With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

AbstractA beautiful death ? Manliness in four Japanese samurai moviesThis thesis deals with the samurai and his portrayal in Japanese historic movies and what kind of messages he conveys in form of masculinity to theater audiences. Four movies were chosen, two from the 1960s and two from the 2010s. The reasoning behind this was to look at two eras of samurai movies and if possible try to see differences between them. The history of the samurai, being a man and woman in modern Japan, R.W Connell and famous Japanese authors from different time eras acted as tools to try to answer the questions in hand.

The purpose of the essay is to make a comparative study between the Christian value parity and the Christian Democrats. To answer the purpose the following questions are asked: What are the similarities and differences between party programs? What are the similarities and differences in their origin? The theory used is based on Reidar Larlsson political ideologies, there were two ideologies used to apply on the result: conservatism and liberalism. The method was ideologies analysis. The result of the study shows that there were some similarities and some differences between the part programs.

In today?s fashion market there are a great number of actors that offer a huge selection ofproducts. The fashion world today covers the whole world and a result of this, the competitionamong fashion companies are enormous, leading to a tough climate for companies in today?sfashion industry. There is an overproduction of goods on the market and companies mustcompete for customers because of today's homogeneous goods and prices.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

This essay examines how witches are portrayed in American produced TV-series in the year 2000 and forward, what elements could have effected that portrayal in the series and also how this portrayal differs itself from witches within Wicca. The material used for this examination are the TV-series Charmed, The Vampire Diaries and Witches of East End and as comparing literature; Living Wicca, The Spiral Dance and Witchcraft Today. The methods used for this process are discourse analysis and content analysis. I used theories of Pierre Wiktorin about religion and popular culture. I used three themes (Characteristics, Practice and mode of thinking) for the processing of the material and to structure the result.

This master thesis deals with the Nobel Prize and highbrow culture as portrayed in Karin Alvtegen?s Skugga. From a sociology of literature perspective, it aims to analyze how these highbrow themes can be understood in relation to Alvtegen?s position in the literary field as a lowbrow crime novelist. The method used is hermeneutic, and the analysis is based on two theoretical models: Pierre Bourdieu?s cultural sociology, and the postmodern tradition where the distinction high/low and its traditional hierarchy is said to be decomposed.

Swedish trade unions are engaged in several activities at the European level. One of these isthe sectoral social dialogue, an institutionalized part of the European Union. This bachelorthesis examines the motives for Swedish trade unions in three different sectors to engage themselves in the European social dialogue. The three sectors are chosen because of their differences according to their exposure to competition caused by ongoing globalization and europeanization processes. By interviewing central informants in trade unions which are active in the three dialogues this thesis seeks to learn more about the motives stated by the trade unions.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse how and why culture and tradition is created and maintained within a minor student society at a Swedish university by looking at its history. The West Coast Nation student society provided the material which was subsequently analysed and three sociological perspectives were applied in order to give the study a theoretical base. In order to investigate the purpose of the society, durkheimian theories on functionalism were applied. Moreover, Bourdieu?s thoughts on social fields were used as well as Elias? theories on the established and the outsiders.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate whether speakers of different languages find different things difficult when learning Swedish. The results showed that the first language was not the only aspect that mattered when it comes to what difficulties the learners face. Also individual differences and the level the learner has reached in the language are important to consider. However, some differences between the groups investigated surfaced and this shows that the first language can infact effect what difficulties the learners will encounter.   .

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the ways in which the constructions of heterosexuality and gender in three Disney movies about princesses affect the power relations between men and women in the movies, and how discourses on gender and heterosexuality have changed over time. Research questions were:How do characters in the movies talk about gender and heterosexuality?How does the interplay between gender and heterosexuality affect the power relations between men and women in the movies?What are the likenesses and differences between movies from different time periods?Discourses were mapped out using a model based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe?s political theories. These discourses were then analyzed with a theoretical framework consisting of Yvonne Hirdman?s concept of gender system and gender contracts, Judith Butler?s view on the heterosexual matrix and an understanding of power relations based on Michel Foucault.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

By interviewing 10 people in leadership positions from various companies and      countries, this thesis had as main objective to find out how the view the of what environment promotes the intrapreneur to make the organizations more competitive and successful. By transcribing and interpreting the interviews, we have found the keywords that could answer our research question. Our method has been based on a qualitative approach with an inductive direction. The leadership has been shown to have a significant role in terms of company culture and the intrapreneurs ability to contribute to the development of the organizations. The culture is essential.

Our purpose was to investigate which readiness, different sectors in a minor city has to meet honour-related problems. We wanted to investigate how they manage honour-related problems and how the co-operation in these cases is between different authorities. Our questions at issue were: Which knowledge's, experiences there are about the culture of honour, which resources has the authorities and how is the co-operation between different organisations work?We have collected present documentation and research about the subject. We made eight quality interviews with different persons within professions, as we understood, came in contact with cultures of honour.