AbstractAuthors: Åsa Höjer, Karl WijkmarkTitle: The intercultural communicator. A study of cultures? influence on communication.Level: BA Thesis in Media and Communication StudiesLocation: University on KalmarLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: 67Date of seminar: 2009-01-15Advisor: Jens CavallinKey words: Intercultural communication, culture, Hofstede´s cultural dimensions, anxiety and uncertainty, self-confidence, high and low context, verbal and nonverbal communication, Telenor, Pakistan, Scandinavia.Case company: TelenorPurpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate what cultural differences, regarding communication, that are present between Scandinavia and Pakistan. Furthermore the purpose is to illustrate which factors that are important for personnel working for Telenor, that are about to work in a foreign culture, in order to create effective intercultural communication.Methodology: The following study is a case study that has used a qualitative methodology with interviews conducted via e-mail. To be able to interpret and understand human experiences and situations a hermeneutical approach has been taken.

This paper will answer which factors are important for the business relation between a small Swedish import company and a Chinese contractor. The problem is based partly in theories that points to cultural and organizational differences between Sweden and China, and partly in current examples from Swedish companies. The relevant data has been collected by interviews with three small Swedish companies that are currently using Chinese contractors.The result is that the differences between the countries and organizations exist, but that they do not interfere with the inter-company relations. The conclusion is that our result contradictsthe established theories in the field, and that a more comprehensive investigation is warranted..

This is a final thesis for the Master?s Programme in Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Landscape Planning, Horticulture and Agricultural Science. The subject of the thesis is the outdoor environment of children in Hebron.The thesis aim is to investigate children?s basic needs and desires in their outdoor environment, and how these can be met in the design of a site in Hebron. A starting point for thesis is that children?s environments in the city should not be separated from city life in general, so that children and adults can meet in the city outdoor environment.The ongoing political conflict between Israel and Palestine is presented in the thesis by describing its consequences for the city of Hebron and the lives of its residents, with a particular focus on the everyday lives of Hebron children.

Being an architect I create spaces with roof, walls and fl oor. The availability of the essential materials to create such spaces is practically unlimited. The materials also play a significant part to the character of the created space. I hope to contribute to the general understanding of materials as elements in the design of urban spaces by having intensely explored one specific material in depth, pointing out its bad and good qualities. I am of the opinion that the reason for choosing a material shouldn?t be because of a shortage of knowledge, facts or references, but what character you want for the room. When travelling across Europe, it sometimes feels like clay paving is everywhere, but back in Sweden it is almost unseen of in modern landscape architecture.

The purpose of this thesis is library work in exile, more specifically The Kurdish library in Stockholm (?Kurdiska biblioteket?). The Kurds have a long history of exile, forming a part of their national and cultural identity. I have therefore chosen in the analysis three concepts: nationalism, ethnicity and culture. The Kurdish library is unique and is different from a traditional library in many ways.

Many of the schools premises are neglected and the physical environment has not been prioritised. Instead the focus is set on scientific learning methods and pedagogic. The need for an environmental shift has not got an essential place in the governing documents for schools, although the focus on school premises should be suited to the purpose of the activity and for the pupils needs. Today the interest and the need of research within the physical environment is evermore increasing. The Swedish Work Environment Authority, present in their activityplan for 2006, that the schools premises and equipment is not adjusting to today?s activity and it is in bad condition that can lead to work-related injuries.The purpose of this essay is to bring to light a different pedagogic train of thought around the surrounding environments importance, for students learning and to compare these with our study of a selection of classrooms and what the teachers to these classrooms consider about the environments importance.

If guidance counselors are to do as good a job as possible, they need to have as much comprehensive information as possible when it comes to possible career paths for their clients. To get on the way to get this information I, in this study, examined how musicians - specifically flute players career paths could seem. I examen this by doing five interviewees. This study is for guidance counselors, so they hade a more solid foundation to stand on, but also for aspiring musicians to get new perspectives to consider when faced with career choices.The study is conducted through five interviews with professionals flutists; Agneta, Harry, Jenny, Eva and Pepita who all work or have recently worked as professional musicians or teachers. With professional musician, I mean the ones in one way or another is or has been employed musicians and also is in the same or higher level in terms of their music ability than those who are employed.

In this textual analysis I have examined the book Att följa Jesus by Ulf Ekman and information from Word of Life's official website. The aim of this study is to see how a religious leader is shaping the identity of the groups members after a certain pattern that differs from the surrounding, secular society. The research focus  of this essay includes several aspects:  how a culture is formed in a religious minority in contrast to the prevailing cultural context; how the material can be explained by Paul Pruyser?s theory on the psychological worlds; how what Ulf Ekman writes about distinguishing themselves from the environment differs from how other religious minority groups distinguish their identity;  and,  how the psychological world, expected behavior, and context of Word of Life can be structured by Valerie DeMarinis? model of assessment. I have placed Word of Life in a realistic illusionistic world developed from Paul Pruyser?s theory of psychological worlds.

The responsibility to identify, protect, look after and develop cultural and historical values in our surroundings - urban as well as rural - falls on the local authorities. This essay focus on local preserve programs for cultural landscapes in Sweden?s municipalities. Programs for preserving cultural landscapes are important tools in the aim to reach a sustainable development of these values. The object of the essay is to delineate how the municipalities handle cultural landscapes in terms of how cultural and historical values is identified, how the landscape is divided and assessed and how different aspects of intangible and tangible values are taken into consideration.

This paper researches how the palimpsest concept is used in relation to landscape, and how it can function as a tool within landscape architecture. Palimpsest originally refers to old parchment handwritings, where new text has been applied on top of effaced, but still discernable, earlier writing. Superimposition of information is the core of the palimpsest concept, used within a range of scientific as well as cultural fields. The purpose of this paper is to find how a landscape palimpsest can be distinguished among the many different layers of landscape, such as historical or cultural, and to examine the potential use of the concept in theory and practice of the landscape architecture field. The study is conducted as a literature survey, examining the use of the palimpsest concept within academic works related to landscape.

This essay set out to propose a problematic interpretation of the socio-cultural perspective on learning. Its purpose is to show how the socio-cultural perspective on learning defines the concept of knowledge in an incomplete way. The aim becomes then that of giving a more comprehensive description of this concept, and, to this end, to construct a new, broader pedagogic discourse. The investigation starts with a deconstructive analysis of Roger Säljö?s socio-cultural text in order to point out the incompleteness of the concept of knowledge.

Purpose of this essay is to conduct a style analysis of Swedish silent film posters with visual storytelling and cultural memory as a theoretical basis. Concepts such as design, color and technique are studied to highlight the historical context of Swedish silent film posters..

The concept of school forest was drafted in 1970 by the Forest in School organization and is defined as an area occupied by a school for outdoor educational activity. The main purpose of this study was to examine how schools use the school forest in practice, how it can be linked to the forest as an ecosystem service and find out how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning. The study is mainly qualitative in nature and has been based on interviews conducted with educators engaged in outdoor education at four selected schools in a municipality in Sweden. Focus has been on the cultural ecosystem services for school forest, for example the physical characteristics that are considered as positive, forest influence on students' physical / mental health and the educational benefits available to be in the woods. Search has also been made to see how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning and also what a contract agreements involves.

The aim for this essay is to adress questions concering ethnic and cultural experiences and in what way it affects our experience of being in different landscapes. By studying how ethnic experiences are expressed in the landscape and the ongoing process of interaction between them, this essay sets out to discuss the significance of cultural aspects in the landscape. The perspective of this essay is that both landscape and ethnicity can be viewed as something constructed which is shaped and maintained by ongoing interactions in the landscape.While examples are taken from different parts of the western world, the main focus is to study how these experiences take place and are being negotiatiated in a particular landscape, an allotment area outside Malmö, Sweden.In the first part it is shown how the landscape can be read as a landscape of powerrelations and how these relations are related to ethnic experiences.In the next chapter the discussion concerns whether we can talk about different ?ethnic landscapes?. Research suggest that the use and perception of the landscape differs among ethnic groups.

This study aim?s to examine how conceptions regarding culture and ethnicity influence the daily work of personnel in integration projects financed by the European Social Fund (ESF). The method of this study was individual semi-structured interviews with nine persons working in three different projects. The reason why we have chosen these specific projects was because of their work with immigrant participants. Concepts that our study is based on was culture and ethnicity, but also the theory considering in-groups and out-groups.