Words like pirates and anti-pirates are becoming common features in the cultural political debate of today, and the file-sharing phenomenon has become a more and more delicate and disputed subject. The fact that people are organizing in networks to swap computerfiles with each other has, among other things, led film and music companies from all over the world to initiate a number of anti-piracy organizations, assigned to protect the right to culture and information. The industrial organization Antipiratbyrån (the Anti-pirate Bureau) and the network Piratbyrån (the Pirate Bureau) have on several occasions been used to represent the prevailing conflict in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to apply a sociological perspective to the collective act of file sharing. Additionally, the purpose is to argue that the activity can be understood as a social movement, although it is rarely referred to as such.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the users/visitors do at the Filipstads Bergslags Library when they are there. The questions we asked were "What do the visitors do when they are at the library?" and "How do the visitors give priority to the librarys services?" From these two questions we asked a third "How do the visitors view the library and its functions and what function do they see as the most important to them?" The method we used was a user study and we did this at the request of the management at the library. A questionnaire was constructed and handed out in a pilot study. We made some changes in the questionnaire before we started to hand it out at the library.

 In the global society of today it takes more and more to become a successful purchaser. One part of this is to understand distinctions between different countries. The first and the biggest thing that you think about are the languages. Of course this is a big obstacle but there are also big cultural differences to be considered. According to Van Weele (2002) this is something that not, until these days, have been prioritized but today it is becoming more common in the industries.The biggest question we asked ourselves before the work started was how cultural and verbal differences affected the global procurement on Husqvarna.

The purpose of the study is to examine and analyze the relation between the existence of global companies and given support to immigrant- owned companies with large cultural difference from public services. This helps answering the question "Which affect does the existence of local dominating companies have on the establishment of small companies owned by immigrants with large cultural differences?" This has been accomplished through a field study containing twelve interviews with small companies in two different cities and two interviews with the community officials in each city. The research was thereby narrowed to only treat the two cities in Sweden in order to examine the relation between public services support to small immigrant-owned companies and how the immigrants experience the support from them. The analyze was made due to a handful of theories such as the The network theory IP model, Hofstede's 4+1 model and the Product Life Cycle.

This essay researches how newspapers created fictional reader identities through their content. Three newspapers have been studied from the week first to eight of February 1890, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, Dagens Nyheter and Stockholms Nyheter. The question that the essay is attempting to answer is which fictional readers were created. This is done through both a content analysis and a deeper language analysis of the newspapers. The text is seen as an active agent, creating the identity of the reader that they imagine when they write, an ideal reader.

Few issues have been exposed in media recently as much as the climate change issue. Afterthe documentary film ?An Inconvenient Thruth? presented by Al Gore was released in 2006,most of the world saw a lot of attention directed towards global warming. This was a turningpoint that is refered to in this dissertation an history-graded critical event, which is assumed tohave a significant impact on peoples lives.The purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether or not political parties in Swedenresponded to this critical event in the way that they, in their party programmes, haveformulated policies related to climate change. Alternatively if media produces an image ofpolitical activity which does not comport with the forming of actual political standpoints.

This bachelor thesis aims to analyse archaeological finds related to mead during the Late Iron Age in southern Scandinavia. Five central places from the Iron Age are compared to five historical texts, that in some way connects to either the central places or to the use of mead. This will be done by using action theory. The action theory focuses on what kind of actions humans have done to create social and cultural purposes. Since the last part of the Late Iron Age, the Viking Age, is getting more popular due to movies, games and tv-shows it is also relevant to study how modern-day mead represents the Viking Age through its marketing.

When it comes to political representation, all over the world women almost always make up a minority of representatives in the legislative bodies. The Scandinavian countries in general and Sweden in particular have though been exceptions to this rule with, when compared to other countries, a rather high percentage of women in elected positions. This development took off in the seventies: during that decade the unit percentage of women in the Swedish Riksdag rose by double!The aim for this thesis is to analyse what underlying ideas influenced this advance. The focus is on three different female party federations, who are believed to have had a great impact on this increase of women politicians through their influence in their own mother parties. The federations analysed are the ones connected to the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the Liberal party.

