Abstract During the last 15 years, the former ?really existing socialist? economies have undertaken an extensive transition process. In this paper the development, measured as GDP growth, is analyzed using variables for economic policy. The analysis is both theoretical, taking as starting point current positions in academia, and econometrical with the linear regression model. We show that while economic policy variables of inflation, economic freedom and institutional quality affect economic growth, the results are not only the ones predicted by the theory.

The purpose of this research is to examine some historical aspects of Robert Putnam?s thesisabout voluntary associations and social capital. According to a micro perspective theory ofsocial capital the trust and reciprocity required and created by associations is important toexplain the disparity between institutional performance and socioeconomic development ofsocieties. The social patterns governing this therefore set a precedent for the future. Using themutual sickness benefit societies in Sweden as variable for voluntary associations around1884, the essay discusses the possible links between social capital, associations and long termeconomic development.

The purpose of our essay is to study the institutional-, demographic and accounting theoretical factors that influence an organisations actuarial commitment.The research was performed through a web based survey, with complimentary telephone interviews, directed to companies listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange A- and O-list on the 30 of November, 2003.Our data was analysed with a Median test, Kolomogorov-Smirnov test, T-test and a Mann-Whitney test. The purpose of the Mann-Whitney test was the low number of respondents that took part in the research. The Kolomogorov-Smirnov test was done to determine whether the population variances was equal or not. The data showed that organisations with a majority of female employees assume a lower salary increase, and a higher average age than other companies with a male majority. Only 2 of 11 hypothesis can be accepted as temporary truths but several other visible relations are indicated in our research, but can not be statistically proved.We think that the major problem with our is the time it was performed.

Much attention has been directed to Charity Foundations and how they use the donations given to them. Donators and external organisations put pressure on and evaluate the performance of Charity Foundations. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of how Charity Foundations handle the pressure from external parties through a qualitative case study of one Swedish Charity Foundation. The most important external factors have been identified and the accountability relationships between each party and the Charity Foundation have been examined. The empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews and from written sources.

The present essay concerns Walter Benjamin?s thought regarding history and temporality as he articulated it in his last work that was only published posthumously: ?U?ber den Begriff der Geschichte?. The purpose is to analyze Benjamin?s construction of historical materialism and to suggest a reading of it as directed towards an opening of history. For Walter Benjamin, every moment presents itself as a possibility of radical otherness: a possibility for things to be different.

The purpose of this essay is to understand the rhetoric presented by Henry V in Shakespeare?s St. Crispin?s day speech. More specifically, it examines the speech from a "dramatistic" point of view, i.e.

Knowledge organization is perceived as a central, constituting activity defining the notion of libraries. Critique calling for a new theoretical foundation voiced by active researchers within library and information science concerning the current knowledge organization has been utilized as a point of departure. Specifications concerning a new theoretical foundation implied by these critiques are considered within this thesis and theory found in The Order of Things by Michel Foucault proposed as an alternative theory for understanding knowledge organization as a human science where meaning, value and representation, by which the ordering of things is possible, is acknowledged as a result of human activity and history. Thus meaning, value and representation must be perceived as dynamic. An example of implementation of the proposed theory has been achieved by the use of bibliometrics.

The subject-matter of the following essay is to investigate the relationship between what is commonly called Deep Ecology or Biocentric Philosophy, as articulated by the co-founder of the Deep Ecology Movement, Arne Naess, and later proponents of the biocentric school of environmentalist thought. I contrast Naess? concept of Self-realization as founded in his Ecosophy T to the ideas of american conservationist and co-founder of the radical green movement Earth First! Dave Foreman, and to the controversial finnish environmentalist and ecofascist Pentti Linkola?s ideological agenda of population-reduction respectively.According to some critics of the movement, especially the social ecologist Murray Bookchin and French liberal philosopher Luc Ferry, the Deep Ecology ideology is essentially misanthropic and totalitarian in structure. A central idea among deep ecologists is that ecosystems and natural entities have intrinsic value in themselves, even outside a human social context. This idea is thought of among deep ecologists to create a philosophically sound basis for counteracting the environmental global crisis.

Children who have fled to Sweden, without their parents or guardians, have been a controversial subject during the winter of 2002. Their situations on refugeestations and the responsibiliy by community and the state have been discussed. My composition is about these children. The composition is not about the situations of the children - focus is instead on the people who operate with the children; community, state and organisations. I want to find empirical levels which show what the children associate with.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship ? that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of ? are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has theadvantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous.The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same ? but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations.While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself..

J.O. Mallander?s Extended Play (1968) is a sound recording, a readymade, of the counting of votes in two presidential elections in Finland, during 1962 and 1968. A voice repeats monotonously: ?Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen?? Although the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen represents, almost personifies, the politics of the post World War II period in Finland, Extended Play does not explicitly address the political. Rather, as this essay argues, it engages in the discourses of power and politics by providing a temporalization of its fixedness, or what Jacques Derrida terms the proper.Extended Play is, in parallel with Derrida?s critique of western metaphysics, a deconstruction in sound that challenges the state ideologies conveyed in the process of the counting of votes, where the presuppositions of the presence of the voice characterizes the ambiguities of power that Kekkonen?s politics of neutrality represent.Mallander?s readymade emerges as a double of the game theory strategies of the Cold War, a mimetic surplus of the administrative control mechanisms of sound recording.

This master thesis deals with the Nobel Prize and highbrow culture as portrayed in Karin Alvtegen?s Skugga. From a sociology of literature perspective, it aims to analyze how these highbrow themes can be understood in relation to Alvtegen?s position in the literary field as a lowbrow crime novelist. The method used is hermeneutic, and the analysis is based on two theoretical models: Pierre Bourdieu?s cultural sociology, and the postmodern tradition where the distinction high/low and its traditional hierarchy is said to be decomposed.

The purpose of this study is to highlight some aspects of the increased usage of tablets in preschool environments by answering the questions: what does the tablet become in the preschool environment, how much freedom does the children have over its usage.To answer these questions a series of observations were made at two different preschools. The observations were then complemented by interviews with teachers at the same preschools.This qualitative study focuses on some of the didactic questions regarding the tablets, based on a theoretical framework that is within the design-oriented perspective; which addresses the children's? autonomy, the institutional framework and affordance.Our conclusion is that the tablet?s introduction in the preschool has helped the teachers in numerous parts of their documentation, but we can also see that the children's opportunities to make choices regarding the tablet are more limited than with any other resource on the preschool. In our results we also see that when the children get access to the tablet they receive a learning experience, which among other things, strengthens their language skills and their social interaction with each other..

This is an empiric, qualitative, case study of cooperation between two public organizations in Ystad, Sweden (Försäkringskassan and Ystad kommun). The aim of the study is to illuminate why they cooperate and what happen with the idea to cooperate and the organizations when they do. The theoretical tools used are influenced by institutional theory. A translationmodel is used to illustrate what the local actors do with the idea when a decision is made to adopt it and how it affects the actors. The study suggests that the cooperation in Ystad called One Stop Shop is partly done because it's a popular way of organizing public organizations in Sweden and partly because försäkringskassan, aim to upgrade their organization identity.

This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature.  The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality.