As well as other politic fields, the cultural politics adapt to changes in society. The development in society has brought attention to the interaction between the cultural field and the economic field. One of the main goals within Swedish Cultural Policies today is the development of cultural and creative economics. Politicians and researchers claim that culture can be a significant part in economic growth in cities and making a place attractive to live in.I became interested in the discussion around the cultural experience as a factor of economic growth when I participated in a seminar at Karlstad CCC during Kulturparlamentet 2012. When I then started working at the music festival Putte i Parken during the spring of 2013 I thought about making this study.The main aim is to investigate in which way Putte i Parken can be a factor of growth and a factor of making Karlstad an attractive place to live in by analyzing documents, reports and literature in a qualitative way of working.

In this study, I intend to examine some aspects of the activities of cultural companies in the town of Arvika. The study is qualitative in nature and based on in-depth interviews with self-employed cultural workers, as well as representatives from Arvika municipality. Cultural policy documents have been studied to clarify the self-employed status in the cultural sector and thus their importance to the cultural life in Arvika overall.My hope is to get a glimpse of what it means to work as a self-employed within the cultural sector in Arvika and the conditions that exist, in order to successfully run and develop their businesses.There is a shift in cultural policy, which has led to permanent forms of employment becoming fewer and self-employment to grow ( Karlsson & Lekvall, 6 ). One can say that the cultural sector has moved in the direction from a public matter, to the more privatized ( Köping , Lantz & Stenström, 3 ). The problem with this is that the policy of self-employment has not progressed at the same rate as the amount of business.

Using interviews conducted within the municipality of Nam Dich, Vietnam, this qualitative study explores how ethnic minority parents and children navigate around the state's supervision in order to preserve their traditional practices of child marriages. Moreover, the research explores the roles and expectations between individuals within an ethnic minority family as a collective unit. Using governmentality supported by the concept of state evasion, culture bearers and empowerment, I argue that understanding child marriage as a phenomenon requires analysis of cultural context. The paper starts with an introduction of the ongoing relation between the Vietnamese state and ethnic minority traditions related to child marriage. While the Vietnamese state ?s modernization projects aim to empower individuals by creating more freedom within the process of marriage and increasing the opportunity for education and work, certain ethnic minority groups want to uphold their cultural ways of marriage when parental arrangement occurs from an early age.

This thesis deals with the question of how and to what degree Swedish history books for schools changed between the early 20th century and the 1960s. The theoretical foundation for this study is a perspective which treats historical accounts as narratives, bringing meaning and orientation to the present. According to this perspective, historical accounts may be divided into four different types of narratives, traditional, exemplary, critical and genetical. The basis for this division is how the narratives use the past to make the present understandable.The following conclusions are reached:That Swedish history books for schools have changed less, and in a moore gradual way than those dealing with general history. There is a growing use of genetical narratives at the expense of mainly exemplary ones.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how the European Union through the Directorate- General (DG) of Education and Culture, are calling forth a constructed sense of European identity amongst the citizens of the Union.It is a discourse analysis, which can be described in twofold. Firstly, it is a mapping of the European discourse; i.e. how the European Union defines the identity it seeks to mobilise. Secondly, it examines whether or not there are similarities in the European discourse of identity and the traditional nation-building discourse of national identity.According to this thesis a European identity is articulated in cultural terms, whereby its members are said to share the same values and a common cultural heritage.To bring the people of Europe closer together and to deepen awareness of their "common" history, the European Union encourages all manner of meetings and exchange schemes between Europeans. Although its goal is to develop a feeling of belonging to a shared culture, the EU is also keen to preserve the specific aspects of Europe's many cultures.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of literature within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards democracy, literature and library by comparing the attitudes in the governmental policy documents from the 1970s with the governmental policy documents from the 1990s. The theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. My method of analysis is a textual one, analysis of ideas and ideology, focusing on the aspect of signification of a text. The study has an effort of analysing the governmental policy in terms of idea and ideology.

Sweden has a long tradition as a mapmaking nation. Tens of thousands of historical maps,dating from the sixteenth century and onwards are still preserved in archives today, providinga rich resource for studies of city growth and changes in the landscape through time. For morethan ten years an effort has been made by public authorities to transfer this material frompaper onto digital media. Due to modern technology, as for example GeographicalInformation Systems (GIS), researchers have been given improved possibilities to study andanalyze this material. This study uses a qualitative approach, based on both literature studiesas well as map studies.

The works of crime fiction writer Edogawa Rampo are largely unknown in the West, but have had a considerable impact upon literature and popular culture in his home country of Japan. Rampo?s works are threading on the line between between distinctively Western and distinctively Japanese writing styles and thematic realms, embodying a cultural fusion which acts as a mirror of the societal and cultural changes that occured in the author?s contemporary Taish? era Japan. This thesis is an attempt to explore Rampo?s literary mindset, and more specifically to attempt to picture and describe Rampo?s self-image as an author of crime fiction active during this time period.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the movie Hotel Rwanda from a didactic point of view using the movie?s use of history and historical culture as the main analytical tools. We also intend to problematize the use of movies in teaching focusing on the teaching guide from the Swedish film institution concerning Hotel Rwanda. We choose to work with a qualitative method. The reason why we decided to work with a qualitative method is the intention, as mentioned before, to analyse the movie using the tools we described earlier.

The aim of this essay is to analyze how food and meals produce and reproduce values and power relations and how these processes are portrayed in Virginia Woolf?s To the Lighthouse. Using sociological writings in the field of food consumption and production I study the structures that affect our relation to food and eating. This perspective is combined with a phenomenological view, aiming to examine how food is perceived, which is also inspired by queer theories. Using the method of close reading, the theories are applied to Woolf?s work.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine ideas used to legitimate Swedish digital libraries, with a focus on the cultural heritage, their relation to cultural policy and an eventual crisis within the latter. Which ideas are linked to digitalisation? How do the arguments for creating digital libraries differ between central actors? How do the digital libraries relate to cultural policy and an eventual legitimacy crisis? These are the questions this thesis seeks to answer. The theoretical starting-point consists of a legitimacy discussion and its connection to Swedish cultural policy. The method used is idea analysis.

The aim of the study was to investigate how a community motivates and ensures the implementation of its values and how this document affected personnel of meaning, vision and daily operations. The study was based on semi-structured interviews, in which nine respondents were interviewed in a city in southern Sweden. Interviews dealt with three different themes, all concerned organization or set of values. The analysis was based partly on how organizations and institutions build up and maintain their legitimacy. The analysis was also explained by the new institutional theory and its concepts isomorphism.

This paper presents a study of the attitudes and values related to gender young people have. Five people, four women and one male, all about eighteen years old, were interviewed about their attitudes and values related to gender.Although the study is relatively small, the results are compatible with other published studies and indicate that young people, without consideration to their sex, has a very traditional view on gender. The study also indicates that the attitudes seem to be established very early in life. Probably the most important factor to determine the attitudes and values of the child is the parent's opinions. The result show that the interviewed persons did not think their attitudes and values towards gender where influenced by media, TV etc...

In the preschool curriculum there is not much described when it comes to the subject of music. What is written about the aesthetic subjects is related to the overall learning moments, rather than separated into objectives for each subject. The learning includes, among other things, that the children will be offered a variety of cultural experiences. However, there is no explanation to what should be included in the use of music. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the function of preschool song circles, based on three preschool teachers' stories.