The theory of ?security communities? is generally understood as ?dependable expectations of peaceful change? between groups and whether or not the African Union can be said to meet that criteria has been contested in the research community. One of the central disagreements lie in the nature of the region?s conflicts, of which a majority are intrastate but with tendencies of transnational involvement. This paper seeks to understand how extensive this involvement is and how it affects the possibility of classifying the African Union as a security community.

This study aims to examine play as a phenomena from a phenomenological approach. This I do by discussing a dominant approach to play, an perspective which is reproduced in the context of pre-school and in where the play and learning is in single focus. Using alternative perspective on play, mainly by Gadamer and Bakthtins philosophical thoughts about the feast or the carnival, contents differ significantly from educational or developmental psychology perspectives. I open up for an understanding of what play as ontology can be understood as, and thereby enable second readings. I illustrate this thought by an empirical example from a pre-school context which where created alongside with the children in the study.

Systems development methods mirror different organizational perspectives, and not all methods are formalised, but what they have in common is the purpose of structuring and supporting systems development processes. Which method would be the most suitable may be determined by the systems development context at hand, because every systems development context is unique. Information is a valuable asset in today?s organizations, and it needs to be protected against both internal and external security threats. In our essay we aspired to find and present suggestions as to how systems developers can include security in the very design based on formalised systems development methods to create systems that are better prepared to meet the security challenges of today.

This thesis explores the validity of feminist poststructuralist theory in relation to gender and culture. Within the theoretical frame¬work of Judith Butler, combined with insights from the field of post-colonial theory, different perspectives of the dilemma of universalism are discussed. Primary sources for the study are policy documents from the Swedish government, literary texts and newspaper articles. The results show a number of paradoxes which need to be continually and critically kept unsolved. This does not mean an end to feminist engagement in other contexts than one's own but rather the need for theoretical awareness and self reflection.

This essay is a discourse and a feminist theoretical analysis that focuses on the alternative discourse that we consider Feminist Initiative to be constitutive of. Our theoretical stance, with base in Laclau and Mouffes discourse theory, builds on the notion that reality is characterised by conflicts between different competing discursive formations and that the social is an endless struggle over the preferential right of interpretation of meaning. More specifically, the essay focuses on the discursive struggle over the meaning of the term politics. It is our understanding that the dominant perception of politics necessarily excludes other understandings, which can according to Eduards, be explained as a consequence of a patriarchal distribution of power that renders the subordination of certain understandings of politics accordingly. Feminist Initiative, as an alternative discourse, can therefore be perceived as a threat to the dominating discourse of politics, which in order to maintain its preferential right of interpretation seek to illegitimatise and depoliticise the politics that the alternative discourse represents.

Big dangerous Russia, environmental thief or house warmer? The Nord Stream pipelines are a highly debated theme in Europe and the EU. A number of different countries will be subject to the pipelines direct or indirect. This paper aims to figure out what kind of threats and possibilities Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Germany consider to be the consequences with the pipelines.The study takes as a standpoint the area of security studies and the widened of the same. The three standpoints within the security study that will be used are military security, environmental security and energy security.

After the last election Sweden has got a government that claims to be feminist. This thesis discusses whether the change of labels has also brought along policy formulated in a feminist way, arguing that the way policy is expressed affects how people see a certain problem. Three policy proposals are analysed, and in only one case the government seems to have been influenced by feminist ideas. The other proposals partly support claims made by new institutionalism that norms and routines in an organisation work to resist policy change, but also shows that feminist ideas are resisted more actively. The fact that so called policy entrepreneurs was present in the policy process at a certain period in time, probably counts for one explanation to the exceptional policy.

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

The concept of security is a contested one. The United Nations definition in UNDPs Development report of 1994 is the most authoritive and commonly cited. The civil war in Sudan has led to 2 million deaths and over 5.5 million refugees. In a resolution from 2005, the UN decided that the war in Sudan was a threat to international security and peace. The 10th of January UN decided that a peace commission ought to be send with 10 000 military and civil men including 700 policemen.The main purpose of this thesis is to improve our knowledge of those factors which can cause an increased risk of conflict within a state, and how that can affect the social conditions for individuals.

