The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.

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.

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.

This is a case study on the functioning of political parties and the aim was to explain ?how? and ?why? the Swedish social democratic party changed their policies in the Middle East politics. I wanted to explain this process of change by using Angelo Panebianco?s framework for the analysis of political parties. Angelo Panebianco´s hypothesis is that all parties must be viewed as organizations to understand their functions.

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 master thesis is about one of the first female in the Swedish Parliament, Elisabeth Tamm (1880?1958), and her political articles in the magazine Tidevarvet. The aim of this study is to find similarities with Tamm?s political thoughts with the Ecofeministic theory. Due to women?s right to vote 1919 women citizenship was in a political debate.

The centre of attention in this essay is on public-private-partnerships in Swedish city planning. It discusses the phenomenon and tries to identify the problems and possibilities that may appear when private and public actors are trying to work together to plan new cities or parts of cities in a process with network structures. The main questions that is asked is ?what vision for the city can we se, and who's vision is it?? together with the question of where the actual power to make the city plan and the vision can be find. The soon-to-be-built area Ulriksdal in Stockholm were Peab AB and Solna Stad stands as main actors has been chosen to illustrate the possible problems and is analysed from different angles, but the writers intention is also to say something on the matter in general.

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.

In an international perspective the Russian children s library is a unique institution, being solely committed to children up to 14 years of age. In Russia of today it is, however, being exposed to hard pressure as the economical and social conditions have changed dramatically since the collapse of the USSR. My interest lies in examining this change of living conditions for the children s libraries and how this in turn affect their work and role in the present state. In order to view this change in a longer perspective, I compare the situation for children s libraries during the time of communist regime with that of today using documents about and from children s libraries. I have studied its legal position and conditions, financial and political state, and how the modern society affects children and youth, especially their daily cultural life.

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..

There is a clear difference between types of regions and forms of regionalization. This theoretical division can point out other division lines on different areas and levels, like the one of discourses. In this article is urged that regional political discourses may be divided in West and East European ones. To argue for West and East differences in regional discourse the article shows division lines both in the history of regionalization but also in ideologies. The regional policy of the EU is one example for today's regionalization as a West discourse and the Transylvanian in Rumania as an example for the East discourse.

AbstractEssay in political Science (c-level) by Karin Forsling, Spring 2007A school for the best interest of the child? - The Swedish School System according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.Supervisor: Stig MontinThe purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish governments work with the im-plementation of this convention and what progress has been made. The inquiry of this study is to describe how the changing in the Swedish School System correspond to the national strat-egy for implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Sweden and how the political protagonists.I have read some of the most relevant documents from the authorities and organisations work-ing with children?s rights in Sweden and papers and communications from the political pro-tagonists.Since UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by Sweden in 1990 the work for implementation has been quite successful but there are still lots to do. There are still some problems in School such as bullying, insulting, insecurity and lack of peaceful and harmoni-ous school environment.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze why or why not Swedish municipalities implement the gender equality policy ? ?right to work fulltime?. In order to understand this institutional change, the analysis is based on a theoretical framework consisting of two fields: political representation and feminist institutionalism. The study is divided into two empirical inquiries. The first part is based on a quantitative survey that describes the casual relationship between two independent variables; women´s political representation and party ideology, and the dependent variable; political decision about ?right to work fulltime?.

The increasing significance of social economy as a concept is linked to general global processes such as the crisis of the welfare state, neoliberal globalization, anti-bureaucracy tendencies and decentralization, but also to a growing political interest in human rights and social development. In Sweden the idea of the social economy generates wide support within civil society as well as within the government and across party political boundaries. Furthermore, what is problematic in this context is the fact that the discussions on the subject tend to be relatively uncritical and often it seems as if though the expansion itself is the main objective. The emphasis on cooperation and the third sector in terms of welfare production implies a set of risks in relation to state responsibility, democracy and the autonomy of civil society. This paper aims to explore those risks and how they can be dealt with within the Swedish context..