The main purpose of this study is to show how narrative can be understood as cultural practice, how it can be said to function both internally and externally, and to ask questions about how the narrating subject, through the organizing of narrative, positions it self and mediates between the different discoursive contexts of which it is a part. This is done by an analisys of how six swedish soldiers tells the tale of how they came to choose a military carrer and why they have served or want to serve in peace-keeping missions abroad. The source material is primarily collected through unstructured interviews with theese soldiers, but also through textual analysis of a soldier blog. Theoretically the study draws on a combination of the discourse theory of Michel Foucault, narrative theory, Richard Jenkins theory of the internal-external dialectic of identifikation and intersectionality to construct a framework that allows the narratives to be deconstructed and understood as discoursive products of both the military contexts as such and the larger cultrual context that surrounds it. The conclusions of this study suggests that the organizing of soldier narratives are a complex and multifaceted process, in which the soliders must balance between the ideals, values and norms of the military context while also taking into account how society at large views and interprets the practices and forms of military life.

The overall aim of this thesis is to examine how Easy-to-Read information, used by governmental agencies, facilitates and limits the field of possibilities for the intended recipient, based on the information.This, in anera of e-government.The theoretical framework is based on two Foucauldian concepts governmentality and discourse analysis. Representatives from five Swedish governmental agencies have been interviewed and the results have been analyzed based on the following questions: (1) How do the representatives construct the category Easy-to-Read? (2) How do these representatives construct the recipients of Easy-to-Read? In order to broaden the understanding of Easy-to-Read, an important national level policy document, containing a summary of strategies and goals for e-government has also been analyzed based on the following questions: (3) How is the e-government constructed in the text? (4) How is the citizen constructed and positioned in the text? The collected material is analyzed using a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault.With the results from the interviews and the analyzis of the policy document, Easy-to-Read information has been discussed and examined as a technology to meet the needs of people with reading difficulties, putin an era of e-government.The findings of the study include the following: (1) The e-government is constructed as a service agency and the citizens are positioned as clients. Furthermore, the citizens are expected to participate digitally and be digitally competent. (2)Some of the representatives does not know, with certainty, to whom the texts are directed or if they are used.

What compelled me to write this essay was the ongoing debate about DAMP/ADHD between mainly Eva Kärfve and Christopher Gillberg. The purpose of the essay was to ascertain whether there was a similar debate about Asperger Syndrome. My focus was on the causes of the syndrome, how Asperger Syndrome relates to high-functioning autism, how the causes of the syndrome are portrayed by the practitioners to those who have been diagnosed with it and their next of kin, how they view the prognosis of individuals with Asperger Syndrome and their thoughts about the method of diagnosis. To gather the material I have used semi-structured interview guides and qualitative interviews. Five interviews were carried out with six practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to examine a preschool's work to counteract traditional gender roles, which strategies are used and how norms about gender roles are produced and treated. The study also examines whether the preschool has an intersectional perspective in it's gender work, which analyzes how they relate to other categories such as ethnicity, race, class, age and sexuality in their work. I have been observing and conducting four interviews with teachers at a preschool with a gender profile. In my analysis I have used Foucault's theories about discourse and power. The results show that the informants had a high awareness of gender and that the main strategies used were: an individual perspective, seeing the individual and not the sex, and a gender-neutral strategy, removing everything that is gendered, for example, in language and environment.

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.

This thesis is a discourse analysis of six rape trials, with the intention to analyze how the plaintiffs?? resistance is described. The overall aim is to investigate whether there are forms of resistance that the courts find more desirable and if there are any rules for how resistance should manifest itself. I will also investigate how the rape is itself described by the plaintiff and courts, respectively. I will analyze how this affects the understanding and attitude toward what has happened.

Tvångsomhändertagandet av problematiska ungdomar ses idag ofta som ett psykiskt krävande arbete. Droger, kriminalitet och våld är centrala delar i ungdomarnas liv. Flertalet av de tidigare forskningarna som gjorts på området fokuserar mer på personalens och/eller de intagnas mående och inte på upplevelsen av deras tillvaro. Denna studie fokuserar på att undersöka upplevelsen av att arbete på ett Statens institutionsstyrelse-boende (SiS-boende) och kring dessa ungdomar samt om det finns andra omständigheter utöver ungdomarna som påverkar personalen och deras upplevelse av sitt arbete. Undersökningen är ämnad att vända sig till alla som arbetar för och med ungdomar inom institutionsvård.