This study is based on the notion of "the postsecular society". I have identified both similar and dissimilar values within current and official publications regarding human rights and gender equality authored by the Swedish Feminist Party and the Church of Sweden. The aim of this study is to identify and review similarities and differences in values, as expressed in definitions and standpoints, and also to try to explain how it is that the actors have similar and dissimilar values. In this context I have chosen the sociologist Jürgen Habermas's theory about "the postsecular society" to increase the understanding how and why similar values within religious and secular actors are presented in, what Habermas calls, "the postsecular society". I have used a qualitative and comparative content analysis for this study. The result shows that the Swedish Feminist Party has a more humanistic view.

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur ordet feminist är laddat och hur ordet används. Redan nu föreslår några att ordet bör bytas ut, i korpusarna från Språkbanken använde några skribenter humanist eller jämställdist istället för ordet feminist. För att se hur ordet har ändrats över tid har jag använt mig av tre olika korpusar från Språkbankens textkorpus Korp. De tre korpusarna som har varit materialet är: Bloggmix 2004, Bloggmix 2009 samt Bloggmix 2014.Jag gjorde en innehållsanalys där jag konstruerade ett analysinstrument som användes på samtliga material. Sammanfattningen är att ordet feminist är väldigt laddat, både i positiv samt i negativ bemärkelse.

During 2009-2010 Sweden participated in an international military operation whose intention, according to the Swedish news media, was to fight Somali pirates. The purpose of this thesis is to study various decisions and documents behind the Swedish efforts, both military and foreign aid, regarding the matter of Somali pirates during the years 2009-2010 and analyze the results using an interpretation of the security-development-nexus-theory. The method used is text analysis based on the hermeneutic idea of understanding and interpretation.The thesis studies the international resolutions and national decisions that lead to the military operations in the Gulf of Aden and also the international strategies and national approaches regarding Sweden's assistance in the development of Somalia. The theoretical section contains an interpretation of the vast security-development-nexus-theory. The concepts of security and development are first presented separately and then collectively in terms of military security, societal security, economic security, regime security and human security.

This study aims to explain the Stuxnet-attack against Iran in 2009-2010 by using the IR-theory of structural realism. By doing so the theory also faces the challenge of the impact of the information revolution on security and international relations. The structural realism that is at hand is that of Kenneth Waltz and his Theory of International Politics from 1979.The study reaches the conclusion that Waltzs focus on the structure of the international system and the distribution of capabilities applies well to the case of Stuxnet as a cyber attack. The creators of the sophisticated Stuxnet, USA and Israel, also indicates that when it comes to this certain aspect of the information revolution and IR, states seem to still be the main actor. Finally the character of one of the major features of the Stuxnet-attack; the internet, is shown to have an anarchic structure that fits well as an extension of the realist view of the international system..

This thesis suggests an explanation for how it is possible for individuals living in an unsafe neighborhood to expressa highlevel of security. Araby is the district in Växjö municipality withthe highest level of insecurity. Within the district, there is acategory of individuals in security-measurements showing a high degree of security. Inhabitants living in house in Araby also seem to show a higher level of security than inhabitants in the same accommodation in other neighborhoods in the municipality.The study's purpose is to understand how individuals belonging to an unsafe neighborhood can experience a high degree of security.Qualitative data were collected from an observation in Araby and from interviews with individuals living in house in the district.Previous research has shown that security in the surrounding area depends on several factors, such as disorders, the degree of social control and personal opinions. Thestudy shows how a distinction to places and people in the district can explain the degree of security.

Japan's foreign and security policy has seen some substantial changes as a result of events like the first Gulf war and 9/11th. This has been taken as proof, by some, that Japan is abandoning its antimilitaristic stance and pursuing a more traditional hard power role through military means. This essay aims to explore if these shifts have coincided with any substantial shifts away from antimilitarism, which has had a strong influence on the country's security policy since the end of WW2.To do this I use constructivist theory, specifically regarding the impact of norms and identities on states security policy and briefly look into the problem of actor designation. The thematic focus is on security policy, from a narrow perspective, and thus I examine areas like the input and output to the Japanese military and the actual applications of this force. State identity is used to explore the prevalence of nationalistic sentiments and support for anti militarism in the public opinion and the political elite.The result of this study points to the further relevance of constructivist theory and especially the application of norms and identity.