Today Europe is faced with an identity crisis concerning its borders. Turkey stands at the threshold for an EU-membership while the EU-Commission is trying to formulate what constitutes a European identity. This identity seeking process will determine the future not only for Turkey, but also for immigrants now living in Europe.In this thesis a discourse analysis, underpinned by socialconstructionist theory, is conducted to explore how the European identity has been constructed throughout history up until today. A starting point is that identity always is defined through a dialectical relationship to "otherness". Therefore the analysis is focused not only on what a European identity consists of but also what and who it excludes.

The following essay aims at the interplay between regional och municipal growth work, and theway cultural heritage is used in growth work strategies. The main issue has been whether theregional strategies are followed up in the municipal strategies, which has been investigated bymeans of question which impact the region?s strategies has at the local level.The essay draws upon an instrumental perspective on cultural heritage and cultural environment,here defined as instruments in the national development and growth efforts. Three publicationsthat highlights potential roles of cultural heritage and cultural environment to act as instrumentsin the regional and municipal development and growth efforts has thereby been selected astheoretical models. These roles has further been summarized in a tabular form as a schematicdivision of main themes with sub-categories, used as a framework for deciphering the regionaland municipal strategies.A content analysis of available strategies at both regional and local levels have been used as amethod for investigating the issue, where the role of cultural heritage and cultural environment(as defined in the schematic table) has guided the reading.

During the last years social media have developed and become a place where all kind of people can meet and interact with each other without any kind of physical contact to one another. We belive that this development also has made it easier for political parties and organisations to spread their propaganda to the people that uses social media without them knew from whom the information is coming. With this in mind we decided to do a study about the social media Facebook and how the users of Facebook think they are being influenced by political propaganda from organisations and private persons. In our study we decided that we wanted to know why our respondents are using Facebook, if they have payed attention to two political questions, one international question and one national question, that have been noticed recently and if they feel that they are being influenced of political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have concluded that our respondents, depending on how old they are, do feel that they are being influenced by political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have also noticed that the younger part of our respondents feel that they are using Facebook because their friends do it and that they have noticed the international political question more than the national political question. In the older category of respondents the reason of why they are using Facebook was to maintain a conection with their friends and they had noticed the national political question more than the international political question. .

The rise of the Swedish Democrats, as a political party in Sweden, has been surroundedby controversy both within and outside of the media. As such a polarizingtopic, the party has been the focus of negative and positive attention. On onehand it has been considered a racist and xenophobic party due to its policies onimmigrants. On the other, it has also been seen as a solution to what has been consideredby some to be a constant problem in Sweden, for those same policies.These policies are motivated by what the party perceives as a threat to Swedishsociety. That is to say, immigrants are a threat to Sweden because of thechanges they impose on the Swedish identity.

This critical examination of the concept of cultural heritage is based on an overall phenomenological approach, with focus on Alfred Schütz?s further development of Edmund Husserl?s idea of the lifeworld. With strong emphasis on the subjective and intersubjective dimensions, the concept of cultural heritage is contextualized, analysed and criticized from different aspects for the purpose of enriching the discourse of cultural heritage.A literature based methodology is used, including a hermeneutic analysis of theoretical texts in the field of cultural heritage studies and the new Swedish Culture Environmental Law (?Kulturmiljölagen?) and related bills. Qualitative interviews deal with people?s notions about the concepts of culture, cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage.

Title: Images of Sweden in ItalyNumber of pages: 5252 (589 including enclosures)Author: Oskar GustafssonTutor: Martin NilssonCourse: Political Science C level ? Bachelor?s ThesisPeriod: Spring term 2010University: School of Social SciencesLinnaeus UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose of my research study is to, through the use of political science theories on soft power and marketing theories about nation branding and in comparison to previous studies on the image of Sweden in Italy, gains a better understanding of the image of Sweden in Italy, with special focus on national political institutions and young Italians.Method: The method of analysis is a combination of qualitative methods: interviews where information about the image of Sweden amongst national political institutions were gathered and a survey where information was gathered about the image of Sweden amongst young Italians.Main results: On the basis of the results I have gained it can be concluded that a positive and well informed image of Sweden emerges when it comes to cultural and social factors but a more restricted and somewhat negative image come to light when asking national political institutions and young citizens in Italy about their views and knowledge on Swedish domestic and international politics and economics.Keywords: Soft power, Public Diplomacy, Nation Branding, Images of Sweden, Italy..

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empirical analysis is a case report taken from the Öresund region, a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the role of language and culture as ethnical identification factors and illustrate how these have been used as political weapons by the Serb regime in Kosovo during the last decade. The thesis discusses the concept of ethnicity, the relations between the politics of identity, nationalism, ethnic mobilization and the importance of language and culture. Kosovo has historically been characterized by severe ethnic antagonism between Serbs and Albanians. Different languages, cultures and religions beside political processes led to ethnic cleavages that paved the way for ethnocentrism, ethnonationalism, chauvinism, ethnic cleansing and civil war. Since 1989, the Serbian authorities have intervened in all important spheres of life, in an attempt to Serbianize Kosovo.

The European identity plays an important role for the EU and especially within its will to further integrate its citizens, hence it is a way for individuals to not only identify with its nation, yet also with Europe. Previous research has already established that an individual can possess two territorial identities, such as a national and a European identity, above all it has established how the identities can equally interplay. Further it has been explained how territorial identities are composed of two aspects: civic and cultural. While the previous research has stated how the European identity possesses both aspects, though to varying degrees, little attention has been put to examine how individuals who possesses multiple territorial identification, defines its European identity. This study therefore aims to study which aspects, civic or cultural, individuals with a citizenship who possess multiple territorial identification, assign their European identity.

This is a qualitative essay that has its starting point in the deindustrialized community in the county of Kalmar. At the time deindustrialization started, the globalization and the technical development took form, this resulted in increasing traveling in the world. The communities that had lost their industries had to find new ways of surviving. The politicians used the increasing travelling and tourism and saw a new industry in the tourism, therefore they made cultural heritage visible. Main focus lies in the will from politicians to visualize cultural heritage for economic gain and the administration of cultural heritage that in essence had to accept a new use of the cultural heritage.

There's no doubt today that mankind has contributed to the changing climate byher use of fossil fuels. This must change in the nearby future. The Europeanleaders are expressing concern that renewable energy sources are not beingused to their full potential. The 2001/77/EC Directive on Electricity Productionfrom Renewable Energy Sources was accepted in 2001 to encourage thedevelopment of energy production from renewable sources, which isconsidered a step towards the fulfillment of the goal of the Union, that 12% ofthe gross energy consumption should come from renewable energy sources bythe year 2010.The objective of this thesis is to illuminate the common legislation of the EUregarding renewable energy with regard to goal fulfillment, judicial quality,conflicts with other goals of the EU and other faults. The objective is reachedby a hermeneutic study in which interpretation of written text is the mainmethod.

It often occurs that the spirit regarding the future as a conservator is rather pessimistic. Howcome that there are so few employed conservators, when the need for conservation obviouslyis big? What kind of changes is needed for a better status regarding the conservation?This thesis concerns the development of the field of conservation in Sweden. What havehappened, what will happen and, particularly, what should happen? The information wasgathered from literature studies and interviews during the spring of 2010.