In this paper we examine the view of mental illness is in a male dominated organization and what strategies are used to handle mental illness by the organization and the individual. We conduct semi structured qualitative interviews with persons who have in some way been in contact with mental illness within the organisation, we then encode our material from a themed analysis. We analyze the material and illustrate our problem area on the basis of Erving Goffmans theories of interaction and on R.W. Connells theory of hegemonic masculinity. We also show how previous studies of how men seek help for mental illness can help to enlighten our research area.

This essay focuses on psychoanalytic theory and its relevance for political studies. It especially draws attention to the conceptual toolkit developed by Jacques Lacan and the way that it serves as the starting point for Slavoj Zizek´s approach to the theory of ideology. One important point of this approach is that the power of an ideology is not primarily related to the ideas or worldview it expresses but rather to the enjoyment it provides the subject with. This enjoyment is obscene in the sense that it forms the necessary, but seldom acknowledged, supplement to public values. Fantasy is a major source for this kind of enjoyment.

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..

Japan is the first industrialized country that is experiencing the threat of a rapidly declining and aging population. This has shifted the focus and the limelight is now on the matter that for a long time has been ignored. That is, the Japanese women?s situation in the society. This thesis seeks to point out the relevance of gender in the construction of leadership in order to get a deeper understanding of the Japanese women?s situation today.

The Oresund Region, consisting of the Swedish county of Scania and the Danish islands of Sealand, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, is widely recognised as a successful example of European cross-border co-operation. The purpose of this region building project is to form a cross-border fully integrated functional region in order to accomplish a high level of economic growth and employment.This thesis argues, by the means of discourse analysis, that the project can be viewed as a kind of post-politics, defined as a politics that under a neoliberal hegemonic consensus strives to manipulate citizens (and to redefine them as consumers and investors) into better economic performance.This manipulation is carried out by extensive discourse production aimed at convincing people that the Oresund Region exists, that it is a successful region, and that the people who inhabit it are also successful. The deliberate vagueness and contradictory character of the Oresund discourse is investigated and explained as a discursive strategy to incorporate as many views and desires as possible..

The purpose of this essay is to identify how the drug user is portrayed in motion pictures. My main questions are: How is the drug use described? How is the male and female drug user depicted? How may the movies contribute to the construction, reproduction and change of gender? The method I use in my research is a qualitative, selective discourse- analysis of a number of movies prominently portraying drug use. A gender perspective is also applied on this paper.The main result of the study is that I have found that the great majority of the analyzed films portray drug use as means for something else. Drug use is often portrayed in the beginning as heavenly but changes to be depicted as problematic.

The essay explores nationalism in the curriculum of the swedish school from 1878 to 1994. The text has been undertaken an analysis in three levels of discourse based on Norman Faircloughs critical language analysis. The first level is the text, the second is types of discourses and the third is order of discourse.The nationalism in the curriculum has been related to three nationalistic types of discourses, derived from earlier studies on Swedish nationalism. They are conservative nationalism, ?folkhemsnationalism? and contemporary nationalism.

This study analyses the german writer and artist Unica Zürn´s novel, The Man of Jasmine,1970 (Jasminmannen). Zürn was mostly active in the surrealist avantgarde in Paris during the 1950ies - and 60ies. The male surrealist images of women was polarised in to the godlike, child and the erotic, convulsive object. The mythologizied woman was the muse of men´s creativity. But still there were many women artists who participated in the movement, so clearly there was something in surrealism that attracted women.

We live in a society that has changed rapidly in recent years. The Swedish welfare state identity consisted of structures that had been formed from an emancipatory project. Today, these structures seem to have been erased and replaced by a different form of society. When a society is changing it affects the political, social and economic levels.In this social change Social Democracy seems to have lost its hegemonic position in society and describes itself as standing in a crisis. An effort to modernize the party has therefore begun.

The essay explores nationalism in the curriculum of the swedish school from 1878 to 1994. The text has been undertaken an analysis in three levels of discourse based on Norman Faircloughs critical language analysis. The first level is the text, the second is types of discourses and the third is order of discourse.The nationalism in the curriculum has been related to three nationalistic types of discourses, derived from earlier studies on Swedish nationalism. They are conservative nationalism, ?folkhemsnationalism? and contemporary nationalism.

This study analyses the german writer and artist Unica Zürn´s novel, The Man of Jasmine,1970 (Jasminmannen). Zürn was mostly active in the surrealist avantgarde in Paris during the 1950ies - and 60ies. The male surrealist images of women was polarised in to the godlike, child and the erotic, convulsive object. The mythologizied woman was the muse of men´s creativity. But still there were many women artists who participated in the movement, so clearly there was something in surrealism that attracted women.

The purpose of this essay is to examine formations of gender and class of so called horse girls in a riding school located in Stockholm, Sweden. The essay is based on interviews with six girls in the ages between fifthteen and eighteen. Through the theoretical framework of Judith Butler and Beverley Skeggs, I examine how the girls negotiate the boundaries and probabilities within doing gender in an upper and middleclass associated area. As a result of its female domination, the stable functions as a place where the girls can dislocate themselves from otherwise normative feminine practises. This is possible since the premises of the stable are constructed in the light of the heterosexual matrix, where the girls organise themselves within the heterosexual girl collective.

Sexual harassments have since long been an issue all over the world and schools have not been an exception. Reports from Swedish secondary schools show how 47% of the female pupils state that they have, sometime during their time in school, been the victim of sexual harassment. Other studies claim that pupils exposed to sexual harassments will develop low self-esteem and a decreased sense of self. The Swedish curriculum state that all children shall have the right to a harassment free school environment, but still many pupils claim to be exposed to sexual harassment in school. Several studies have theorized about why sexual harassment is so prevalent in schools but what do the pupils think? This study aims to reveal and analyze pupil opinions about sexual harassment; what do they think it is and why do they think it occurs? This will be done from a post-structural feminist point of view with focus on the shaping of identity among the respondents.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse on political exclusion in the official report Demokratiutredningen. It has been my ambition to relate the analysis of the report to a critical academic discourse on political exclusion and thereby make visible hidden norms and structures which functions to exclude certain individuals and groups from political participation.My paper point out that the report establishes a strong link between democracy and participation and that it, therefore, makes a strong case for a process of democratic inclusion. Though, in my study I suggest that that there is an unawareness of the importance of norms, hegemonic conceptions and structures and that inclusion, therefore, is unlikely to take place. Furthermore, I criticize the focus on deliberative democracy in the report. With insights offered by Mouffe in her argumentation on the necessity to acknowledge the dimension of antagonism present in all societies I underline that the focus on this democratic model is problematic.My conclusion is that the analysis presented in the report is insufficient if we want to create a democratic system characterized by equality..

The earlier studies of how gender is visually constructed in lifestyle magazines have mainly been done on photographs. But, photographs are only one part of the entire magazine Therefor3, we saw the importance in examining one of the other big parts, typography.We have been studying if gender can be constructed in lifestyle magazines through the shape and color of typography and the color context. It is important to point out that we have not been studying the written word but only the shape and color of the typography.The study has been conducted through a qualitative content analysis with a comparative process of the selected magazines. The analysis began with a semiotic analysis of selected parts of the magazines. The result was then analyzed with a feminist theoretical approach.The result of the study shows that gender can be constructed through typography in a number of different ways.