During the 1960s and 1970s an increased interest in Native Americans can be seen in Sweden, e.g. through the establishment of organizations such as the Indian Club of Sweden. The aim of this thesis is to study the portrayal of Native Americans and its role through Albin Widén, a Swedish author, ethnologist and member of the Indian Club, and his non-fictional works on the Swedish migration to America, Swedish-America and Swedish contacts with Native Americans. The study is divided into four parts. The first part looks at the portrayal of the Native Americans in Widén?s writings, in comparison with Euro-Americans? and Europeans? traditional stereotypic images of a good and a bad Indian.

Since studies points out declining interest in science among students in Swedish schools, I have in this paper chosen to examine how some students at the Social Science Programme are experiencing the lessons in Natural Science and how to make lessons more interesting according to these students.The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of how teachers would develop new perspectives and tools to make lessons in Natural Science more interesting. I also wanted to investigate whether an intercultural perspective could be a possible tool to increase students? interest and motivation.As a theoretical framework, I have assumed Vygotskij's sociocultural perspective, Habermas's theory of deliberative conversations and an intercultural perspective. Through a qualitative approach, I conducted interviews with students and teachers. The main results showed that students felt that natural Science lessons were too theoretical and undemocratic and that they wanted to have more student interactions, such as discussions and group works.

This work is about collecting and wonderment. It starts with an interest for the renaissancephenomenon wunderkammer, and via my own attic it goes to translating an interpreting asmall object of wonderment. The final pieces can be described as a collection of objectsrelated to each other..

AbstractThe Swedish agricultural organisation, LRF, stands in front of many changes and the work with the changes in the organisation has caused some conflicts at the top. Is it like Michels say that it's a few people at the top that rules? The case with LRF shows to be something different, since the president Caroline Trapp was re-elected. The election committee proposed a new president, but the assembly had another opinion and re-elected Caroline Trapp. This shows that the opinions at the top were not the same as among the members of the organisation and the election committee couldn?t rule over them.In this essay I try to understand what kind of organisation LRF is and what made this case special.

This thesis explores how art produced in the former GDR has been looked upon, handled and exhibited after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Swedish Art History has paid little attention to art in the GDR. The debate starting in the 50s between the spokesmen for abstract art and the defenders of figuration restrained for a long period the ability to look upon art from the GDR without prejudices. This led to a rejection of all figurative art in the GDR and sweeping judgmental attitudes, like it´s all ?kitsch?.

Through interviews with children of ages 4-5 years old and by observing children children at play at three preschools with different types of outdoor surroundings, I have investigated if the preschools outdoor surroundings have any influences on the children´ choice of play. The hypothesis was that natural surroundings can entice children´s interest in nature being in it and play. I have also investigated if the children know why it is important to be outdoors and if they know it has a positive influence on their health.The result of my investigation is that the children play about the same games at the three different preschool gardens, but at the preschool with more natural surroundings, the children have more contact with plants and animals, and could learn of the different phenomena of nature by the preschool teacher answering their questions. Most of the children in the interviews know it´s useful to be outdoors and be on the move and get fresh air, but many of them thought it was most important to play. By being outdoors the children get exercise, fresh air, play and at the same time they establish an understanding of the nature and a healthier life..

Syftet med vår studie var att att se vilka diskurser som finns kring barnperspektivet bland socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter. Genom att identifiera diskurser kring detta begrepp var även målet att kunna bidra med ny kunskap kring hur barnperspektivet kommer till utryck och tolkas av utredarna. Vi har använt oss av kvalitativa enkäter med öppna frågor. Enkäterna delades ut till socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter i åtta kommuner i Sverige. Resultatet har sedan tagits fram med hjälp av diskursanalys.

This thesis aims to investigate the information habits of peoplewith a serious interest in music. What information needs do theyexperience, what information sources do they seek out to fulfillthese needs and what part does the public libraries play in theirinformation habits?To answer these questions a qualitative approach was used. Fourrespondents with a serious interest in music were interviewed.The theoretic framework was based on Robert A. Stebbins theoryon serious leisure and Karen E.

The technical achievements that have occurred in recent years have led to a greater use of the Internet around the world. Today, more and more people are using virtual communities, a place where communication occurs with people who have similar interest. Due to the option of being an anonymous user, the concept of trust plays a big part in how virtual communities are working. It is therefore of interest to investigate how trust develops between users in virtual communities. This report asks the following question:"How is trust formed between users at a virtual community?"A qualitative and netnographical study was conducted to answer the question above.

Regulation of web bots is an analysis of the interest and a collection of discussions about the phenomena web bots. The section that contains the result from the interviews brings up the question about ethical and legal actions and the opposite to those. How the regulation could work is also discussed in the section with the results from the interviews. The discussions were produced by people whose background in one case or another can relate to the phenomena web bots. In that way this study was limited to few, but more profound interviews which would enable analyses of web bots existence.

The aim of this thesis has been to analyze and interpret several different discourses in Japan and from the findings see how the Ainu people and their existence in Japan have been defined in today's Japan and in who's interest it is to keep it this way. My findings was that the Japanese nation in all channels of society are reinforcing and perpetuating the belief that it constitutes an ethnically homogenous nation and that there exists no ethnic problems in the country. I found that schoolbooks don?t give adequate information about the Ainu people and its history, and the Japanese press is reinforcing the status quo by their selective silence and limited coverage on issues concerning the Ainu. The government has defined and legitimized the problem of Ainu within the framework of culture and tradition.

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

The Capturetheory wants to give an alternative explanation for the need of regulation. From this point if view the government does not have enough information to make an optimal regulation. There is a possibility for different interest groups to take advantage of the political arena by rent- seeking behaviour. An industry may be willing to be regulated to protect itself from competition. The objective of this paper is to account for the pros and cons of the theory of regulatory capture and also if it can be applied to the Swedish market of pharmaceuticals.

AbstractBachelor essay in Pedagogy by Johan Lidén &Kristian Sagfors, 2011."Genus i gymnasieskolan: En oengagerande fråga?".Supervisor: Zeki YalcinGender and gender equality in our school system has throughout the years become a well researched subject, however most of that research has focused on the lower levels of compulsory school. The upper secondary school has not gotten the same attention.We have chosen to explore how social science teachers in upper secondary school treat the subject of gender and gender equality, what strategies they apply in the classroom and how their pupils respond to the subject.We wanted to get access to their classrooms so we could do an ethnographical study to find the answers to how their lessons were planned and executed, if different teachers made different didactic choices depending on the orientation of the class. As our work progressed we ran in to an interesting problem which ultimately made us rethink the purpose of this paper.In our pursuit of respondents we contacted many schools by e-mail and later visited the schools to find participants. This proved difficult as we were met with a wall of silence and lack of interest.

This thesis uses statistical methods to investigate if political appointees working for the Swedish government are good representatives for the members of the ruling party. This is a relevant question since the number of political appointees and the political fields in which they are employed have increased. Some say that this is a sign of presidentialism, which in this context means that the prime minister and his cabinet are becoming more independent from parliament and supporting party. The research is done by comparing the political appointees with an select elite of party members regards to socioeconomic background, which interest that are promoted in society and ideology. The consequences of differences on these characteristics between political appointees and the party elite could be that some interest in society are wrongly overrepresented while others are wrongly underrepresented by the unelected political appointees.