Churches are seen as one of Sweden's most valuable cultural heritage. They bear witness to a living tradition and gives us knowledge of society at large and therefore people's lives at different times. These buildings possesses a high value, which is shared by the vast majority, and they are protected by law. The concept of modern churches is in this essay the churches built after 1940, which is not covered by law. The older churches has therefore a cultural and historical value which the modern churches lack.About 600 churches are built after the year of 1940 and the total number of churches in the country is 3400.

The aim of this bachelor thesis has been to examine and develop our own understanding about how young people in Sweden (16-29 years of age), take part in cultural activities. As librarians it is important to know what kind of activities and interests this particular group has. With Pierre Bourdieu?s theoretical framework towards habitus and capital we are interested to see if there is a connection between one?s cultural use and background, if different access to capital with or within groups has an affect or not. With both statistics and interviews with people within our target, we believe this data has been sufficient enough to conduct a good and valid study.

This thesis analyzes contemporary Swedish discourse on Russia, i.e. the ways Russia and Russians are perceived in Sweden today. After a summary of historical Western and Swedish perceptions of Russia, and a discussion about the treatment of these tensions within modern research, contemporary Swedish discourse is reconstructed based upon analytical articles in three major newspapers during the period 1992-2007. It is argued that the prevailing image of Russia contains the reproduction of old stereotypes and prejudices. The five major representations of Russia in contemporary Swedish discourse are: non-Western, unreliable, authoritarian, threatening and eternal, with the last one being a meta-representation functioning both as a representation of its own and a mechanism for the reification of the others.

The aim of this undergraduate thesis was to examine the media?s portrayal of overweight and obese children and their surroundings, using the first and third dimensions of Fairclough?s three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis. The study addressed the following questions: How does the press, in this study represented by two newspapers, portray overweight and obese children? What discourses regarding overweight and obesity among children are the most prominent in these two newspapers? What risks and negative influences in the child?s surroundings are identified, and how are they described? What social representations can the images of overweight and obese children originate from? The analyzed material consisted of 62 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, which were analyzed using the earlier mentioned method for discourse analysis, as well as the theory of social representations. The results showed that ?the fat child? and its environment were portrayed exclusively in negative terms, and a discourse linking obesity and ill-health dominated a large part of the material.

The aim of this paper is exploring questions regarding the problem of absenteeism among high-school students in Sweden. Fifteen students attending an urban high-school have been interviewed about their views and experiences of absenteeism. The author analyzes the students? answers by taking into account two different sociological approaches which give two different explanations about the way young people experience and estimate education. The French sociologist Bourdieu theorized that differences in cultural capital influence the permanent internalization of patterns of thought and behavior.

This essay examines a small selection of Swedish newsreel and documentary short films, primarily travelogues, produced shortly before and after the second world war. The general aim is to expose differences in the representation of ?The Other? and the ?ethnic Swede? by applying a critical discourse analysis. The purpose is to illuminate how the material positions the latter as the norm and then contextualize this with xenophobic currents that had developed up until the middle of the twentieth century. Theoretical and methodological framework is drawn from the field of cultural studies as well as the nonfiction film.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of how belonging and community is created in one of the aesir faith communities in Sweden. The study examines the aesir faith communities ability to develop the community members religious identity as well as their understanding of the importance of cultural heritage and how it affects the members in their practices of their aesir faith. The main argument in this study is that cultural heritage creates a sense of community that makes the members want to stay and develop their religious identity together with the other members of the aesir faith community. I have used cultural heritage, symbols and rituals, belonging, community and religious identity as concepts in order to answer my research questions. The methods used in this study are participant observation during the group's public activities, as well as interviews with the members of the aesir faith community in order to confirm the analysis I made during the participant observation.

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.

The aim of this study is to identify and analyze the discourse within a gothic online community and examine how they use significant symbols to create themselves as goths and being part of a community. In order to achive this aim, eleven different forum threads were examined to amalyze how the goths created their significant symbols within the online community and through interaction with each other. The results implies that the discourse within the community describes the goths as either true or false goths and that it is important to maintain this boundary.

The study seeks to investigate and understand how individuals create their identity from the perspective of two countries and cultures, and how these affect their current lives today. The focus of the study is aimed at young adults who have mostly or entirely grown up in Sweden to parents that have migrated. The material is based on seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The result is then divided into three themes; ethnic and cultural belonging, life impact, and the preservation and passing on of culture. The derivation of the first theme is that there are mixed views regarding the cultural association of the persons interviewed.

This two years master?s thesis in Library and Information Science examines book reviews and articles aboutbooks and authorship in media directed to children between the ages of 8 and 14. The aim is to increase knowledgeof children?s reading choices and view of reading. This is motivated by the decrease in literacy and sparetime reading among Swedish children and adolescents.

This paper aims to analyze how preservation of and access to old and rare book collections are organized in public libraries in Serbia. The paper is based on an analysis of documents, a survey and qualitative interviews with librarians in Belgrade and Novi Sad. Serbia is a country that has experienced violent historical periods with far-reaching consequences for its old and rare book collections. The interpretative background refers to documents about cultural policy in Europe and in Serbia. Serbia is a country in transition which aims to join the European Union.

This master thesis is about art activity in the public library. The essay takes its starting point from Government cultural political directives and my purpose has been to study how these are followed up in the municipal level. My survey takes place at the main library of Flen in the county of Södermanland. What I am looking for is, what the art activity looks like, what is decided regarding it and what the strategies are. Furthermore I look into how library visitors understand and participate in the art activity.

This essay examines the 1962 Swedish parliamentary debate preluding the proposition to introduce a uniform compulsory education for all Swedish children. The proposition aimed at ending the previously heterogeneous educational system and replace it with a more equal and democratic system.A widespread debate ensued, regarding the status of Christian religious education (kristendomskunskap) and its new emphasis on scientific objectivity. This essay will examine the relative position of Christianity within the new uniform school system, as it was articulated by the members of the Swedish parliament. This analysis will be achieved through the use of a discourse analytical study of the parliamentary records, the recorded motions and bills. From these records a substantial disparity in the parliamential members articulation of the concept of Christianity can be ascertained, even within the discourse of an educational regime.

The idea that I put forward in this thesis concerns the democratic system and the threat from discoursive impact on its core values. I focus my normative analysis on three of these democratic values: transparency, accountability and influence ? and what democratic problems the discoursive impact causes in conflict with them. I have used a critical discourse theory to define discourse and discoursive impact, by focusing on the process of discourse, rather than its nature. I deal with the political structure where I claim that the essential relation between citizen and politician is disrupted, due to lack of information and the imminent problems of the existing network society.