There is something magical about shoes?They can create an irresistible desire or be the one thing that we want to get rid of the most at the end of a long day. When people by shoes the chose more out of appearance rather then comfort. The result is a fact. The feet feel tired and soar after a couple of hours and the only thoughts are about the aching feet that firmly object to the way there being treated.

One of the main goals in this study is to investigate how young children's identity formation and social relationships are depicted by today's consumer society.  In order to reach the goals of the study I also concentrated myself on questions regarding the reflection of symbolic aspects consumption in younger children's interaction and preschool-teachers' ideas about how and in what ways children's consumption patterns are created and developed nowadays. In order to answer the presented research questions I used the theoretical arguments of researchers in the field of pedagogy Gert Biesta in connection with the ideas and concepts of the consumer society characteristics developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.The thesis' methodological approach consists of a combination of semi-structured interviews with teachers and observations of children's interaction, which contributed to a systematic investigation of the thesis' problem area and served as a tool for obtaining answers to the research questions.The results demonstrate that consumption occupies a lot of space in young children's lives, which means that it greatly affects their social relationships today. Both consumption and knowledge of the known brands prove to be the child's path to the desired community on the one hand, and the children's way to the consumer world on the other (hand), which in turn points to an obvious dependence between children's consumption and their social relationships.The results also show that there is a tension between the perception of identity formation as preschool-policy-document on the one hand and the attitude of the identity prescribed by consumer society norms and regulations on the other..

The purpose of this study is to examine if the experience of whale watching can lead to increased knowledge of environmental problems. We also want to find out whether increased knowledge in turn could lead to changing environmental attitudes and behaviors. The theoretical framework consists of theories about sustainable tourism, ecotourism and responsible environmental behavior. The paper also has a section where previous research on ecotourism impacts on behavior and attitudes is discussed and subsequently addressed in the analysis section.Data has been collected through a case study where seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who participated in whale watching. The results show that all respondents had greater knowledge of whales by their experiences, the degree of knowledge was due to respondents' prior knowledge.

This essay focuses on the elderly and their religious beliefs and is based on the origin idea of a secular Sweden, but where immigration has been the source of additional various religious affiliations. This study intends to nuance the problems that previous researchers focused on when doing research on immigration, by interviewing staff members of nursing homes in immigrant dense areas, especially Malmoe, Gothenburg and Stockholm.The aim is to investigate how the allocation of residents, with different religious than Protestant Christians, is distributed at nursing homes and to see if there is a need for adjustments. Additionally, the thesis about immigrants and immigrants' identity and attitudes to Swedish society is discussed with John Berry´s acculturation theories and strategies.The results show that the majority of the nursing homes have residents with different religious affiliations and that some practical adjustments have been done, but it also shows that nursing homes have changed to the extent that they have adapted to a secular society. Ignorance and prejudice contribute to the problem in terms of seeing all residents as individuals and at the same time ensuring adaption according to all their needs, which is exemplified in the solutions made by using multi-cultural staff members and specialized departments. The relationship between nursing homes and the Swedish church continues but the role of the church service has changed.

This paper examines whether the American officer?s education at West Point and the Swedish officer?s education at the Military Academy Karlberg have adapted their history of the military art education in accordance to the new requirements of the Armed Forces and its focus on the operational defense. Sweden is evolving towards an operational defense and so is the United States. This in turn requires that training and education keep up with the changes. The National Defense College in Sweden do not focus the teaching of advanced history, which happened beforet he invention of the engine, in the officer?s training program, while the American education is rather advanced, with special focus on events taken place in the 19th century up to the Cold War.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utröna vilka genusnormer som förekommer inom det skoldiskursiva fältet och huruvida skönlitteratur är en del i detta. Utgångspunken i min uppsats är att genuskodat språk inverkar på flickors och pojkars möjliga språkutveckling och identitetsskapande. De frågor som ställdes var: Uppfyller dessa texter de krav som läroplanen ställer på att ge flickor och pojkar stimulans i den språkliga utvecklingen oberoende av kön, vilka beskrivningar av genus återfinns i de skönlitterära böckerna samt har de i böckerna ingående karaktärerna olika handlingsmöjligheter och egenskaper ur ett genusperspektiv? Genom en diskursanalys av sex skönlitterära böcker läst av en år 4 har jag utkristalliserat de meningar som beskriver pojk- respektive flickprotagonister. En intervju med läraren gjordes för att ringa in hur dessa elever valt sin litteratur.

