The means to political participation at the local level in Sweden are changing and this change is analyzed through a case study. The first aim is to explore the forms of public political participation in Swedish municipal Älvkarleby, namely public question time in local government, citizen motions and open meetings. A part of this is also to analyze he every day contact between citizens and representatives. The second aim concerns the reasons why politicians decide to support these means to participationThe empirical material consists mainly of semi structured interviews with local politicians, civil servants, participating citizens and local press. Official documents such as public minutes are also used in the process of creating an image of local participation.Local political participation is found to be limited but yet having the potential to strengthen democracy, provided that public decision-makers are open to a dialogue with the participants.Using Kjell Arne Røvik's theories of organisational change, the changes in local democracy can be explained as being partly rational, partly symbolic and partly identity shaping political decisions..

The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention stipulerade att länder med McDonald's inte bekrigar varandra. Uppsatsen undersöker varför denna hypotes falsifierades efter att ha varit giltig i 32 år. Med i första hand kvantitativa metoder identifieras ett antal utslagsgivande faktorer för att ett land ska få McDonald?s. Det konstateras att demokrati förr var en mycket viktig faktor men idag helt upphört att var det, medan närheten till USA idag är viktigare än någonsin förr.

This is a diploma thesis executed as a part of the examination of the educationalprogram Building engineer ? Construction management at Halmstad University. The aim of the thesis is to compare and evaluate conventional open-cut pipe-laying withhorizontal directional drilling. The thesis includes a comparison of the economic,environmental and time-based aspects of both methods and discusses which factorsthat determine the optimal choice of method.The study is mainly based on previous studies regarding the subject and oninterviews with professionals from the industry.A fictional project with five realistic cases of pipe-laying scenarios was compiled,sent to different companies for calculation, evaluated and compared. Our conclusionregarding when it?s suitable to use which method is entirely dependent on thespecific project.

The Swedish government has set up 16 environmental goals for Sweden to achieve. One ofthem is ?Living forests?, which is the foundation for the ?National strategy for the formalprotection of forests?. The ?National strategy? puts the private forest owner at the centre ofattention in order to achieve the environmental goal ?Living forests?.

The world has changed its understanding of environmental issues dramatically and more people are showing awareness of social and environmental problems. Various stakeholders have increasingly begun to show an interest in how companies are taking responsibility for their actions. This has led to an improved activity amongst organizations to make their production consequences positive. They work with Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR). In order to communicate their responsibilities, many companies work with CSR and ethical guidelines.

These days most companies conduct some form of work for the external environment, quality and safety. In connection with this work, some companies have chosen to get management systems certified by any applicable standard for one or more of the fields while other companies have chosen other ways that are not associated with certification.In light of the fact that the individual systems are becoming unmanageable an increasing number of these companies are faced with the decision whether to integrate and coordinate these different systems or not. In order to study the possibilities of a company?s system coordination an assessment of elements particularly interesting for the company was performed. The key elements and focuses in the evaluation were staff access to information, experiences from other companies and environmental work status for some of the organization's companies.

Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

The purpose of this essay was to, by the ecology of human development theory, examine 10-year old childrens own experience of their lifesituation outside the time of school. The study was based on qualitative interviews with six 10-year old children from a smaller community in Sweden. The main guestions was:1. What is the experience of being 10 year?2.

Because of the increasing numbers of international tourist arrivals each year it is essential that tourist operators are aware of the impacts that tourism generate. Tourism affects the world in an environmental, social and economic way, positive but also in a negative way. To travel responsible and sustainable is therefore important, and operators have a responsibility in this subject.Because of this I wanted to look at how Swedish tourist operators manage responsible tourism, together with what amount of information their customers receive about this. To be able to study how operators work with this I conducted three interviews via email. The tourist operators were of different sizes and specializations to receive a more extensive result.

The aim of this thesis was to answer a number of questions about the environmental consequences of aircraft de-icing. A further aim was to suggest how the environmental consequences due to the release of de-icing fluids can be measured and reduced.The main impact of the aircraft de-icing on the environment is due to the large oxygen demand for the degradation of glycol based de-icing fluids which are released in the environment. The effect of the increase in oxygen demand depends on where the degradation occurs in the ecosystem. In a sensitive ecosystem, the large demand of oxygen could provide an anaerobic environment which would be harmful for many types of organisms.In order to reduce the negative effects of the applied de-icing fluid, there is some type of collection system at every regular airport in Sweden. The methods of collection can be divided into two general groups, hydrological isolation or vacuum sweeper trucks.

This Master's thesis concerns the public library as a public meeting place. Our aim has been to find out why and how the library as a social meeting place has been discussed within the Swedish library community and if there has been a constant core in the discussions from the mid 70's and up to the present day. In order to do this we apply a place and space-perspective. The result of the study is that the core of the said discussions concerning the library as a meeting place is to create belongingness. This is the reason why the library community has an interest in the public library's function as a meeting place with the idea that people, by using the public library in that aspect, may experience a feeling of belonging to the society.

The idea for the project emerged when Nilorn wanted to get better control over their supplychain and improve operational efficiency. The company also want to reduce their expenses inthe continuous process of improving profitability. By choosing the right option oftransportation and mode of transport there are large potential savings for the company. Thisenables Nilorn to reduce the transportation costs and strengthen the environmentalresponsibilities by reducing their environmental impact.The flow of goods within Nilorn has over the past years increased significantly and most ofthe gods today is transported by air. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the supply chain of thecompany and evaluate the potential economic savings in this area.

This degree project focuses on the importance of being professional doing a job at the same time as being able to express one self in a professional way. The degree project also focuses on how the work as an environmental- and health inspector could be made easier by making the inspectors aware of their language and open to change. Finally the focus of this degree project lies on how positive contacts can be made with people despite them being informed of difficult or unwanted things.In order to get an overview of the inspectors? communication skills today the environmental- and health inspectors at the environment office in Laholm´s municipality were evaluated. The inspectors´ communications styles and languages were checked on the basis of the ?nonviolent communication model? by Marshall Rosenberg.The content and the result of this report were presented for the head of the environment office, the chairman of the committee and the participating inspectors in Laholm´s municipality.

Denna examensrapport har kommit till som resultat av en varumärkesanalys av bioteknikföretaget Novozymes nya varumärke "Rethink Tomorrow". Syftet med studien har varit att komma fram till hur jag ska presentera varumärket samt den nya produktionen på dotterbolaget Novozymes Biopharma Sweden AB i en stillbildsfilm. Utöver varumärkesanalysen har jag även gjort en kvalitativ enkätstudie där dels tidigare kunder och dels potentiella nya kunder var målgrupperna. Enkätstudien visade på vad som är viktigt att poängtera i filmen när det gäller information om själva företaget och produktionen..

Vi gör i vår uppsats en samläsning mellan kritisk diskursanalys och diskursteori för att undersöka hur medvetenheten om diskriminering och stigmatisering av riskgrupper artikuleras i den svenska hiv/aids diskursen. Genom att utgå från ett kritiskt socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv, frågar vi oss hur denna medvetenhet konstitueras av intersektionen mellan ?ras? /etnicitet, kön, klass och sexualitet. Vi är intresserade av att söka förändring i diskursen och avgränsar oss därför genom att närläsa två offentliga dokument, AIDS-delegationens informationsbroschyr från 1986 och en SOU-rapport från 2004. Vi kommer i vår studie fram till att medvetenhet artikuleras genom ett konstruerande av riskgrupper, där genus och sexualitet inledningsvis står i fokus, men som senare lämnar en allt större betydelse för kategorin ?ras? /etnicitet i diskursen.