The aim of this thesis is to expand the understanding of 16th century Flemish art by approaching paintings by artists Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575), Joachim Beuckelaer (1533-1574) and Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) from a different perspective. This is done by extending the discourse of art history, into a discourse of literary history and primarily 16th century novels by authors such as François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes. The paintings are studied in relation to these 16th century novels, by comparison and as a testament of this specific time period. A widening contextualization is also constructed in which a connection to the expression of the carnivals ambivalent form, as well as the notion of lower classes is explored.

Fairy tales are commonly considered to be both timeless and classless. Since the 17th century, when most of the tales we have access to today were first collected and published, the idea that fairy tales are part of an oral tradition, and therefore more or less uninfluenced by academic and literary trends, have been dominant amongst researchers, critics and readers. This idea needs to be revaluated. Even if the tales might have their roots in an oral tradition the history of the fairy tale ?is not primarily a history of oral transmission, but rather a history of print?, as Elizabeth Wanning Harries puts it (Wanning Harries, 2001:4).

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the extent to which Swedish compulsory school tends to rely upon, and to further reinforce, ideologies that from a theoretical platform of deep ecology can be identified as ?ecologically unsustainable conceptions of reality?. Mainly, this will purport to an examination of the (explicit as well as implicit) prevalence of anthropocenthrism, individualism, ethnocenthrism and rationalism in a) the Swedish National Curriculum; and in b) biology text books. Methodologically, the study makes use of Fairclough´s approach to, and method for, critical discourse analysis (CDA). The main results are that the National Curriculum indeed expresses a high level of individualism, as well as (although to a lesser extent) traces of rationalism and ethnocenthrism.

Denna uppsats undersökte stereotypers inverkan på tre steg i en urvalsprocess: utformande av kravprofil, bedömning av sökande utifrån cv och anställningsintervju och slutligt anställningsbeslut. Studien utgick, med stöd av teorier om stereotypkonstruktion och social identitetsteori, ifrån att en kompetent utgruppsmedlem främst diskrimineras med hänvisning till brister i social kompetens. Hypoteserna var för det första att stereotyper om invandrare skulle bidra till högre krav på social kompetens i kravprofilen om gruppen av sökande var etniskt blandad jämfört med om denna bestod av enbart svenskar, och för det andra antogs denna skillnad därefter leda till en stereotyperad bedömning av de sökande och ett diskriminerande anställningsbeslut. Efter pilotstudier lades också hypotesen till att personer som är måna om att inte skatta sökande fördomsfullt ändå skulle tro att andra var benägna att göra det, vilket antogs påverka anställningsbeslutet. Ingen av hypoteserna fick stöd i resultaten.

This study aims to investigate the political reformation of the psychiatric care in Sweden, that took place 1995. The main purpose is to illuminate the transformation of subjectivity for mentally ill people after the reform 1995. The group of people which are present in the study are those who former were subjects of care in psychiatric hospitals, but with regarding to the reform have moved out from the institutions and instead become clients for community care. This new group of mentally ill people became, in connection with the reform, subjects for a new concept psykiskt funktionshinder. This new label and concept, that were attached to the present group, is the main concept for the investigation in the present study. The method, that was used in the study, develops a textual based analysis of the official documents, that were produced in connection with the political decision to reform the care of mentally ill people. With a theoretical conceptuality taken from Michel Foucault, with concepts such as discourse, power, and subjectivity, are the documents analysed in order to illuminate how the new subjectivity, under the concept of psykiskt funktionshinder arise.

This research paper aims to show how racism, power, social representations and identity are created and reproduced through the media. The research paper will analyse newspaper articles presented about Cronulla riot in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph using Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, CDA, as a theory and method. The research paper aims to demonstrate how inequality in the Australian society is reproduced by the media through the use stereotypes and certain social representations and how knowledge and awareness about this is relevant to social work of today..

