The purpose of this essay is to see if villages or bigger settlement locations can be found in south-eastern Blekinge during the viking age. There have been many archaeological findings from this period in Blekinge, for example grave findings, ring-forts , old roads and ancient harbors. But no evidence of a village has been found yet. If south-eastern Blekinge is compared with the area surrounding Järrestad on Österlen in south-eastern Skåne and the area surrounding Sorte Muld on Bornholm, many likenesses can be seen. In this essay, the findings in Blekinge will be used as different components when the three areas are compared with each other.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the parties (USA, Great Britain, UN and the European Union) legitimize their intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina as seen from without the conceptions of sovereignty and intervention. USA and the UN have legitimized their intervention on security reasons. The American president, George W. Bush, claimed that democracies never engage in war with each other and that democracies were prosperous just because they were democracies. According to the president, that is why it is important to democratise the whole Balkan region to protect the international community from terrorism which grows in unstable and undemocratic states.

It is clear that media advertising is one of the crucial marketing tools for companies in order to promote their products and services. As we are moving towards more and more economic integration, both on a regional and global scale, the question about standardisation of media advertising has become increasingly important and is nowadays subject to discussion in most international companies. This thesis deals with the issue of standardisation in a region where the process of political, legal and especially economic integration is taking its course, but where cultural and linguistic diversity is still a remaining fact: Europe. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the potential gains from a standardised advertising approach but also to identify its limitations. Especially on a market place like Europe, with its diverse cultural and linguistic background, a fully standardised approach might be difficult to implement.

This thesis aims to describe and characterise the foreign policy change the United States has experienced towards Europe. This thesis claims that the United States is presenting a more supportive attitude today towards the development of the European Union. This more positive attitude has developed during successive U.S. administrations and has become visible since the end of the Cold War.Washington is today less ambiguous and less ambivalent towards the integration of Europe. The United States appreciate that a common foreign- and security policy in Europe is in accordance with American interests.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare how and why consumers of different ethnic backgrounds value and prioritize product attributes among food in certain ways. We expected to find culturally bound attitude differences and our aim was to relate those to, and challenge, present knowledge of information structures. Consequently, we also aimed to use this new knowledge of attribute attitudes in connection to assortment variety theory, as attributes constitute important motives to how consumers perceive variety. A theoretical framework was constructed to suit our purpose and function as an analytical tool, consisting of Culture perspectives, Information structures (product attributes), and Assortment variety. In this thesis we focused on attitudes and consumer perspectives and excluded actual behaviour and the retailing perspective.

This report is written in cooperation with the Swedish National Road Administration South-Eastern Region in Jönköping. The report is a result of the evaluation to give an answer to the question about how well the function contract has been carried out on the E4 in Östergötlands and Jönköpings län. The evaluation is divided in two hard parameters and one soft.The Swedish National Road Administration is interested in knowing how the standard on the road have been changed during the functions period, which is the reason why the first hard parameter is considering road standard. To evaluate the standard there have been a comparison of values from measures taken every year on the current road stretch. The second hard parameter considers economy.

In today?s Europe, migration has become a security issue rather than a humanitarian issue. Previous research highlights how migrants have become prisoners of bureaucracy in Europe by their mobility being hindered. The present study critically analyses the migration governance in Europe by highlighting labour market integration in Sweden. The study highlights migrants with a specific focus on foreign-born women. The research questions chosen to examine this phenomenon is: How does migration governance in Europe affect member states' policies for labour market integration, with a particular focus on Sweden? How do foreign-born women in Sweden experience labour market integration processes within the framework of the governance mechanisms that exist in Europe? Foucault?s theory of power and the theoretical concept of choking composes a theoretical framework which is used to analyse focus group data and text analysis data.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to study how Catalans´ identifications, with respect to their city (Barcelona), their region (Catalonia), their country (Spain) and Europe, are related to each other. Furthermore it deals with whether they use cultural or civic notations when they speak of their identification with the different territorial levels.The thesis is based on a qualitative method with interviews with ten Catalans living in Barcelona, aged from 18 to 58. The result showed that Catalans´ identifications with different territorial levels vary in how they relate to each other. This variation can be classified using three models, namely; ?The Russian doll model? which implies that the identities are ranked hierarchically, ?cross-cutting? that is people can identify themselves with the different levels depending on various situations, and also ?The marble cake model? which means that the different identities are so intertwined that they cannot be separated.

