Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka den eventuella konflikten mellan sekulariserad och religiös etik och moral.  Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i religiös absolutism kontra sekulariserad relativism. Jag vill även ta reda på om det finns etiska grundtankar som flertalet kan vara överens om..

abstractThe aim of this essay is to try to convince the reader that relativism and postmodernism (the latter implying the former, but not the other way around) can be reasonable methods for the social sciences, rather than the irresponsible play of ?extremes? theories of this kind sometimes are made out to be.The intention is to do this by way of the later Wittgenstein, the philosophy of whom is the foundation for what is termed relativism and postmodernism in this essay (definitions of a kind that are here claimed to be missing from the discourse of the social sciences). The essay also contains an empirical presentation/analysis, displaying the Wittgensteinian theory through an aspect of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and -60s..

Föreliggande uppsats har kritiskt granskat, analyserat och diskuterat Läroplanens teoretiska kunskapssyn. Om analysen håller så anser jag mig ha visat vilka resonemang, utifrån den kognitiva relativismen, som Lpf 94 bygger på. Hur den kognitiva relativismen kommer fram till att kunskap är relativ kan se lite olika ut. Minst tre underliggande teser kan urskiljas vilka alla kan ligga till grund för Lpf 94s kunskapssyn. Dessa är kunskapssociologisk relativism, epistemisk relativism och ontologisk relativism.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka den påstådda universala naturen av mänskliga rättigheter genom att använda mig av debatten kring asiatiska värderingar, som en kulturrelativistisk teori. De grundläggande argumenten som poängteras av försvarare av asiatiska värderingar är att de asiatiska och västerländska stater tillhör olika kulturer som även skiljer i deras uppfattning av etik och moral, vilket påverkar deras olika uppfattning av mänskliga rättigheter. I argumentationsanalysen kring asiatiska värderingar har jag använt mig utav texter från Xiaorong Li, Amartya Sen, Lee Kuan Yew och Mahathir bin Mohamad, då dessa forskare och politiker representerar åsikterna av de två teorierna jag använder mig utav i argumentationsanalysen, universalism och relativism/kulturelativism. Kopplat till denna debatt diskuterar jag även hur ett större konsensus kring internationella mänskliga rättigheter skulle ske, eller ifall det finns en möjlighet för en nedgång av ett internationellt konsensus. Jag har kommit fram till att argumenten från båda sidor i diskussionen presenterade i denna studie har fört fram viktiga åsikter som är av stor betydelse för framtida samarbete mellan stater.

The aim with this paper is to study Karl Popper?s view on realism and relativism. Further aim is to see whether those ideas have been consistent over the years. The paper argues that Popper since his first interest in philosophy has taken a realistic and antirelativistic attitude. Only his arguments for this position have been developed to meet his critics.Common sense speaks for realism but can neither be proven nor refuted.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

The name of the study means ?The short arm - a study in diversity and arm?s length in the cultural collaboration model?. Right now there is a reform in the Swedish cultural administration where the responsibility for handing out state funds and grants to cultural organizations is changing from the state government to the local regional governments. The purpose of this study is to map the organisational changes caused by the reform and investigate how this affects the regional policies concerning cultural diversity and the arm?s length principle.

Samtidigt som traditionella religioner är på tillbakagång vänder sig allt fler människor till den magi och mysticism som kännetecknar new age. Forskningen har hittills närmat sig detta fenomen genom korrelationsstudier, demografiska kartläggningar och analyser av vad new age-anhängare tror på. I denna explorativa, induktiva studie berättade i stället fem kvinnor i halvstrukturerade intervjuer om vad deras new age-tro betytt för dem. Koncentrering av bärande utsagor i dimensionerna betydelse, tro relaterad till icke-tro, kunskapskällor och ontologi genererade fyra faktorer: existentiell trygghet som skyddar mot osäkerhet under livets gång och hämmar ångest inför livets oundvikliga slut; upphöjdhet genom insikter och medvetenhet som icke-troende saknar; antiintellektualism som betonar känslor och intuition på bekostnad av förnuft och logik; relativism som stipulerar att var och en har sin egen sanning. En funktionell modell som tydliggör hur faktorerna relaterar till varandra diskuteras, liksom resultatets integrering i ett teoretiskt ramverk och riktlinjer för framtida forskning..

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

All since Thomas Kuhn?s strongly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions the Philosophy of Science and ?even more so ?the Social Sciences have contained a greater amount of theories that could be described as more or less relativistic, meaning that the standards of justification or truth thereafter more often were said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup. One of the more elaborate ways of developing Thomas Kuhn?s theories in a more relativistic direction ismade by the philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty, mainly a supporter of Thomas Kuhn, is also a philosopher who has been seen as a main exponent of a so called Postmodern philosophy.My intention in this thesis is to evaluate whether Kuhn's and Rorty's theories of science and knowledge could be regarded as relativism, in respects of their view of incommensurability, rational argumentation, and of their position vis-á-vis the more conventional picture of scientific knowledge and truth.

This paper examines the concept of heritage and which factors that determines how we evaluate and select what should be considered cultural heritage. This has been examined using a qualitative study involving interviews with seven people working within different parts of the cultural heritage sector. The purpose was to get a picture of what the public sector?s cultural heritage consists of and why so. The research question was: What gives the status of cultural heritage? This was examined by looking at further questions: What defines the concept of cultural heritage? Who decides what should be considered cultural heritage? What is significant when discussing cultural heritage? One conclusion is that the concept itself is experienced as diffuse but that the meaning can be summarized as the traces we leave behind to be preserved by future generations.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine the use of the concept cultural heritage in Swedish governmental cultural policy. Ten official reports, reaching over a time period of seven years (1997-2004) are examined in the following way: What is cultural heritage? What functions/ values does the cultural heritage have? Whose heritage is a cultural heritage? With some simplification you can say that there are two different views on cultural heritage in the documents. The most common way to refer to cultural heritage is a category of chosen historical objects whose preservation is motivated by their function as sources of information and knowledge about the history and development of the Swedish society.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.