The aim of this study was to analyze discursive patterns in publications and attitude researches on bullying published by The Swedish National Agency for Education. The focus was largely on whether there is a pattern in the narration of how teachers and pupils are portrayed as perpetrators in a situation where bullying occurs. The empirical material of the study was acquired by use of a qualitative method where publications published between the years of 2002 and 2014 were selected. Dictums concerning teachers and pupils as bullies have been compared and surveyed where differences in how they were depicted was the object of analysis. To enable such a study, Foucault's theories on discourse and power were applied on the empirical material in the analysis.The result shows that bullying in general almost always refers to the pupil as the perpetrator while teachers are under-represented in the same context.

Relationships between defence mechanisms and body movements were investigated in regard to three hypothesis; I. that a difference in frequency of body movements correlates to different signs of defence mechanisms, II. that themes of body movements can be identified in regard to signs of defence mechanisms, III. that no significant differences will be found between the different groups of gender. The aim of the study was to seek a relation between quasicommunicative body movements and defence mechanisms.

The aim of this study is to examine the significance of having a music department at the public library in Enköping, and how the organization of the phonograms is handled. The different areas examined are the reason of the reintroduction of a music department, its budget, its users, the work with selection, the marketing, statistical data concerning loans, the work with classification, indexing, and organization of the phonograms and the future of the music department. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with staff connected to the music department at the public library in Enköping. For the theoretical frame, Sanna Taljas discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland is used. Talja presents three discourses which all show different views on what kind of material a music library should contain.

The aim of this paper is to study whether the way directioners (One Direction fans) on Twitter express self-understandings denote fandom as a sacred experience. For this purpose, the data was analyzed in relation to Nicholas Jay Demerath III typology of the varieties of the sacred experience. The method used was discursive psychology. The data was analyzed by how the fans draw the line between ?us? and ?them?, when expressing their self-understandings and their position in relation to others. Five themes were identified: (1) positioning and demarcation for membership, (2) group identity, (3) conflict, (4) the norms for behavior, opinions and language and (5) the group?s role and function.

Purpose?This study has examined the information behaviour and perception of information in a group ofinformation users who have a critical approach to the media and the information supply. Some of them call themselvesor are being called conspiracy theorists. The purpose was to examine how their information behaviour is influenced by the belief that the information is biased or inaccurate and what the information behaviour looks like when the user searches for discrepancies rather than a response to a question.Method?The study is based on transcribed interviews and email responses to interview questions.

The democratic conditions in national states have change radically at the same time as the society has changed. Because of social and economic globalization processes, the states and government has lost power for the benefit of transnational and global institutions. That affects the democracy since the nation state earlier defined the domain of citizenship. At the same time, citizens? confidence towards political parties and politicians has gone down.

This case study examines how a group of upper secondary school students in a multiethnical suburb of Stockholm reason about the theory of evolution. The theoretical background of the thesis is postcolonial and the questions raised were how spread the creationist thoughts are in the group; in what way the backgrounds of the students are relevant to their thoughts; how the students construct the notion of the theory of evolution; how they position themselves and others in relation to the discourse of the theory of evolution; if there are any differences between students at the collage program of natural science and the collage program of social science, and in that case, what differences; and who or what inspires the young in their thoughts about the theory of evolution. To answer these questions both a survey poll and interviews were used. The result of the case study showed that a majority of the students at the investigated school has creationist ideas and that the students profiled on social science have creationist ideas in a wider extent. Another result is that the religious background seems to be relevant to develop creationist thoughts, while the variables gender, home district and educational level did not differ the creationist group from the whole group.

The aim of this thesis is to seek understanding of which images there are about the ?others? in the society. For this study, four women in the ages of 21-23 years old were interviewed during April 2005. The empirical material was analysed with Laclaus and Mouffes discourse analysis. One conclusion is that the images of the ?immigrant? and the ?immigrant women? are created opposite to the ?Swedes? and the ?Swedish women?.

The aim with this study was to analyze and understand how begging is constructed as a social problem in Sweden between September of 2010 and the end of February in 2014 in debate articles in Dagens Nyheter. To do this I have chosen to use a social problems theory and critical discourse analysis to highlight some aspects in the process of defining the social problem. The study's main finding is that the construction of beggars and begging appears to be in a relatively extensive redefinition in the current situation. It is shown by, for example, a shift in focus in the discourse. For this reason, it is relevant for social work to examine how the construction progresses..