This thesis studies private equity firms' implementation of management control systems in their portfolio companies and whether the systems are affected by cross-national differences. A comparative case study examines five different private equity firms to derive if there are any differences between the private equity firms' management control systems in the United States, Europe and China. The empirical observations are categorized according to the framework developed by Merchant (1985) and further developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003). Theory on the effect of multinationality on management control systems, also developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003), are used to explain possible findings. The applied theory includes the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (1984) and Hofstede and Bond (1988).

One of the most distinguishing features of contemporary globalisation is production fragmentation, a splitting up of the manufacturing of a good into several different stages. Production fragmentation creates new opportunities through vertical specialization; a country incapable of mastering the entire production process may specialize in the manufacturing of one separate part. The aim of this thesis is to examine to what extent international integration affects a country?s ability to engage in vertical specialization in an industry characterized by production fragmentation. The analysis focuses on the european integration process over the last decade, where countries in Eastern europe with relatively low labour costs have been integrated with more capital abundant western economies.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how the European Union through the Directorate- General (DG) of Education and Culture, are calling forth a constructed sense of European identity amongst the citizens of the Union.It is a discourse analysis, which can be described in twofold. Firstly, it is a mapping of the European discourse; i.e. how the European Union defines the identity it seeks to mobilise. Secondly, it examines whether or not there are similarities in the European discourse of identity and the traditional nation-building discourse of national identity.According to this thesis a European identity is articulated in cultural terms, whereby its members are said to share the same values and a common cultural heritage.To bring the people of Europe closer together and to deepen awareness of their "common" history, the European Union encourages all manner of meetings and exchange schemes between Europeans. Although its goal is to develop a feeling of belonging to a shared culture, the EU is also keen to preserve the specific aspects of Europe's many cultures.

This is a tale about energy and power. It describes the geographer Halford Mackinder?s geopolitical theories and compares them with current views outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael T Klare, among others. With a critical approach it also provides a historical account of a Europe that stands in front of an energy struggle so severe that the current world order seems destined to fall. Oil and natural gas, has since the beginning of the 20th century, been used as a geopolitical tool in order to create dependence, control and even sometimes overthrow empires.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party was for a long time skeptical of Sweden?s opportunitiesto apply for membership in the European Community. Sweden?s longstanding policy ofneutrality was until the dramatic changes in Eastern europe 1989 seen as an obstacle tomembership. These changes were an important factor to why the social democratic partychanged their position on the EC and in October 1990 applied for membership.

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr) is just like Norway spruce (Picea abies) a species in thegenus picea. The natural range of Sitka spruce is a narrow strip along the west coast of North America. Itis the most coastal of all picea species, and very dependent on the mild and humid climate along thepacific coast.Sitka spruce has been grown a long time in the countries around the North Sea, particularly in GreatBritain where it currently is the most important species in British forestry. Sitka spruce has not beenplanted in Swedish forests to any large extent before the storm Gudrun in 2005. Several studies indicatethat the production of wood biomass is higher for Sitka spruce compared to Norway spruce.

Muslims and islam are unquestionably a part of European social life. In recent times, however, different events, such as the enlargement of the EU and the fact that muslims to a higher extent demand their rights, have brought a number of questions to the fore concerning muslims and islam in Europe. Moreover, we can see an increasing level of islamophobia in contemporary Europe, but also that the EU has launched several programs to increase both the diversity and the unity throughout the Union and to combat islamophobia. However, most of these programs focus on islam as religion and muslims in general, and such a narrow viewpoint runs the risk of missing important issues.In this new context it would be interesting to widen the scope and ask what place not only the muslim community and islam, but also sharia (an important element in islam), may have in future Europe ? especially when it comes to muslim identity?My main objects are to see how the concept of sharia is constructed in the debates in the European Parliament, how that discourse relates to a social practice ? the increasing islamophobic ideas in Europe ? and what effect this may have on muslim identity in a European context.The results shows that the Parliament constructs sharia as, for example, something archaic, threatening, inhuman and misogynistic.