This essay deals with ruins from the perspective of their cultural values ??and the impact of add-ons, protective add-ons and caring actions affect these values. The issues in the essay are; What are the cultural values of a ruin?  How have ruins been used?  How are ruins treated today?Initially the definition of the concept ?ruin? is discussed, what is a ruin? A building has an architectural biography: the creation, destruction, change and the decay. The concept of ruin is considered to be a state of this decay, rather than a dead building.

This thesis concerns to investigate renovations of existing buildings aiming at enabling energy efficiency, from a conservation and restoration perspective. This includes performing case studies of three projects in the Gothenburg area where renovations has been done and an analysis of directives raised by the EU and later implemented by the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, Boverket. In addition to these, regulations enforced by the Swedish law, related to the topic, have been considered.The investigated projects in this case were the housing cooperative Välten in Brämaregården, the Solar Buildings in Järnbrott and Gårdsten as well as Katjas Gata 119 at Backa Röd. In order to measure and compare the results of these projects a comparison between the pre- and post-restoration energy consumption have been performed. To capture additional perspectives the grading system Operation Kungsörn has been applied.Regarding the comparison of energy consumption the renovation of Katjas Gata 119 was found preferable but showed in my view lacking attention to the cultural heritage of the area.

The following chapters examine landscape architecture which engages in contested territories with an emphasis on the way in which landscape architecture can engage with the issues of divided cities or landscapes with similar social, cultural and physical properties. The project focuses specifically on the potential landscape architecture has for promoting or aiding in the reconciliation process of these areas, by examining the following questions. How can landscape architecture be used to benefit the peace building process of divided cities and landscapes? How can landscape architecture be used in the process of promoting spatial reconciliation in the case of Belfast? The investigation begins with a description of the background to the project in Chapter 1, which functions as a brief introduction to the urban phenomena that is divided cities. It then goes on to introduce the different methods and data employed in order to answer the research questions in Chapter 2. After introducing the problem and the methodology, a global overview of divided cities is performed in Chapter 3. This chapter is divided into two sections.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the ways in which culture and cultural policy are being articulated in the process of Lund's application to become Sweden's European Cultural Capital of 2014.I have used Dorte Skot-Hansen's three cultural political rationalities: the humanistic-, the sociological- and the instrumental rationality, as well as and Jenny Johannisson's extension of those into three cultural-political discourses, as sensitizing concepts in my analysis. The questions raised are: How are the three rationalities/discourses articulated in the chosen central documents and in the process surrounding them? Which themes and arguments dominate the chosen documents?The main objects of my study have been four texts that have been produced in the applicationprocess: a Prestudy, a Plan of action, a Broschure and a Cultural policy. Along with them local political protocols, newspaper articles and other related material have been used. The research method applied was a qualitative eclectical textual analysis with emphasis on the content and on tracing the way the rationalities were expressed in the material.The rationalities were all found to be articulated in the four texts.

The aim of this bachelor thesis has been to examine and develop our own understanding about how young people in Sweden (16-29 years of age), take part in cultural activities. As librarians it is important to know what kind of activities and interests this particular group has. With Pierre Bourdieu?s theoretical framework towards habitus and capital we are interested to see if there is a connection between one?s cultural use and background, if different access to capital with or within groups has an affect or not. With both statistics and interviews with people within our target, we believe this data has been sufficient enough to conduct a good and valid study.

Bilingualism and multilingualism have always existed in Sweden. Preschool teachers must provide a stimulating pedagogical environment adapted to bilingual children.The purpose of this examination is to study the perspective of the preschool teachers and their knowledge regarding bilingual and multilingual children. Their knowledge will be examined related to their language experiences. I hope to find similarities and dissimilarities in the preschool teachers? opinions concerning teaching and learning what they actually do when they are teaching.My study is based on qualitative method, based on interviews and repeated observations.