AbstractThe recruiting of lay judges to the district courts is managed by the political parties. Despite repeated efforts the parties do not succeed in recruiting lay judges that reflect the structure of the inhabitants. Why not? This is the fundamental issue of this essay.This study is a multiple case study of two parties with different success in their recruiting work. The purpose is to study the process of nomination regarding lay judges at the district courts, at the latest election (2006).

In Sweden, prostitution is politically defined as a social problem, more precisely, as a form of male violence against women. The definition is distinctly manifested in the government bill Kvinnofrid, characterised by the unique Swedish law that prohibits the purchase of sexual services.This thesis examines how the Swedish solutions of prostitution are carried out. By interviewing central actors working with prostitution in different ways we aim to answer the question: What measures are taken to decrease prostitution and what implications does the Swedish solution have?The analysis is divided into two parts. First, we analyse the concrete measures taken against prostitution ? what is done, how, and why? Second, we analyse the complexity of prostitution measures by applying complementary analytical perspectives: the symbolic and the discourse perspective.The study shows that measures taken to decrease prostitution vary and depend on individual actors? understandings of the political definition.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to illustrate Serbia?s democratic development on the basis of consolidate democratic perspective. Linz & Stepan´s five arenas (political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic) are required for the possibility to become a consolidate democracy. In order to fulfil the aim, I have chosen to focus on the political and civil arenas that are most central in the study of consolidate democracy.The purpose of this study is to process how far Serbia has come towards a consolidate democracy and which obstacles still remain in the transition.The questions in this study are:? What problems has Serbia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of 1990?? What possibilities are there for Serbia to consolidate the democracy, with focus on the two key arenas of consolidation?By applying the theoretical framework to the data, I have been able to present answers and build up an analysis.

Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

Japan's foreign and security policy has seen some substantial changes as a result of events like the first Gulf war and 9/11th. This has been taken as proof, by some, that Japan is abandoning its antimilitaristic stance and pursuing a more traditional hard power role through military means. This essay aims to explore if these shifts have coincided with any substantial shifts away from antimilitarism, which has had a strong influence on the country's security policy since the end of WW2.To do this I use constructivist theory, specifically regarding the impact of norms and identities on states security policy and briefly look into the problem of actor designation. The thematic focus is on security policy, from a narrow perspective, and thus I examine areas like the input and output to the Japanese military and the actual applications of this force. State identity is used to explore the prevalence of nationalistic sentiments and support for anti militarism in the public opinion and the political elite.The result of this study points to the further relevance of constructivist theory and especially the application of norms and identity.

The study is a qualitative survey with the purpose to through interviews with Employment Office social workers examine their perception of possibilities and obstacles in the employment market for immigrants. This purpose is specified through two specific problems; how are cultural and ethnic affiliations portrayed in relation to what is perceived as Swedish in the communication with Employment Office social workers and whether they reckon that the specifications in the employment market are pragmatically or normatively motivated. The materials are presented using a social constructivist perspective and in relation to previously conducted research and our chosen theory. The results are presented and analyzed in themes. The main conclusions drawn from the interviews are that it primarily is the individual prerequisites that are central, but that structural factors also affect the entry into the employment market.

This thesis intends to examine the role of the city, Dublin, in the Irish economic growth during the 1990s. It is a case study where Dublin is compared with current theories on post modern cities as growth machines and increasingly prominent actors in the global context. The study has an interdisciplinary approach but focuses on political science issues such as power distribution, global-local governance and local political organisation. It is a theory driven study that also intends to add aspects to the understanding of the cities of our time. I argue that Dublin has faced a lot of changes during the last decades in accordance with the post modern city.