigation, but realized after analyzing the discussion of the focus group that we are not there yet.

Human rights have been added to the new curriculum which came into force the 1st of July 2011 in the Swedish Upper Secondary school. The purpose with this master thesis is to compare the old and the new curriculum as part of an examination of what way they affect the Social Science education. Further the analysis focus on what is affecting discourses in the Social Science about human rights, as well as its communication and incorporation in its education. The empirical material consists of the schools steering documents and interviews with Social Science teachers. The theoretical framework is based on human rights education (HRE) and curriculum theory.

We started out the study with a preconception of culture as something that creates difference between groups of people, which had been verified by our prior research. We also had a sense of culture as a polysemous term. Our assumption is also that there is an opinion within social work practice that Swedish social workers are faced with a cultural barrier when encountering immigrant clients.In this study our aim is to examine constructions of the terms cultural competence and culture. Constructions of the terms ethnicity and ethnic diversity are also observed, although the main reason for this is to show what relation these terms have to the terms cultural competence and culture, and how they may give each other meaning, according to the theory of social construction. In addition to constructions, we also aim to bring out discourses around the terms, upon which we will create a discussion about power and dominance informed by post-colonial theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

How should a fair income tax system be designed? Since Estonia became the first country to introduce a flat tax on incomes in 1994, this question has been in focus of public debate. The aim of is this thesis is to show that a flat income tax system, combining a proportional tax rate on all incomes with an allowance exempt from tax, is consistent with the demands of justice. In order to achieve this I construct a two level argument using normative method. The first part consists in the justification of a specific ethical theory which is derived from to notion of human dignity.

The purpose of this study is to examine discussions on the Swedish internet forum ?Flashback? regarding female body hair and the cultural norms that surround it. The discussion is centered around a broadcasted event in which a woman?s hairy armpit was incidentally shown, with a lot of viral hate as a result. Our purpose with this study is to get a deeper insight into viral hate towards women who challenge gender norms.

Caso Skanska is an incident that occurred in Argentina and regarded corruption and bribes to government officials. This study investigates how this incident could occur and how it can be explained. The theoretical framework used is the dynamic interaction model, stakeholder theory, embeddedness theory, the political perspective and corruption theory. The method used is qualitative and it consists of data gathered through semi-structured interviews in Sweden and Argentina as well as other sources of written information of relevance for the study. The authors conclude that Caso Skanska could occur due to the lack of strong institutions as well as transparency.

The purpose of this study is to present a critical analysis of how certain themes of the Norse pagan religion are portrayed in ten selected textbooks used for Religious Science education in grades one through nine. The themes included in the analysis are; the description of the transition from the Norse Pagan religion to Christianity; Adam of Bremen?s portrayal of human sacrifice, and lastly Ibn Fadhlan?s characterization of widow burning. By using a critical knowledge text analysis, and applying a theoretical starting point that pedagogical material analyses and interprets events from a specific perspective; in this case from a Christian perspective, I have from the study concluded that the chapters covering the Norse pagan religion in these textbooks have a distinguished Christian bias seen as the norm. The themes analysed in this study all describe different phenomena in a similar way and make use of the same sources, even though these are often questioned.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate changes within four discourses identified in the curriculum material of the Swedish library education in Borås Bibliotekarielinjen dating from 1977 and 1985 and its successor Library and Information Science Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap dating from 1995, 1999. My method used is a text analytic method primarily derived from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, yet with addition of tools from the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough. By identifying three floating signifiers within the material, i.e information, library, and librarian, and thereafter identifying their fixation, a pattern of resemblance and diversity in the fixating signs appeared between different courses of the curriculum dating from 1999. Hence I could establish an order of discourse consisting of four library discourses, a knowledge organisation discourse, a user discourse, a society discourse and a management discourse. Using this discursive order as a pattern, I could trace these four discourses back in time within the material dating from 1995, 1985 and 1977.