This is a life story about a man, Victor, and his life. He was born into a family of travellers, this has been a very important part of his upbringing, socializing and how society has viewed him.The purpose of this essay is to discuss how a society's values, and the changes in these values, are manifested in a life story. A person?s identity is created in the situations one is in and in the relationships with ones social contacts. A person has not just one, but several different identities that coexist and are highlighted depending on the situations in which we find ourselves.

Museums are a part of the cultural sector that over the last couple of years had to compete with the steadily growing consumption of spectacles. New techniques to attract and amaze the visitors have evolved. Living History Museums has developed a method to simulate past times by building up an environment with reconstructions. History is a non-definite science, there will never be an exact answer to how it really was, for example during the Middle Ages.This essay deals with the difference between reconstructions and authentic artefacts and how they build up an illusion of the past. In what sense does it matter if the artefacts are genuine or not? How do these museums deal with anachronistic phenomena from today's modern world in the historic environment? Additionally I discuss whether or not these reconstructions - of environment, buildings and personal characters - have any influence on the historic narrative given by the museum.

This is a study of a group of Swedish travellers, and of the traveller community, a marginalized group named 'tattare', skojare, tavring, knävling, dinglare, resande (Gypsies, pikeys, tinkers, travellers), whose origins and history are unknown to most people.The purpose of the study is to find out what it is like to be a traveller and look at the culture of travellers, in older times and today. I have focused particularly on the women's situation within the culture, in the past and present.The study is based on interviews with 4 persons, from the traveller community, one man and three women. During the interviews other travellers joined and participated in the discussions and the reasoning.My conclusion is that the traveller community is a group, which has been subjected to severe abuse by authorities, but still managed to preserve their culture. The interviewed travelers share a culture, in which women play a prominent role as breadwinners, for the family cohesion and in raising the children. Functions that gives women the role of culture bearers, meaning that it?s through women the culture is carried onwards..

This paper deals whit the problems concerning social organisation in the county of Dalarna in middle Sweden during the Middle Ages 1050- 1528. This paper also deals whit the every day ife in Dalarna during the same period. In the paper archaeology, Ethnology, history and osteology is used in order to create a so accurate as possibly picture of every day life at the farm, the villa and the keep. Each environment is compared to each other in order to try to see the social structure of the county. The geographic frame for the paper is the part of Sweden above the border zone of Limes Norrlandicus, or lower Norrland.The results presented in the paper shows that Dalarna most probably had a flat social organisation in the meaning that the every day life and its artefacts was much the same in all the environments.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the children in the Maasai villages in Tanzania are learning the Maasai?s musictraditions and ngoma. What is the importance of the school compared with the family?Tanzania has an old tradition of ngoma of many different cultures. The Maasai?s are a nomadic people and have traditions of their own.To get answers for the purpose of this study, these questions have been formed:How do the children learn the Maasai?s musictraditions?When do the children learn the Maasai?s musictraditions and start to practise them?What role and significance do the school have when it comes to teaching the Maasai?s musictraditions?For this study I have interviewed three informants who have good knowledge about the Maasai?s and their traditions.

This essay explores how artwork in the public space can be analysed, conceptualized and described by bringing attention to site. Through an analysis of artworks in the yearly art exhibition of Fittja Open 2011, the essay draws attention to site-specific art and structures of power. The principal aim is to present not only the exhibition of Fittja Open 2011 but also other artwork in the public sphere in Fittja, a suburb to Stockholm. From this point of departure other interests evolve that concerns the "image" of Fittja. The analysis, based on research in art history, architecture, Ethnology and philosophy as well as qualitative interviews, also focuses on understanding the role of site and the relations between art practice, institutions and site.The result shows that there are problems with a ruptured interface between the artwork and site.

The aim of this study is to point out variations of practices in the relationship between professionals of service occupations and their clients. The material consists of four openly conducted thematic interviews with male professionals who work in the environment of their clients' homes.The main theoretical approach of this analysisis undertaken with ethnicity in mind.The practices identified aim to throw light on the boundaries between the differing cultures of professionals and their clients.The analytical termsboundary reduction and boundary maintenanceare used in this research.The two-stage analysis points out different practicesused, in chronological order, during contact between professionals and their clients. This is followed by a statement of the themes which connect, primarily fromthe professional perspective. The results indicate an intimate connection between intercultural and transcultural aspects through the use of cultural transparancy, which is a strategy connecting different roles, aswell as use of loophole tacticsthat afford the possibility of definingspace, place and relationship.It's illustrated how the professionals operate from "within the structures and worldview" of the client, and this analysis also reveals a glimpse of the potential for cultural changein the meeting between different cultures..

