This is a case study that explores the ways in which implemented university reforms have affected employees in the higher educational sector. Previous research within the research field has mainly focused on policy related consequences of the reforms. This is why a study that brings attention to the ways the reforms have affected employees is sorely needed.The aim with the study is to examine whether there is a discrepancy between formal changes and the ways the employees experience them. The study is based on interviews with 8 lecturers from two universities and the material is analyzed mainly through sociological neo-institutional theories, such as Richard Scott?s theory of the three pillars within an informal institution and Helmke and Levintskys theory of the relationship between formal and informal institutions.The results show that there is a discrepancy between the formal changes and the ways employees perceive them.

This study aims to investigate how, in Montesquieu?s Persian Letters (1721), religion and religious structures are presented to influence women?s position in French society.In Persian Letters Montesquieu presents a dogmatic religious life, which proceed from a literal interpretation of the bible. Such a reading raises critical questions concerning the nature of women, and subsequently places man over woman. Persian Letters show how this male dominance gets institutionalized in marriage. The religious life depicted is also distinguished by a non-genuine religious conviction and by acts which take on a simulation form.

I arbetet görs ett försök att genom litteratur och elevintervjuer närma sig frågan om vilka förutsättningar för lärande som simuleringar i geografi erbjuder och vilka lärandeteorier som då blir relevanta. Intervjuer har därför gjorts med elever efter att de genomfört ett för undersökningen utvalt simuleringsspel. I arbetet ställs också frågan om hur elever uppfattar simuleringen som didaktiskt verktyg och ett antal svarskategorier struktureras. Slutsatserna är att lärandet i simuleringar i första hand tycks vara beroende av den egna praktiska erfarenheten, den sociala interaktionen mellan deltagarna och den emotionella laddningen. Elevernas uppfattningar av lärandeformen stödjer dessa kvalitéer, men tillfogade också betydelsen av variation i undervisningen och det inneboende spelrummets betydelse för kreativiteten..

This report is a case study of ?citizen forums? in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance.My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants.

The tablet is a new IT-tool which have started to get introduced into school, but research is still missing and especially in the pre-school environment. The purpose with this study is to investigate teachers uptake, how they use the tablet in everyday pedagogy work as well as the organizational conditions that that facilitate and hinders. Through my observations and interviews in a Swedish K-5 school I have found that the teachers find tablets more appealing to use in comparison to computers. These findings are partly supported by Davis et al.?s (1989) TAM-theory who considers there to be three types of aspects that affect the way individuals adapt to technology.

Följande studie syftar till att undersöka hur industriföretag på den värmländska glesbygden uppfattar pedagogikämnet vid Karlstads universitet. Studien har en tydlig inriktning mot arbetslivspedagogik, och det är framförallt arbetspedagogiska teorier som utgör studiens teoretiska grund.Studien bygger på intervjuer med representanter från fem värmländska industriföretag.Dessa intervjuer har sedan analyserats med avseende på respondenternas berättelser och de uttalande som kan kopplas till ämnet pedagogik, vilket är brukligt vid användandet av narrativ metod och analys.Resultatet visar att de värmländska industriföretagen har behov av pedagogisk kunskap, men att de föredrar att anlita konsulter framför att ha någon anställd som arbetar med dessa frågor..

Följande studie syftar till att undersöka hur industriföretag på den värmländska glesbygden uppfattar pedagogikämnet vid Karlstads universitet. Studien har en tydlig inriktning mot arbetslivspedagogik, och det är framförallt arbetspedagogiska teorier som utgör studiens teoretiska grund.Studien bygger på intervjuer med representanter från fem värmländska industriföretag.Dessa intervjuer har sedan analyserats med avseende på respondenternas berättelser och de uttalande som kan kopplas till ämnet pedagogik, vilket är brukligt vid användandet av narrativ metod och analys.Resultatet visar att de värmländska industriföretagen har behov av pedagogisk kunskap, men att de föredrar att anlita konsulter framför att ha någon anställd som arbetar med dessa frågor..

How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

The following text constitutes an attempt to present the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon's genetic ontology through an account of his reconfiguration of the problem of individuation in his doctoral thesis from 1958, L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel, métastabilité. The intention is to show how Simondon through this reconfiguration of a classical philosophical problem ? in which concepts and schemas from contemporary physics and technology is utilised in a critique of the bi-polar hylomorphic schema as its traditional, substantialistic solution ? becomes able to articulate an anti-substantialistic and anti-reductionistic ontogenesis as first philosophy. A systematic philosophical conception that according to Simondon precedes every critical investigation of the subject as well as every scientific ontology ? not by establishing a pre-critical position, but by exceeding Kant's critical position: that is, through a displacement toward a conception of the transcendental conditions for the genesis of being and thought as real conditions, rather than conditions of mere possibility.

Who runs the development? A comparative study of the construction of residential buildings in Nacka and Södertälje.The aim of this study is to identify actors involved in the initiation and implementation of residential house construction in two Swedish municipalities. This means who is taking initiative for new residential buildings, who affects the planning process, who finances these new buildings and who builds them. By exploring empiric material from the municipalities of Nacka and Södertälje, the above questions will be answered and by referring to pluralism, growth machine theory and regime theory a link to general theories of political science is made. The results found show that the analysed municipalities have quite different possibilities for acting and that these backgrounds are also important for which actors will take initiative for new residential buildings and which actors will be allowed to state their opinion during the planning process.

Through the collection and analysis of negotiations surrounding the gay magazine Destroyer, the intention of this paper is to identify norms of sexuality within a contemporary sex-radical discourse. These negotiations are collected from interviews with individuals whom, at the time of the inter-view, consider themselves or their politics sex-radical. In order to allow for a more general under-standing of the context in which these negotiations have come about, material about Swedish law is also included in this text, together with the interview material, and serves as a base for analysis through the application of Gayle Rubin?s theory on the hierarchical value system of sexuality.Following, are the main themes throughout the paper: The meaning of the context; Sexualized children; The possibility to (not) participate: differences of power; The decision whether or not to sell the publication and The position of the pedophile and crossgenerational love/sexuality within the LGBTQ community.Key words: sex radicalism, pornography, boy-love, kiddy porn, pedophilia, Destroyer, Gayle Rubin..

The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

The aim of this essay is trying to understand the ideological changing process over the last decades and the ideological meaning of the relatively new conception lifelong learning as well, and how it comes that the opportunities offered the individual pre-school child and the individual compulsory-school pupil to assimilate the so important learning, differs so dramatically all though the expressed ambition to offer each and every one equal opportunities. What are the ideological structures that are, and have been in function, that carries and have carried the perceptions of the use and value of fostering and education?In a time with the welfare ideology in a hegemonic position, it was seen important that the state took major responsibility for the education of the citizens. In our time, it appears, an economist ideology has taken the hegemonic position, and education is becoming an increasingly economic issue, and equality is decreasing along with, as in general society, the increasing of segregation within the educational system..

I have studied how network in a broad sense can affect decision-making. The primary purpose is to see if the political initiative somewhere disappears when it comes to understand the relations between power, actors and politics. The study discuss in a theoretical area that concerns the reliability in neoinstitutionalism to use as an analytical instrument. Some criticism is given to the theoretical standpoint in the sense that there is no power perspective included in the theory. I include a discussion about a concept of power, which I include to the theory.