The aim of this thesis is to investigate the local debate on the Music library in Västervik to see what arguments, pro et contra, that constitutes it. Since its opening the Music library has faced regular threats of being closed down. This is an issue interesting due to several factors, its lack of guaranteed public funding and relative importance to Västervik´s attempts at city branding being two. Using argument analysis, the thesis proposes that the local debate shows traces of both instrumental and culture centered, intrinsical views of the Music library, and that the instrumental view holds both negative and positive poles of opinion while the intrinsical counterpart is one-sidedly positive. Further, the thesis argues that this is in line with a long since documented shift in cultural politics towards a more market oriented discourse..

The aim of the paper is to explore the dominating perception of the Other after the conflict regarding the Danish Mohammed caricatures. How Swedish newspapers have portrayed Arabs, which role they have been given in society and what problems they are struggling with is going to be the focus of this thesis.As methodological approach I chose discourse analysis, since it presents a view where language defines and structures our understanding of reality. Through the study of various Swedish newspaper articles, this essay tries to illustrate the implicit yet existent negative image of the Arabs as a group and potential alternative ways of understanding the Other.The perception of Arabs is a product of a necessary imaginary foe, a mirror image of the bad and strange in contrast to the idyllic and safe Swedish nationality. The rhetoric?s of the discourse are therefore constructed between a politics of acknowledgement and a will to culturally dominate the Other.

Knowledge is frequently discussed in modern society, and has been since ancient Greece. Our goal is to examine the content of two political documents with the desire to point out their visions about how the Swedish school system should be shaped, in relations to knowledge. More precise this essay is going to concentrate on two specific political parties, Folkpartiet and Vansterpartiet and their official programs on the subject school and education, to see what they say about knowledge. The choice is made on the basis that these parties political standings differ most from each other, in the left/right scale in politics. The qualitative analysis takes its main base from Aristotels concepts of knowledge; Episteme, techne and fronesis, and Bernt Gustavssons modern defenitions of them.

This qualitative study focuses on the investigation of different actor?s ideas concerning gender and womanhood in a post-socialist nation Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of this study is to try to provide experiences and attitudes of one not a new, but definitely one constantly changing phenomenon, trafficking in women for sexual exploitation. The qualitative data is mainly collected through nine interviews with people from Bosnian Governments, International organizations and NGOs during my stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The causes to trafficking are complex and intertwined but it directly relates to gender discrimination and attitudes on sexual relationships between women and men.

During the 20 century millions of people have escaped from war, threat against their human rights, economic injustices and pursuit. The great numbers of fleeing people have lead to difficulties in asylum investigation in the countries, which receive the asylum seekers. Sweden is a country, which has ratified the Genéveconvention 1954, and receives the asylum seekers. The great numbers of asylum seekers have caused among other things long time of waiting for the asylum seekers, sometimes up to 2-3 years. This implies some consequences both for the asylum seeker and for the community.

In the process of globalization, identity has become one of the central factors.An understanding of the difference that makes up our society has made thequestion of weather is it possible to envision a society where difference is thecommon ground, one that has been up for contest. To answer this we need to seeif this kind of democracy is possible at all. For this I?m turning to the socialmovments who while they are working close to the reality also can give us somereal answers. Therefore I have looked at how social movements adress identity,difference and conflict and concluded that three things are crucial in organizing ongrounds of difference.

This thesis focuses on politically active women within The Swedish Social Democratic Women?s Association, also known as S-women. By applying discourse analysis to interviews with active s-women and to meeting conversations between the association?s members, the study approaches ideas of feminism, feminist politics and political commitment. ?Solidarity? ? the central concept of the labour movement ? serves as the point of departure for a feminist discussion about class, gender, ethnicity and age/generation.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

The aim of my study is to critically analyse the discourse behind two different integration projects in Sweden, by using post colonial theory. My hypothesis is that many projects intended for increased integration includes a view of immigrants as the ?Others? which can be seen in how one talks about integration and culture in the discourse behind integration projects.The first of these two projects aims at increased diversity in the cultural sphere, organized on at state level. The purpose of the second project is to increase the communication and results for schools in areas with a high rate of immigrants in Malmö. In my study I make a discourse analysis of the discourse behind these two projects and study how they are motivated and how one conceptualise culture and integration in these documents.

The past years in Sweden has been infected by a discussion about immigration and immigrants, both spoken in politics and media. The aim of this essay is to study the attitude about immigrants in the third period of immigration in Sweden found in the local press. And also what image the press gave of immigrants. The study looks at Smålandsposten, which is a large local press in the Växjö area. During the period for this study was the attitude in the local press very negative. The studied articles in Smålandsposten shows a profound idea of a ?we? and ?them?.

The aim of the study is to examine different statements for and against regional identity in the research of the new organisation of the Swedish society. The aim is also to observe in what extend the Swedish committee of responsibility has had an awareness of the identity politics in its effort to improve the presumptions for the new, successful regional division.The questions are:1. In which ways do the opinions of the participant of the work of the committee of responsibility, coincide and differ when it comes to the importance of the regional identity in the case of a new regional division?2. How has the committee of responsibility worked on development of consciousness and mobilisation for the creation of the regional identity in its final report?A method called the argumentation analysis was used in this study.

This study aims to explain the Stuxnet-attack against Iran in 2009-2010 by using the IR-theory of structural realism. By doing so the theory also faces the challenge of the impact of the information revolution on security and international relations. The structural realism that is at hand is that of Kenneth Waltz and his Theory of International Politics from 1979.The study reaches the conclusion that Waltzs focus on the structure of the international system and the distribution of capabilities applies well to the case of Stuxnet as a cyber attack. The creators of the sophisticated Stuxnet, USA and Israel, also indicates that when it comes to this certain aspect of the information revolution and IR, states seem to still be the main actor. Finally the character of one of the major features of the Stuxnet-attack; the internet, is shown to have an anarchic structure that fits well as an extension of the realist view of the international system..

The purpose of this essay is to examine why some countries in the world decided to support Kosovo?s declaration of independence in 2008, while others did not. The essay is a type of case study, with Kosovo?s independence as the main focus. For the purpose of the essay, main focus will be on the United States of America, Russia, China and Serbia.

The aim of this essay is to give the reader an idea of how the European agricultural policies have developed, in regard of sustainable development, since Sweden became a member in the union 1995. The main aspect that?s been investigated is the issues regarding sustainable development and how the issues regarding the ecological farming methods have been dealt with. My research questions are:- How has the European environment- and agricultural politics changed since Swedenjoined the union in 1995?- What consequences have the changes had for ecological farming?The answers to the stated questions are that there have been several treaties in the field of environmental development of the agricultural policy, starting with the Maastricht treaty and ends up with the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming.

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how Swedish political parties gain knowledge of their voters. The assumptions taken in the thesis were that political parties are using same methods as businesses do to find interesting segments. To attain insight into the purpose of the thesis, two research questions were formulated: how are Swedish political parties obtaining insights in who their potential voters are? With the second question, an attempt is made to answer how the very same parties are using their knowledge about their voter segments. To find answers to those questions, personal interviews were performed with seven political parties.