The purpose is to illustrate the phenomenon of self-harm from a social psychological and sociological perspective. The purpose is furthermore to examine the role social relationships play in the individuals´ self- imagine and what role does identification play for anyone who harm themselves? We want to examine in what way social relationships are important and how they function for individuals who harm themselves, both once they have started to harm themselves, and if the relationships in any part caused the cutting to begin with.Questions:How do individuals shape their identity based on self- harm? Which self-image do individuals have who self-harm? Is there anything in the person's previous social relationships that have caused them to begin to hurt themselves?Method:In this paper we have analyzed five autobiographies. We have used open coding from grounded theory as analytical method and subject positions based on discourse analysis.Theory:We have used the Cooley concepts looking glass self, Foucault's theory of power, Giddens' concept of ontological security and existential anxiety.Results and Analysis:We found six different categories that we thought were central. These were negative self-image, guilt, lack of family support, negative experiences of others' views, the protective identity as self- harmer and insecure social relationships in school.Conclusion:The self-harming is a very complex behavior.

Equality between the sexes has been discussed in Sweden for more than 50 years. In the 60´s and during the 70´s the discourse that dominated the debate was based on the assumption that both men and women needed to liberate themselves from their traditional gender roles. In this approach information and education was perceived as the key to equality. During the 80´s however, power and subordination became the main focal point of concern within this debate, and focus upon changing the patriarchal power structures dominating society were perceived as the principal key for establishing equality between the sexes. Today, the latter discourse still dominates both the scientific and the political perspective upon equality.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how special education is done in relation to what is considered "normal". The aim is to discuss how the normalization discourse appears in a pre-school for all and, by extension, how the need of special education is articulated in relation to the normalization discourse. This study also intends to discuss how the perception of what is normal affects special education in pre-schools. The study draws upon previous research within the special education area through which we make our position. Since there is only a few studies in this chosen field which are based on empirical data, our study indicates the importance of more research in this field.

Ämnet idrott och hälsa brottas med en genusproblematik som drabbar både flickor och pojkar. Det finns tydliga skillnader i hur flickor och pojkar bemöts och förväntas vara i idrott och hälsa undervisningen. En problematik som syns hela vägen till lärarutbild-ningen. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka de diskurser som ligger till grund för lä-rarutbildarnas inställningar till- och förståelse av begreppet genus. Samt till att undersö-ka hur dessa diskurser gestaltar sig i den pedagogiska verksamheten och i mötet med studenterna.

Detta är en kvalitativ studie med ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv som berör begreppen makt, interaktion och kommunikation. Vi har valt att använda oss av en abduktiv ansats då vi utgått ifrån både teori och empiri för att få fram vårt resultat. Vårt syfte med uppsatsen var att förstå hur anställda i kundorienterade yrken påverkas av makt från ledning och kunder samtidigt som interaktionen är en stor del i arbetet som de anställda inte kan bortse ifrån. I studien har vi genomfört 10 semistrukturerade intervjuer med människor från olika kundorienterade yrken. För att analysera vår empiri har vi använt oss av Foucaults teori om makt, Karasek och Theorells kravmodell samt Goffmans teori om rollbyten och interaktion.

This study is based on the will to understand the importance of a specific theory within social work. From the concept of neo-liberal governmentality, the aim is to critically examine and discuss how governance and self-governance is manifested in social work methods and interventions, exemplified by the theory cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). This will be accomplished through an analysis of:? How governance (and self-governance) is manifested in text through the advocacy of CBT and methods based on CBT.? How (governance and) self-governance is manifested in text through the contents of CBT and methods based on CBT. The study has a deductive approach including the hypothesis that the discourses inherent in social work methods and interventions, exemplified by the theory of CBT and methods based on CBT, may be related to the West?s development of a neo-liberal concept of governance.

The purpose of the thesis Masculinities ? Gender and its Impact on the Social conditions of individuals is to perform a critical study of how gendered norms influence the social conditions of individuals. This has been done by a problematization and the attempt to answer the question of how the hegemonical masculinity can be analyzed as a discourse, and how the structural aspects of this discourse inflict on the social conditions of masculinities.The question was divided into the analytical themes: the boarders of the discourse, the institutionalization of the discourse, the actuation of the discourse and the agents of the discourse. The theoretical frame is constituted by the theory of discourse by Michel Foucault, the theory of the hegemonical masculinity by R.W. Connell and a subversive identity theory by Judith Butler.

Länge har den medicinska diskursen dominerat med närmast ensamrätt att förstå och förklara ?avvikande? beteenden och det förhållande till kroppen som av dessa följer. Antingen har ätstörningar förklarats med hänvisning till individens biologiska förutsättningar eller, i enlighet med mer sociokulturella intressen, som ett slags resultat av samhällsstrukturers obevekliga makt.I flera av de studier som ligger till grund för denna uppsats kan man skymta något som Megan Jane Warin diskuterar i sin doktorsavhandling Becoming and Unbecoming. Nämligen att man kan närma sig en förståelse för anorexi genom att betrakta själva tillståndet till den sjukes egna kropp som dynamiskt ? som samtidigt präglat av närhet och avstånd.