The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women.Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas? argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns.

The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

With the increasing number of adoptees in Sweden, so has the amount of literature regarding different aspects of adoption. The aim of this study is to explore the construction of adoptees in children's literature. It takes on a social constructionism view, by regarding language as a narrative tool in which human beings construct versions of different phenomenon. By exploring the different discourses in the data within the context adoption, we can identify different versions of "the adopted child" and their needs as it is constructed in the literature. Also, by putting them in a bigger context, we are allowed to see the social structures and the discursive conditions that allow a certain child perspective of "the adopted child" to take place.

The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women.Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas? argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns.

This master?s thesis attends to a debate in the Swedish daily press concerning the public library which arose after the Swedish Moderate Party?s publication of their cultural political document Kulturen 2.0. This document contains a number of standpoints, of which three directly concern the public library: charges on book loans, libraries on contract and politically balanced purchase policy. In all, 28 articles are examined by means of an idea and ideological analysis. The purpose is to find out what is behind the conflicts surrounding attitudes about the public library's mission and activity in an era of needs for change.

The importance of student influence at the universities is something that is described in Swedish regulations as well as in local policies and documents for Karlstad University. At the same time there is no description for the interpretation of what student influence actually means. It is up to the university to decide what student influence should be at the university and how it should be represented in the organization and processes.The purpose with this essay is with a discursive perspective of analysis define how representatives of Karlstad University reflects how the student influence should be represented in the organization and if it is possible to connect it to the position as an actor of co-decision or of influenceThe analysis show that different levels of the university will describe the position of student influence differently, and that it plays different roles to keep up the quality of education at the university. It shows that it will be of more importance that student influence takes the role to influence the organization more than co-decide the nearer the student the process will come..

This is an essay in Swedish on the subject of democracy and demonstrations of collective violence. The study is based on a conflict between the youth-house movement in Copenhagen and the state of Denmark - the city of Copenhagen. The focus is over the period December 2006 until January 2008 with reflection on the political movement around the youth-house from the 80's and onwards. This political movement roots back to the late 60's and especially the squatting movement, the BZ, of Europe which had a strong period in Denmark both in the 60's and the 80's. There is also a strong connection to other political movements of anti-fascism, anti-globalisation, queer activism and equal rights.

Discussions about the democratic deficit of the European Union have gotten more intense and the criticism usually points towards a great gap between the citizens and the EU politics. In this study the political communication policy is being put under the scope to investigate to what extent the policy is designed to counter the democratic deficit, supported by the theory of deliberative democracy. The analysis examines three aspects of the deficit ? decentralization, participation and the distribution of information ? and makes research into the communicative measures that have been implemented. The importance for EU to make deliberation possible is stressed throughout the essay and in the conclusion I argue that improvements still need to be made.  .

Introduction: As the media landscape has changed so has fierce competition in the market, giving an effect of stronger commercialization of the media. Societal problems in our society are caused by increased commercialization and market orientation. Media has gone from trusted social institutions to focus on their own economic interests, where owners are expected revenue. The content of the media is characterized more and more by entertainment, because it attracts a larger audience. On one side media is expected to contribute to democracy in society and on the other they are expected to contribute profits to their owners, which creates a conflict in today?s media society.

Syftet med examensarbetet har varit att undersöka om klassråd och elevråd är fungerande demokratiska fora. Arbetet innehåller en enkätundersökning på tre skolor där vi vänt oss till elever i årskurs fem. Vi har även intervjuat klasslärarna i respektive klass. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att elever och lärare upplever klassråd och elevråd som bra demokratiska fora, men att den demokratiska processen upplevs som enklare i klassråd än i elevråd..

This paper has it?s starting point in the midst of the debate concerning behaviour in socialmedia. Prior research has primarily been concerned with the role and responsibility of theuser while technology has been viewed as morally neutral. The base of the study isdiscourse analysis and a discursive psychology perspective is used to compare texts onTwitter and Facebook that were published during the events of the Boston bombings.The aim is to examine how platform users construct reality, groups and identities andwhat consequences those constructions bring. An interpretation of why the discourse ofTwitter and Facebook differ is grounded in aspects of design, which have been identifiedas having an influence on behaviour.

This thesis examines how power is constructed through language use in the Swedish mining policy with the legislative change proposition to enabling uranium mining. The aim is to analyze differences in how the government and municipalities formulate and justify their positions. The study adopts a qualitative case study design and applies Fairlough?s critical discourse analysis. The empirical material consists of a governmental press release and public consultation responses from municipalities.

This essay is a case-study of a phenomenon called ?ostalgie? which could be described as GDR-nostalgia. ?Ostalgie? is a compound of the two German words ?ost? (east) and ?Nostalgie? (nostalgia.) It is, like a similar phenomenon referred to as ?communist nostalgia?, a type of nostalgia. However, if one were to define ?ostalgie? as ?communist nostalgia? important aspects of the phenomenon would be left out.

AbstractRelationships between white women and black men have become a topic of interest in various discussion forums. By examining different arguments within certain discourses, it becomes clear that discourses that have a distinct autocrat outline, i.e. a closed and declaring nature which excludes alternative discursive arguments, also define these relationships as different and deviant in comparison to relationships that does not encompass and include the constellation white women and black men. As a result of the use of autocrat discourses the white women and black men who enter into relationships are displaced and positioned as subaltern. A position which, on the one hand, allows for uninhibited criticism, but, on the other hand, and most importantly, it is a position from where they can be defined by others.

In this paper, I have proposed a way of interpreting the philosophical subject of the Discours de la méthode that has remained relatively unexplored by contemporary commentators. By investigating the subjectivity that is expressed through Descartes? use of architectural metaphors, I laid bare some of the difficulties inherent in its discursive structure, as well as suggesting that the cogito in fact repeats and inscribes itself into this structure. In this context, the metaphor of the road (or travel) takes a supplementary role in relation to the architectural metaphor, marking the very conditions of existence of the architectonic subject. The subject, in order that it may establish itself as ?pure? and ?independent? thought, is dependent on a certain ?forgetfullness?; that is, only by forgetting its constitutive dependence on the diversity and historicity that is signified by the metaphor of travel, can it establish itself as its own source.