?SEPARATE WORLDS?. School librarians teaching in information seeking in high school.The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how information seeking is taught in high school and how school librarians describe their experiences of teaching information seeking. Five school librarians from five different high schools (gymnasium) in Skåne participated in the study. The empirical data derives from five interviews and fourteen observations conducted over a period of three weeks.

Abstract Title: Veckorevyn.com. A study from power relations in the world of blogs Author: Klara Sigfridsson Department for Media and Cultural Studies, Malmö Högskola Tutor: Kristoffer Gansing This is a report that aims to research upon Fairclough´s Critical discourse analysis to emphasise the power relationship between professional bloggers and former amateur bloggers at the fashion-entertainment web page Veckorevyn.com. Professional bloggers as they appear in the research object and their power within the Media seem to be a subject that is very relevant these days. This paper will look at different factors that make professional bloggers popular and as an example on their responsibility as a role model. However, amateur bloggers do have an importance in this discussion as they are more and more competing with the professionals.

We live in a world where the resources are not equally divided and that is why charity work is needed. The United Nations Children?s Fund, UNICEF, is a global organization that works for children?s human rights around the world. But perhaps even charity work, which´s often glorified in the society, need to be looked at from different directions. Research about intercultural education, globalization and charity shows that even good deeds can end up reproducing the problem that was supposed to be solved in the first place.

AbstractIII-essay in political science by Christoffer Harnell, autumn -08. Supervisor: Malin Stegman-McCallion. ?Nuclear Disarmament - USA and the Soviet Union 1960-2002? This essay is about USA and the former Soviet Union and their nuclear disarmament. The purpose is to explain why and when the two states begun their nuclear disarmament, as well as what caused the start of the process.

Globalization is described as processes of economic, social and political character and a tendency in the field has been to study these aspects of the phenomenon separately. Another common feature of previous studies is to relate to the field at a high abstraction level and talk about the effects and changes in general terms. Such studies of quantitative and statistical nature in which people are constituted as homogeneous groups hides the fact that the relationship between social attributes and context creates unique positions where the effects of globalization are diverse (Sprague, 2005, pp. 16 - 18). The purpose of this bachelor thesis is therefore to break with this entrance to the field and instead focus on a micro level perspective.By conducting a qualitative interview study guided by the globalization theory of the Globalife research team, which shows how structures at the macro level can be understood to affect the micro level, the aim is to reveal potential knowledge gaps within the field.

The Island of Öland has one of the best wind climates for land based wind power in Sweden. An objective for the Island is to become self sufficient using electricity from renewable source of energy such as wind. There is currently 55 MW capacity installed on the Island and it is estimated that grid congestion will occasionally occur if more than 135 MW was installed.The aim of this thesis is to investigate he possibilities for load management by smart charging of electric vehicles, EV. The definition of smart charging is that the charging is done to some extent with an ICT-system, (information and communication technology) that correlates wind electricity generation to the charging of electric vehicles. The purpose is to avoid grid congestions on the sub-sea cable that connects Öland to the mainland because that in turn would curtail wind energy production.

Title: Creating meetings - a study in interactionism and creating music. In this study I had my focus on teenagers in a school class. My aim was to explore how pupils experience the processes of creating music together and how they choose to organize their interactions during these creative processes. As analytical tools I used sociological and sociopedagogical concepts and theories. Interactionism provided models toward individualization as well as socialization, related to learning, knowledge and creativity.

The purpose of this study is to focus on library service for children in a hospital, which in turn is seen in relation to a traditional children s library. Four aspects of library work were investigated. These aspects were working methods, partners of co-operation for the libraries, media policy (acquisition, use of the collection and circulation procedures), as well as programme activities for children.The research method was qualitative and comparative in nature, consisting of case studies of two libraries : (1) the library in a children s hospital, known as Bokskogen at Astrid Lindgren s children s hospital in Stockholm and (2) a traditional children s library, the children s department at Eslövs city library. In each library interviews were conducted. The investigation shows that the librarians in the hospital library must be more outreaching and active in order to stimulate children to use library materials.

Many organizations utilize decision support systems in order to handle different tasks and tosupport the decision-making process. Decision support system is a broad term used to referto several different types of systems. These types of systems can handle a wide range ofoperations within the organization. Consequently this will have an impact on differentoperations within the organization. The main aim of this study was to create a betterunderstanding regarding the impact of decision support systems on the various operationswithin the City Council's procurement units which in turn will increase effectiveness.