In this thesis, the Swedish venture capital market and its profitability is analyzed. Venture capital is defined as capital that is invested in the early stages of a company's life cycle, in the two investment stages seed/start-up and expansion.A common view is that the profitability of Swedish venture capital has not been, is not and will probably not become high either. With this in mind, we try to answer to the following questions in this thesis:? What has the profitability of Swedish venture capital actually been historically?? Which reasons could be found in order to explain the historical returns for Swedish venture capital, and which factors has been identified in international comparative studies between venture capital markets?In order to answer these questions, data showing historical returns for the Swedish, European and American venture capital market has been gathered, an extensive literature study has been performed, and three interviews with participants from the Swedish venture capital market has been conducted.We conclude that the historical returns of Swedish venture capital is in line with the general view that they have been low. We also see a trend where Swedish venture capital funds that are not specialized in one investment stage generate lower returns than more specialized funds.

The more leadership you get, the more power you will receive. Unfortunately, not everyone is given the same opportunities. This can be seen and proved on the basis of studies in media companies. Our purpose concerns attitudes towards female leadership in Moscow, Russia. This thesis was based on two study methods, qualitative interviews and observations.

The aim of this Bachelor?s thesis is to obtain understanding and knowledge about how literary scholars collaborate regarding information. Seven scholars have been studied in the aim to find out social and cultural elements which create particular prerequisites for their practice, with focus on information sharing. The method used has consisted of semi-structured interviews. The informants have been studied from a socio cultural and domain analysis starting point, which means that they are studied in the light of being members in their practice.

Mathematics is a central topic in today's education debate, including discussion of its educational quality and various teaching methods. Today basically two different teaching methods are used; one is the textbook based method, with the book in focus and the other one the laboratory method by which teaching is performed through practical applications. The purpose of this study was to examine four primary school teachers' view of these two teaching methods by means of four relevant inquiries. By interviewing the four teachers, advantages and disadvantages were highlighted and the purpose was achieved. In order to support the analysis, two theories applied; the socio-cultural perspective and the cognitive perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers' approach to popular culture in preschool. The questions we want answered are: What approach do educators have to popular culture in preschool and what underlies that approach? Is there a high - and low culture in preschool? If educators bring popular culture into the preschool, how then is it used? Do children?s culture influence everyday life in preschool? We have employed qualitative methods to seek answers to our questions. We conducted seven interviews with educators from four different preschools. The starting point for our study was the socio-cultural perspective because we examined people's cultures and how the meeting between them unfolds. We concluded that educators have a very ambivalent attitude towards popular culture in preschool.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how opinions and values are expressed in BTJ?s reviews of children?s literature. According to debates reviewed and interviewed librarians, many consider BTJ to be too directing when it comes to the libraries? purchases of books. Therefore I find it important to study how the reviews are written.

Young women with immigrant background are generally looked upon as victims of patriarchal structures and cultural determinism.The purpose of this bachelor thesis was therefore to have a salutogen perspective. We investigated how young women with a transcultural background are affected by and how they use their experiences from different backgrounds in their creating of identity.We based our essay on qualitative interviews and current research on the subjects of multi culture, identity and youth. The interviewees were seven young women with experience of multi cultural background and performing different kind of artistic activity.The theory and empirical material combined and compared resulted in three themes: affinity, cultural hybridization, and salutogen factors.We saw that for those young women affinity functioned as a basis for creating identity and that their double background enriches them in several aspects. The three major salutogen factors that the interviewees had in common, and we emphasize, are their struggle, open mind and awareness of freedom.The global youth culture has a great impact upon the young women and to some extent we could recognize cultural hybridization. We consider this neglected subject urgent and very relevant for social work in the multi cultural society of Sweden..

Adapting the concept of the ?popular cultural memory? and its necessary ?context knowledge? established by Karin Kukkonen, this bachelor thesis seeks to examine how this memory is ?at work? and expresses itself in contemporary fiction, by doing an intertextual reading of the swedish author Amanda Svensson's debut Hey Dolly. Within the intertextual structures of Hey Dolly the reader encounters allusions and references that address almost everything from contemporary popular culture to established authors in the swedish canon, mainly as means for the characters to help them express their emotions and thoughts, by ?choosing? from already available content of popular culture to use and modify. The intertextuality alluding to the popular cultural memory does at the same time address the concept of the ideal reader throughout the novel.

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities.