Our purpose is to display the meaning of fan clubs and further reveal the potential value of fans. This study has an abductive approach with a qualitative data collection, where empirical material has been collected through a micro netnographic study along with qualitative interviews. IKEA and IKEA Family have been applied together with virtual fan clubs to study the fan club phenomenon. The study is based on prior literature concerning loyalty, customer clubs and brand relations. This theoretical framework was chosen to fulfil the purpose of unveiling the meaning of fan clubs and the potential value of fans.

The aim of this study is to provide an investigation of an ?old? political phenomenon that over the recent years has enjoyed a considerable revival across Europe. This study about nationalism is mainly based on empirical second hand source material from literature and articles providing us with both a historical as well as a contemporary insight in this ideology. This study shows us the complexity and the difficulties that the academia is facing regarding nationalism due to the dynamic nature of the ideology, in the sense that it simply means different things to different peoples in different cultures across different points in time. The study is conducted by using a phenomenological, qualitative and inductive method of gathering and interpreting information.  A handful of books have formed the foundation through the gathering of relevant empirical information, along with articles from both scientific publications as well as the mainstream media. The data have been studied and laid out to make key points regarding nationalism and the theory behind it clear for the reader.

This essay ? Discourse and Dissonance ? deals with Mary Shelley?s gothic novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). The focal point is the construction of ?Them and Us?, as defined by scholars such as Stuart Hall, viewed in terms of the following categories: race, gender and family, class, and sexuality. Rather than applying an outside perspective, e.g.

This essay examines the Swedish missionary association Bible Faithful Friends? (Bibeltrogna Vänner, BV) ecclesiological development between the years 1911 ? 1986 and their relation to the Church of Sweden. This essay?s three main questions are:- How did the ecclesiology of BV develop during the years 1911 ? 1986, with certain focus on 1967-1986?- In what way was this ecclesiology imprinted bya) the structure of the missionary association?b) and the ecclesiological standpoint of the leader Axel B. Svensson?As regards the first question, the study shows that BV's ecclesiology, particularly in the years 1967 ? 1986, is characterized by a church debate between BV's board and the promoters and founders of the Lutheran Confessional Church (Lutherska Bekännelsekyrkan, LBK).

The novel American Psycho was first published in 1991. It recieved harsh criticism and was viewed as a work of heterosexism, misogyny and pointless violence. Despite the criticism, the protagonist, a wealthy serial killer yuppie namned Patrick Bateman, fascinated the readers. He hides his monstrosity behind a façade of heteronormativity, but this essay shows that the norms in American Psycho are fragile. Batemans relationships are shallow, his identity is constructed out of traditional masculinitynorms and even though he?s homophobic there?s a homoerotic undertone in the text, as well as gothic patterns that give the novel a fair amount of queerness too.

I denna studie undersöker jag Carina Rydbergs skildring av "dålig" sexualitet. Jag gör en närläsning av Rydbergs roman Månaderna utan R. Läsningen utgår från Michel Foucaults och Jacques Derridas dekonstruktionsteorier samt från Judith Butlers genusteorier. Jag undersöker huruvida romanen kan läsas som gotisk, huruvida Rydberg kan sägas luckra upp gränsen mellan "god" och "dålig" sexualitet, samt huruvida hon skildrar sadomasochistiska kvinnor som subjekt.Jag kommer fram till att Rydberg kan sägas luckra upp gränsen mellan "god" och "dålig" sexualitet och att hon, genom att skildra sadomasochistiska kvinnor som subjekt, stör könade sexualitetsnormer. Häri ligger Rydbergs subversiva potential.

Gothic literature has a tradition of dealing with dark subjects, themes and motifs, as well as depicting fear in different shapes and forms. Dani Cavallaro describes dark fiction in terms of the "aesthetic of the unwelcome". The philosopher Edmund Burke separates the beautiful from the sublime and writes that everything that is capable of producing a terror of pain and death is a source of the sublime. In her essay "On the Supernatural in Poetry", Ann Radcliffe draws a clear line between the concepts of terror and horror and distinguished them as fundamentally different. In this essay, I define the terms horror and terror by following up the research surrounding Radcliffes statement.

This essay ? Discourse and Dissonance ? deals with Mary Shelley?s gothic novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). The focal point is the construction of ?Them and Us?, as defined by scholars such as Stuart Hall, viewed in terms of the following categories: race, gender and family, class, and sexuality. Rather than applying an outside perspective, e.g.

The intention of this essay is to inquire into the (re-)constitution of gendered/sexed identities in a gothicistic discourse. The used material is the work Atlantica, chapter 5, vol. 2, written by the Swedish historian/Medical professor Olof Rudbeck. I have chosen this chapter for its description of mythological characters relationship with the earth, the sun and the moon. A description based on a concept of strength and reproduction as gendered characteristics.

The conception of exhaustion was first used in the end of 1960 and was then used in a psychological context directed towards the working life. Eventually was the conception devided into two main categories: mental and somatic symtoms. Today research of exhaustion is mainly aiming towards recovering and returning to working life.This work sets out to analyse the importance and effects of social networks such as family, friends and professional relations in helping people who suffer from exhaustion to recover. The study is based on interviews with eith people who have suffered from exhaustion but today are recovered. To my aid I have used tree different questions: What part have the social network of family and friends ment to the recovery? What part has the professional relationships with doctors, therapists and curators ment to the recovery? How have you changed your life in order to maintain balance?The interviews pointed out the importance of the social relationships as support, feedback and understanding that the process takes time.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to address the problem connected with conservation ofspecific objects in historic buildings that have a protected building status. The immaterial demandsand environmental concerns of a place of cultural significance are discussed as opposed to the welladaptedsetting of a museum, with regard to long-term preservation. In an authentic interior of acertain era, large-scale individual treatments of the objects that define it and regulations forconservation-related reasons, may not be considered a worth-while effort, as it is often the integrityof the environment as a whole that has been declared as significant. To investigate the relationshipbetween object and its context, a case study has been conducted by examination of the propertycalled ?Curmans villor?, located in the seaside community called Lysekil.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka ett tidigare outforskat område, nämligen de gotiska dragen i Tove Janssons Muminböcker, med fokus på Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen. Skräckgenren har tidigare kopplats samman med både Jansson och hennes Muminböcker, fast aldrig förr genom ett gotiskt perspektiv. Därför lyder frågeställningen som följer: Vilka gotiska drag förekommer i Tove Janssons Muminböcker, framförallt i Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen? Hur framställs, och vilket syfte har, dessa gotiska drag?Gotiska drag står i fokus för närläsningen, vilket är metoden jag använder mig av i min analys. Jag använder en definition av termen gotik, presenterad av Mattias Fyhr, som innebär att jag kommer att söka efter drag som berör subjektivitet, avsaknad, förfall, undergång, olösbarhet och labyrintism.

This thesis explores how Muslim youths? lifeworlds are depicted and narrated in the following two studies on Muslim youth in Sweden and Denmark: Muslima (2007) and Samtidsislam (2010). The aim of this thesis is to answer the following question: In what ways do these works treat the aspects of the lifeworlds that are being highlighted in their studies of Muslim youth in contemporary Sweden and Denmark? An underlying aim is to analyse the results within the framework of theories of socialisation, cultural emancipation and rituals and traditions.With a hermeneutic approach I analyse the texts and operationalize the research question into four themes: the effects of socialization, cultural emancipation, rituals and traditions and secularization. The texts are treated in the analysis with textual analysis and hermeneutic method.

This study deals with the Adventure Comic Prince Valiant, written and designed by the Canadian artist Harold R. Foster. Focus is on the first two years of publication 1937-1938, where the hero is pictured in his Adolescence. This gives the title of the study: Youth. Earlier writings in the USA on this topic, have concentrated on the artist and less on analyses of the comic itself.

Different methods for shelterwood cutting have been used in differ-ent parts of Europe since the middle ages. The use of shelter wood cutting in Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests in Sweden met a revival in the early 1990s as an alternative for the dominating clear-cutting system when silvicultural costs increased dramatically for the latter. Shelterwood cutting systems involve some possible problems but also a lot of positive effects. Among the problems are increased risk of wind throw and damage of the remaining shelter trees caused by the cutting operation. Positive effects are for example a valuable growth in the remaining trees and increased biological di-versity. This study is based on a total of 79 trees from 4 different treatments in a spruce shelterwood, cut in 1994, in the middle of Sweden (62,4º N).