The purpose of this paper has been to examine various ethnic stereotypes in two Swedish film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren?s character Pippi Longstocking. I have used a semiotic content analysis and postcolonial theory to investigate: 1) how the ethnic groups are represented in the different materials, 2) if there is a hegemonic relationship between the foreign group and one?s own group, 3) whether there has been a "decolonization" during the twenty years that separate the two films. This study has shown that, in the 1949 adaptation, primarily Africans were produced in a negative light and as biologically inferior in relation to the whites.

Varför är det viktigt att undersöka på vilka sätt maskulinitetsideal i svensk ishockey har ändrats över tid? Den här frågan har flera svar. I den här uppsatsen har jag haft ambitionen att relatera maskulinitetsideal till svensk ishockeys utveckling åren 1969-1976 i ett vidare perspektiv. Under dessa år genomgick svensk ishockey många förändringar, men den största var förmodligen skiftet från att vara en amatörsport till att bli en professionell. Genom att studera hur förväntningarna på spelare ändrades under den här tiden, kan man bilda en förståelse för hur professionaliseringen av sporten påverkade enskilda spelare.

How do men who define themselves as feminists create and maintain an identity as men? In this qualitative study four men involved in feminist organizations were interviewed about their views on women, men, sex and feminism. Theories of language, psychoanalysis and ethics were utilized to further our understanding of the material these men produce in their effort to define themselves. Our object of study is the text, which we believe holds the key to understanding how an individual shapes his world and himself. The result is our interpretation of the text and its underlying mechanics.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out how gender roles are described in musical lyrics written for children. I used gender theories that describe how stereotypical gender roles are displayed in music and these theories were later compared with the songbooks I studied. The thesis is a qualitative study to detect masculine and feminine related differences in the texts. After having read, analyzed and compared over 200 songs I found that the stereotype notions of masculinity and femininity is reflected in songs. Society has transferred in this way normative values on to the children through the songs that teachers choose to sing in schools..

The aim of this thesis is to examine the fear of crime in old peoples lives. Notwithstanding that the age category is exposed to crime to a low degree, old people are experiencing a great fear of crime relative younger people. This is the paradox of fear, also recognized in gender studies. The question is how this paradox can be understood. To answer this, twelve elderly men and women have been interviewed and the reports about crime in the local newspaper, Norrköpings Tidningar, has been analyzed, through discourse analysis.The discursive construction of fear is here discussed in terms of discourses of a fearful society, and stereotypes of old age.

This Master's thesis explores representations of sexual agency in contemporary, Swedish novels for young adults. Using a representational theory approach the thesis analyzes 24 novels published in 2000 ? 2013. Addressing the following research questions: how is sexual agency constructed and regulated relative to gender performativity in Swedish novels for young adults? How are situations of sexual abuse and sexual ?grey zones? (situations that border on abuse) represented and being made intelligible in the texts? What are the consequences of representations of sexual agency? In the readings of the novels discourse analysis and theories on cultural representation and power have served as the critical points of entry, as well as the methodological basis for the study.

How do men who define themselves as feminists create and maintain an identity as men? In this qualitative study four men involved in feminist organizations were interviewed about their views on women, men, sex and feminism. Theories of language, psychoanalysis and ethics were utilized to further our understanding of the material these men produce in their effort to define themselves. Our object of study is the text, which we believe holds the key to understanding how an individual shapes his world and himself. The result is our interpretation of the text and its underlying mechanics.

The aim of this study is to investigate the discourses of widening recruitment to higher education in some political documents from the 21st century. The scientific method applied is critical discourse analysis as developed by Norman Fairclough. This implies the analyses of the actual texts, the social practice as well as the discursive practice, i.e. the conditions under which the texts are produced, distributed and consumed.The major results include four discourses: a post-modern discourse, a neoliberal economic discourse, a political discourse of multi-culturalism and a modern discourse with its roots in the 20th century?s discussions about social imbalance in recruitment to higher education.

This study is about gender stereotypes that occur in the magazines of ELLE and KING's advertisements in 2014. The purpose of this inquisition is by using a gender perspective to examine the interpretation of women and men, compare how they relate to the traditional gender stereotypes. To answer our purpose of this study, a selection of 400 advertisements were analyzed based on it's content and visual expression. Through a content analysis, we could measure the frequency of 18 variables and put them in relation to each other to grasp the differences that exist between the genders. The results are presented in bar charts based on the variables that proved most interesting outcome between the genders.

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..

The aim of this essay is to answer the question of how, and in what ways Martina Bigert?s and Maria Thulin?s picture Allt om min buske (literally, All about my bush) is queer. Inspired by Judith Butler?s idea of the heterosexual matrix, and Michel Foucault?s discourse I attempt to investigate how sex and sexuality are described in relation to heteronormativity, and if Allt om min buske is either norm-breaking or norm-creating in a wider perspective. This study concludes that antinormativity and queerness are evident within the framework of the picture.

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.