The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests.We argue that what is often held to be the ?greed? or ?immorality? of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ?rational? underpinnings of modern-day capitalism.We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ?the Swedish model? that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance.

This paper discusses how ten blogs written by librarians talk about using games in the library. What do they talk about and what are their arguments for using games as a learning tool, and what does this say about their views on the library?s role in society?It is examined by using argumentation analysis together with a model for identifying different roles within the library on the blog themselves. By identifying the most important arguments used and placing them within the model, the paper aims to see how the bloggers view the library as a whole and as a part of society.It showed that the reasoning among the librarians varies, but most emphasis was on seeing the library as a meeting space together as an inspirational space, and the use of games can greatly help with that. Especially when viewing the library as a meeting space with room for everyone regardless of their interests..

AbstractThe work will give the picture of what four- and five-year-olds know about the water cycle in nature and in the society. Is there any difference depending on whether a boy or a girl is answering? The work will as well try to describe a picture of how a pre-school could plan their work on a sustainable society, science, and increased gender equality. To answer these questions the information has been received from interviews with children and by studying pre-school?s local plan.    Earlier research on the area of water shows that it is important before working with a new topic to find out what knowledge the children already have, so that the process could be as worthwhile as possible.

Advertising in responsive websites is a quite new phenomenon and has therefore, previously not been a target for any mayor research. Todays society, where new technological innovations persistantly supersede others must be seen as a possible changer for how companies advertise to this society. This paper sheds light on many of the difficulties connected with advertising for responsive websites, but also possibilities and advices for the future. Through a litterature review and a focus group with respondents from a large communication agency in Umea?, insights, implications, solutions and thoughts both connected to specific websites but also around advertising for the future as a whole is presented.

Crisis communication in today's society is an important element for organizations. Whether an organization makes it through a crisis, good or bad is largely based on their crisis communication work. Crisis communication is about how the organization works to repair or maintain the organization's external image, the image that society has about the organization. When a crisis occurs stakeholders lose confidence in the organization or change their mind about it.This case study is about exploring how a municipality handles crisis communication through the various phases of a crisis. The study is also to examine how the municipality communicates with its stakeholders in specific communication channels during a crisis.The case study makes use of theories circulating crisis communication, such as: theories of how crisis communication should be handled, how a crisis is recognized, the different phases of a crisis, the communication channels that can be used and who may be interested in an organization when a crisis reveals itself.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how preschool pedagogues in Stockholm and in Tornedalen speak about and relate to creative activities. By qualitative interviews in two geographically distant areas, one minority culture and one majority culture, I have collected information from six pedagogues, three in each area. Values in, and the significance of culture in creative activities have been the main focus. From this study I conclude that all pedagogues agreed upon the creative activity having an extensive role in the preschool work. The role of the individual pedagogue within the creative activity is multiple and dependent on where, when and how the activity is carried out.

The civilization has taken a step from the industry society to a service oriented culturewhere the physical differences between different products have decreased in value for the customers. The differentiation is more about senses, esthetical symbols and design. Modern economy is more and more focused on consuming and produce dreams and lifestyles. Maybe are we ready to face a new era; the society of experiences?Can the trend that is striving towards experiences really be adapted to all markets? This question started our quest to see how the real-estate market would be able to be adapted to this new economy.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the role of librarian in order to illustrate how the librarians work, how their competence and education have changed and developed during the last decade, and ultimately to see what the role of librarian looks like in the 21^st century. After describing the librarians work, competence and education in the 21^st century, we discuss whether or not the changes that have arisen during the last decennium have affected the possibilities for librarianship to develop into an accepted profession. The method of investigation is a qualitative analysis of printed sources. As a basis of the discussion and analysis Andrew Abbotts theory of professions is used. We also use Per Tengblads analysis model, which includes six important steps in analysing the professionalism of an occupation.

The aim of this study is to describe and examine the characteristics of inclusion of children with disabilities in the kinder garden and primary school in Belarus. The data in this study were collected through interviews with special teachers and staff at the Developing and Rehabilitation center. The interviews were supported by child-observations and a literature study. Staying in boarding schools prevents handicap students from integrating with the society as well as getting social experience. Integrated education demands the combination of two regularities: education of children with normal development and special education of children with psycho-physiological problems.

