The main purpose of this study is to analyse how the main themes of alienation and the search for identity is portrayed by Swedish author Inger Edelfeldt. I have applied the theories of Rita Felski concerning feminist novels of self-discovery, in which the development of the female identity is the main question. As Edelfeldt?s writing consists of literature for the young as well as adults, I have included material from both of these genres. I have also taken use of Ulla Lundqvists theories about Swedish juvenile books when examining aspects of the main character?s feelings of alienation and identity searching.The results of my analysis show that the reading of my material as feminist novels of self-discovery has revealed pervading charachteristics of alienation, love, friendship and psychological development.

Ulla Isaksson (1916 ? 2000) wrote many novels, often with a woman or several women as protagonists. In Dit du icke vill (?Where Thou Willst Not?) from 1956 she depicts a crisis of faith in a woman, which would not have been successful had she chosen a contemporary setting. She uses an adequate historical framework, the prosecution of witches in Sweden in the 17th century, well documented in reliable sources.

The purpose of this paper is to make a feminist textual analysis of three female protagonists incontemporary novels in order to demonstrate representations of ?skeva? female bodies, deviantfrom beauty-, slender and age norms. The analysis is based on an intersectional perspective whichdemonstrates the interaction between body, sex, gender, class, sexuality and age. The theoreticalmaterial used are class theories by Bourdieu and Skeggs, performative theories by Butler, theoriesof grotesque realism by Bachtin and the female grotesque by Russo and Lundberg. The charactersall belong to the genre of the female grotesque which manifests a feminist protest and a free zonewithin patriarchal power structures.

The aim with this essay is to compare strong girls in classic and modern literature and see how the differences in expectations on these girls are reflected in literature. This study is done with the aid of historical, feminist and new criticism..

The subject of this study is gender norms in the preschool and children who oppose those norms. The aim is to investigate how the discourses are linked with the way in which preschool teachers and teaching assistants talk about children?s gender identity. This study is founded in feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis, which was a basis for the interpretation of the results. My research questions are:? How do educators express themselves concerning gender norms?? What do educators need to work with a gender critical agenda?? How do the educators describe their work concerning gender, gender norms and children who oppose those norms?? For educators who have experience with children who do not identify with the gender they was given at birth, how do educators describe their own treatment of said children, and how would they describe the treatment from the other members of the teaching team?The study consists of qualitative interviews with five educators who were asked questions relevant to: norms, gender, gender criticism and how they work with those topics.I found both positive and negative aspects of gender work in preschool.

The purpose of this paper is to view Karlstad Municipality and their financial support to non-profit organizations within equestrian sports. Despite the varying representatives of various equestrian sports in Karlstad, there seems to be a single beneficiary within the sport when it comes to financial support from the municipality. The policies and plans concerning cultural development are directly compared to the Karlstad Municipality and its contribution to these organizations within equestrian sports. Through interviews and reports I have studied the process of financial support from the Karlstad municipality using an intersectionality theory based on Nina Lykkes guide on gender studies and Feminist theory. Pierre Bourdieu?s theories on field, habitus and capital are also used as a method to enhance the understanding of equestrian sports and its role in modern Swedish society. The conclusion is that the Karlstad Municipality is, for a several of reasons, promoting non-profit organizations within equestrian sports, which are operating as riding schools.

The aim of this study is to describe how reviews of literature in Bonniers litterära magasin and Expressen changed during the period 1964-2004. The investigation is based on 20 reviews of novels and short stories, which are analysed with a method described in Hellspong and Ledin (1997) and inspired by Halliday. The theoretical frame of the investigation is founded on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992 & 2001) and Habermas´social theory of the public sphere.The investigation shows, among other things, that the reviews became shorter and easier to read in both paper during the period. The investigation also shows that the genre´s style, composition and contents are relatively stable, and that current ideologies in society have a tendency to be reflected in the reviewers´evaluation of the books. To generalize, the reviews thus developed from a poetic genre in 1964, to become political in the 1970s, academic in the 1980s, feminist in the 1990s and finally an intermedial genre in 2004..

Following the wake of the AIDS-catastrophe in the beginning of the eighties, homosexual men or 'men who have sex with men' (MSM) have been barred from donating blood throughout the planet. In this thesis I look into the different discourses at play in the context of creating the legal framework for blood donation in Sweden. Genealogically tracing the emergence of the category of MSM and mapping how the category is brought to use in contemporary negotiations on blood safety, I scrutinize how scientific truth is established within blood transfusion practice. I argue that the rationality of risk group exclusion is contingent on economical grounds, and that the foucauldian concept of biopolitics could productively be used to understand this rationality. In particular, the concept of the 'biopolitics of blood' can be employed in order to understand the reluctance from the involved actors to acknowledge the heteronormative consequences of the legal framework of contemporary blood donation..

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers? professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

This thesis concerns the feminist consciousness-raising novel of the 1970s. The aim of the thesis is to examine narrative strategies which, according to the consciousness-raising practice, are adapted to enlighten the political aspects of the personal. The focus is both on strategies that address the protagonist and on those that address the reader. I also examine in which way the use of these strategies is dependent upon ideas of class and gender.I find that the narrative situation, in this case the relationship between the protagonist and the narrator, is central to the use of the consciousness-raising narrative strategies. In Anna-Lisa Bäckmans Fia i folkhemmet och Fia med manifestet, the protagonist Fia is positioned as an oppressed working-class woman, which results in a narrative situation that gives the protagonist a limited space of action and that gives the narrator the power to interpret the experiences of the protagonist.

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka?s ?The Metamorphosis? can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler?s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis?s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional.

This text concerns itself with war, the just war theory, and the application of that doctrine on the ?war on terrorism?. I present different views on the theory's place in the discourse, its relevance for unconventional wars followed by the analyses of above mentioned empirical situation.Particular interest is given the criteria concerning proportionality, both ad bellum and in bello, due to in part its difficult nature, and the attention it has received from others. This paper asks the question: Is the just war theory adequate for analysis of modern war?There are few alternatives.

This study attempts a literature based reconstruction of the impact of globalisation and modernisation on the gender identities in Vietnam. Recognising the explanatory albeit normative capacity of critical theory ? specifically the feminist and globalisation critical approach ? this thesis argues that in spite of the economic benefits of modernisation, it enhances existing unequal structures. By focusing on women in the labour sector, simultaneously Vietnam's comparative advantage and one of its economically marginalised groups, a contradictory movement can be discovered. Notwithstanding the economic development, a regression in terms of women's possibilities to self-empowerment seems to cancel the benefits for the individual.

SammanfattningSyftet med denna uppsats är att söka svar på vilka analytiska verktyg som krävs för att förstå villkoren för mänskligt handlande. Min tes är att den diskursteoretiska epistemologi som kommit att dominera samtida feministisk forskning - i uppsatsen representerad främst av Judith Butler - inte tillhandahåller dessa analytiska verktyg. För att pröva denna tes har jag intervjuat fem heterosexuella, feministiska män om deras erfarenheter av sex. Jag frågar mig: på vilket sätt bestäms intervjupersonernas sexuella interaktion med kvinnor av deras respektive positioner som heterosexuella män och som feminister? I min analys tillämpar jag ett dialektiskt angreppssätt och stöder mig framför allt på Margaret Archers teoribygge.Min slutsats blir att det, för att i detalj kunna blottlägga villkoren för männens handlande, är fundamentalt att göra den typ av distinktioner som diskursteorin emotsätter sig - mellan subjektivt och objektivt, diskurs och praktik, etcetera.