The role of cultural policy within the general political planning of a community can vary both historically and regionally. The aim of this study has been to explore the cultural policy plans, during the 1990's, in the recently formed geographical region of "Västra Götaland". This is a qualitative study, carried out during 1999, and based upon structured interviews with five representatives of the cultural-policy sector in the "Västra Götaland" region. In order to identify connections and tendencies in a more general social context the aims of the five representatives regarding cultural policy have been explored from the perspective of three cultural policy paradigms, namely Dorte Skot-Hansen, Olav R. Spilling and Göran Nylöf.

This essay deals with risk management and social risks, which have received increased attentionin recent years. Methods for dealing with social risks, for example within local Risk andvulnerability assessment (RSA), are currently under development. The purpose of this paper is toexamine if and how social risk can be quantitatively assessed and mapped using GeographicInformation Systems (GIS). The definition of social risk that the essay is based on states: "Theprobability of unwanted events, behaviors or conditions originating in the social conditions thathave a negative impact on the objects that are worth to preserve.? A number of social riskindicators that can be used for a spatial analysis have been operationalized based on thisdefinition.

The society?s view of pupils with needs of special support in nine-year school has changed over time in Sweden. The teachers? views of the pupils have had an influence of how the special education process is designed. The aim with my paper is to make a comparative study of how special education teachers in rural schools and schools in Stockholm have designed their work with pupils with needs of special support.

The aim of this paper is to describe the position of the Swedish welfare state within the shaping of a Swedish national identity. This is done through the study of Mångkulturåret 2006, and its rhetorical context. The point of departure is that history is formed continuously in current speech and a text analytical method has been used. Mångkulturåret was issued by the Department of Culture as an extended perspective of Cultural politics. The rhetoric used in the official document Agenda för Mångkultur is analyzed through a comparison with earlier official documents on the field of multiculturalism and integration.

This is a historical documentary research study across Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963). The theoretical perspective is based on the historical perspective of knowledge from ancient Greece to the approach of modern symbolic interactionism. The study shows that Boyd, who was Viola Spolins teacher, was a proponent of the modern view of group play theory. 1909 she founded Chicago School for Playground Workers, later transformed to the Recreation Training School. Until 1927, the school entered in Hull-House initiated by Jane Addams.

Our increasingly globalized world has contributed to that more Swedish companies has expanded their business to more distant areas. One of these Swedish companies that now stands before their first international expansion is the Swedish fast-food chain Max AB. Max has chosen to start their expansion in Saudi Arabia, a country far away from Sweden, not only in terms of geographical distance but also in cultural. The cultural differences that Max will encounter may affect the business and result in to various adaptations that must be done in order to establish successfully. The thesis investigates the existing circumstances for the fastfood business in Saudi Arabia and shows which adaptations international fast-food chains should or must do as a result of the cultural distances they encounter.

This thesis takes its starting point in the humanistic cultural-geographical concept of place, with the aim of achieving a greater understanding of what constitutes the place Mon today. Mon is located in the northwestern part of Dalsland. Until 1879, the area was described as outlying land, but with the extension of the railway between V?nern and the Norwegian border, Mon's station community emerged. In the mid-20th century, all activities in Mon were phased out, and since then, the place has been inhabited by only about 10 year-round residents.

Based on the on the assumption that the two recent Swedish poetry collections mil by Anna Hallberg and mallamerik, mallamer, malameri, mallame, amerik, mallameka, merikka, by Lars Mikael Raattamaa, are constructed with theoretical questions about identity, national identity, language hierarchy and power in mind, this study aims to investigate the ways in which these issues come to expression. Simplified, the term language-poetry, or språkmaterialism, can be used to describe a language-philosophical poetry that aims to eliminate the hierarcic structures between writer and reader in a text and invite the reader to become the co-worker of it. The study shows that by different ways of eliminating the centre of the text, the text is made democratical. But one question that this study asks is how can a nation's conventional and standardised written  language ? the language of the centre ? be used to write itself out of this centre into the margin? Stepping from a theoretical background of postcolonial theories on identity and national identity, including reflections as those given by Benedict Anderson, Madan Sarup, Timothy Brennan, Stefan Helgesson and Mia Cuoto, the analysis points out how this poetry laborates with the terms bugging, repetition, national language identity, and space as poetic material, in order to work in line with ? and contrary to - conceptions of a unified and shared language.

This thesis investigates the reception of middle literature novels among critics in Swedish newspapers and at Swedish libraries. Works by three authors were chosen as representatives for middle literature: Helen Fielding, Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons. The investigation is based on interviews with librarians at the Gothenburg City Library, the total purchased number of books at public libraries in Sweden and analysis of Swedish newspaper reviews. The result is compared with theories by literary sociologists as Jofrid Karner Smidt, Janice Radway, Erland Munch-Petersen and Staffan Bergsten among others. It was found out that literary scientists and critics had a different way of looking at middle literature.

Distributed system development is a common occurrence in today?s technological and global world. Because the consequences of its geographically distributed nature it creates barriers between people that affects their communication and collaboration efforts in the distributed context. Despite a lot of technological breakthroughs over the last decades and the occurrence of video-conference applications and other tools for communication and collaboration, cultural and geographical issues have so far not yet been completely resolved. In this study I have made a literature study over distributed system development to form a set of central factors that affects the distributed development process.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

Sweden has a long tradition as a mapmaking nation. Tens of thousands of historical maps,dating from the sixteenth century and onwards are still preserved in archives today, providinga rich resource for studies of city growth and changes in the landscape through time. For morethan ten years an effort has been made by public authorities to transfer this material frompaper onto digital media. Due to modern technology, as for example GeographicalInformation Systems (GIS), researchers have been given improved possibilities to study andanalyze this material. This study uses a qualitative approach, based on both literature studiesas well as map studies.

The purpose of this essay, entitled ?Heja Sverige! Heia Norge?, was to study the difference in nationalistic tendencies between Swedish and Norwegian news coverage of the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Falun, Sweden, which took place between 18 February and 1 March 2015. It was the fourth time the event took place in Falun, previous games having been held in 1954, 1974 and 1993.I performed a critical discourse analysis of a total of twelve articles split over two race days ? one where Swedish athletes outperformed Norwegian athletes and vice versa. I did this order to study if the news coverage in each of the two countries? most promininent sports papers; Sportbladet in Sweden and VG Sport in Norway, was charaterized by a nationalistic discourse, as well as comparing the two to find similarities and differences between them.Having based my analysis on theories and previous research regarding media events, nationalism, national identities, ?us and them?, imagined communities et cetera, I came to the conclusion that a nationalistic discourse is, without a doubt, present in the news coverage ? something very unique for sports journalism as a genre.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

This thesis analyzes and discusses the role of institutions concerning countries' abilities to create economic wealth. The countries that we are analyzing are the former members of the Warsaw pact and former Yugoslavia. These countries are referred to as transition countries. In order to analyze the transition countries institutional structure we are using Douglass C. North's theory regarding institutions and institutional building.