Den här uppsatsen har sin utgångspunkt i staden Lund vid tiden för Sveriges nationella omröstning om totalt rusdrycksförbud 1922. Syftet är att belysa den lokala alkoholsyn och de lokala alkoholkulturer som möjliggjort stadens specifika valresultat; ett valresultat som visade det näst lägsta förbudsintresset i hela landet.Uppsatsen försöker beskriva hur stadens olika aktörer och samhällsskikt - såsom arbetare, akademiker, borgerlighet och nykterhetsrörelse - förhållit sig till alkohol och till förbudet. Med hjälp av bl.a. arkivmaterial och tidningsartiklar ges små glimtar in i lundabornas alkoholrelaterade umgängesliv, och hur detta satte sina spår i valpropagandan.Uppsatsen visar hur alkohol använts för att organisera tillvaron, och inte minst dess avgörande betydelse som källa till gemenskap och samvaro. En problematik som blir aktuell i arbetet är svårigheten att dra slutsatser utifrån källor som inte ger tillfredsställande information..

Studien syftar till att identifiera de kulturella skillnader, hinder och motsättningar som kan uppstå i ett äktenskap mellan en muslimsk man och svensk kvinna. Männen utgör studiens kärna eftersom de härstammat från ett annat land och har en muslimsk bakgrund. För övrigt avser studien även att belysa på vilket sätt man lyckas bemästra dessa motsättningar.En kvalitativ metod har använts där fyra muslimska män från Mellanöstern har intervjuats. Dessa analyser har genomförts för att belysa problematiken kring blandäktenskapen, men även för att erhålla en djupare förståelse för de etniska skillnaderna mellan partnerna. Resultat visar på att ett blandäktenskap inte bara omfattas av kulturella skillnader mellan partnerna utan även leder till ett enormt motstånd från omgivningen och samhället.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the image of the stereotype librarian has created conflict in young librarians´ personal identity and/or professional identity and if this has shown in their choice of clothes? Our purpose was to find out, with the help of their choice of clothes, the young librarians view of themselves as individuals and professional librarians. We have searched for the answers to the following questions: - Do young librarians experience that clothing at their workplace has any significance and if so, what do they want to signal with their clothing? - Do they experience that clothing and appearance has any impact on their personal and professional identity? - How do they relate, by their choice of clothes, to the stereotype images of the librarian? We have performed qualitative interviews with eleven young female librarians. As a theoretical framework we have used ideas and concepts from different areas of research; semiotics, social psychology, business administration and Ethnology.

This study deals with some contested issues regarding prehistoric cultural development in Amazonia and the colonial impact on the native inhabitants of the area. It focuses on the relation between groups belonging the language families of Tupí and Gê, on one hand, and the different ecological zones that they inhabit, on the other. GIS mapping is used to visualise the distribution and movements of these groups in relation to ecology and the impact of European colonization. GIS is shown to be a useful methodology for analysing historical data derived from written sources and maps. The results of these analyses are discussed in the light of different theoretical perspectives.

The purpose of the study has been to recognise good development and the factors behind this development. We have chosen an aid-project co-financed first by the Swedish government and later by the government of Great Britain for our study. One of the conditions for good development, according to our chosen theory Another development, is peoples participation. To study good development and peoples participation we conducted a Minor Field Study (MFS) in Rajasthan in the north-west of India in June-August 2001. We had a hermeneutic approach and consequently accomplished interviews and participant observations in the Lok Jumbish project in Rajasthan.

Travellers på Irland är ett resandefolk som håller fast vid sin kultur och grupp trots en politik som arbetat emot dem. De har länge, men inte alltid, betraktats som en grupp med egen identitet men inte som en särskild etnisk grupp. FN rekommenderar Irland att ge dem erkännande som etnisk minoritet. Varför irländska regeringen ännu inte gjort det har en historisk förklaring och olika politik har styrt behandling av Travellers under de senaste 50 åren som uppsatsen behandlar. Attityden till hur de ska bemötas har gått från assimilering till integrering, från att ha sett dem som en problemgrupp till att uppmärksamma dem som en diskriminerad grupp.

Title: This is not Africa - West African teaching methods in Sweden. This is a work of "translation". The study started with a musical journey to Guinea, West Africa. It was a field study where I had the opportunity to open my senses towards another culture and another kind of music. I found another learning tradition and decided to try to bring it with me back to Sweden, into the Swedish school system.

To many of us blogging is a natural part of our everyday life. Bloggers dedicate hours to writing in blogs, reading blogs, commenting on posts or answering comments on published posts. But what we choose to blog about can differ; this is an important note due to my discovery that what we choose to write about determines what benefits blogging holds to the blogger.This paper discusses the conventions of blogging as well as tries to answer the question of why blogging is so popular: why do we start blogging and why do so many choose to continue? These questions get answered by me analyzing the phenomenon that is blogging.I have studied both blogging as genre and as a kind of performance, as well as I have tried to hold an open dialogue with my informants. Thus I have concluded that blogging is to be considered a tool with many uses.