One of the main goals in this study is to investigate how young children's identity formation and social relationships are depicted by today's consumer society.  In order to reach the goals of the study I also concentrated myself on questions regarding the reflection of symbolic aspects consumption in younger children's interaction and preschool-teachers' ideas about how and in what ways children's consumption patterns are created and developed nowadays. In order to answer the presented research questions I used the theoretical arguments of researchers in the field of pedagogy Gert Biesta in connection with the ideas and concepts of the consumer society characteristics developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.The thesis' methodological approach consists of a combination of semi-structured interviews with teachers and observations of children's interaction, which contributed to a systematic investigation of the thesis' problem area and served as a tool for obtaining answers to the research questions.The results demonstrate that consumption occupies a lot of space in young children's lives, which means that it greatly affects their social relationships today. Both consumption and knowledge of the known brands prove to be the child's path to the desired community on the one hand, and the children's way to the consumer world on the other (hand), which in turn points to an obvious dependence between children's consumption and their social relationships.The results also show that there is a tension between the perception of identity formation as preschool-policy-document on the one hand and the attitude of the identity prescribed by consumer society norms and regulations on the other..

This essay attempts to examine the discourse of the Sweden democrats in relation to thevalue system of the Swedish national school.To analyse the political texts I use discourse analysis and especially the method and approachconducted by Judith Lee Bacchi. Bacchi focuses on the construction of a problem in variouspolitical discourses. When performing this kind of analysis the main question is (accordingto Bacchi): ?What is the problem represented to be??I find that the Sweden democrats construct the ?migration politics? and the ?multiculturalpolitics? that is guiding the society as the cause of most problems in our society. To solvethe ?problems? they promote a nationalistic and a cultural racist discourse especiallypinpointing the ?Muslims? as being a problem.Since the Sweden democrats are striving to implement their discourse in the society andschool, and since their discourse already are reproduced by solar students in the classroom,I find it important to examine the essence of their particular discourse and contrast it withthe current value system of the Swedish schools.I don´t find the nationalistic and racist discourse of the Sweden democrats to correspond tothe value system of the Swedish school, mainly due to their strive to create alienation, andby labeling individuals in a reductive manner, instead of using apparent differences as asource for democratic discussions in the classroom.

In one of six garbage collectors area in Cairo, Esbet el Nakhl, there's a handicap school run by the Coptic church. We chose to study this school using observations and interviews. The purpose of our thesis has been to describe the school, the goals of the education and the educational forms. The questions we asked our selves before the trip to Cairo were; how does the school look like? What's a garbage collectors area? How do the teachers educate the children? How's the situation for the handicapped children?We spent six days of observations and interviews at the school gathering information for the thesis.

In the research field of the cultivation theory focus has shifted from TV in general to studying specific genres instead. It is proposed that there are similarities in otherwise different shows and that these shows give it´s voyeurs a solution to their problems.  The purpose however of this study is to investigate how the myth about the good life is posed in Tv3´s supply.  The theories used in this study are closely linked by their meaning. Narrative talks about the fact that texts, video in this case, contain stories. Ideology is the set of visions and beliefs one person has on the world and myth makes social, historic and cultural decided power orders in to facts.

After the orange revolution in Ukraine, hope was given to achieve fullydemocracy in the whole society. However, this has not been the outcome; theUkrainian public administration still has problems to deliver what the societydemands. By answering the question: ?Which problems have the publicadministration to become democratic and how can we explain them??, we analyzethe failures within the public administration to accomplish democratic procedures.The empirical material in this thesis is mainly obtained from interviews andresearch during a field study in Ukraine. The problems for the civil servants inUkraine to act as guardians of the society are strongly connected to an inadequateprofessional knowledge.

Uppsatsen behandlar frågan huruvida dagens Ungern bör kunna betraktas som en konsoliderad demokrati. Frågan utgår ifrån teorin om för att ett lyckat demokratiskt samhälle ska kunna uppnås måste fem dimensioner vara uppfyllda: ett väl fungerande och demokratiskt institutionaliserat civilsamhälle, politiskt samhälle och ekonomiskt samhälle samt en rättstat och statsbyråkrati. Uppsatsen tar tre av dessa samhälleliga arenor i beaktande samt medborgarnas och politikernas attityder och utgår i huvudsak från artiklar, böcker och tidsskrifter. För att åskådliggöra Ungerns utveckling från demokratisk transition till dagens situation har en viss historisk tillbakablick varit nödvändig för att ge perspektiv åt landets sociala, politiska och ekonomiska händelseförlopp..