Recently, there have been intense discussions about the humanities and their role in society. Internationally, as well as in a Swedish context, the humanities have been regarded to be in a state of crisis. However, these discussions usually demonstrate a lack of historical perspectives based on thorough empirical research. The notion of a crisis needs to be historicized.In this study, a case is being examined where the relationship between science and society was renegotiated. In the context of World War II, a discourse has been identified in a borderland between science and politics through an analysis of Swedish journals and anthologies during the time period 1937-1947.

AbstractAs human beings, we are all governed by our innate instinct that to kill another human being, or to just inflict pain on another, is to go against what makes us human. Still, it happens every day, far and near. Some of these killings happens in war-like situations, where atrocities against humanity occur. The international community has since the founding of UN in 1945, a duty to intervene where crimes against the human rights occur. This is a difficult task, because, in order to intervene and help those in need, the situation might postulate states violating states sovereignty.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

AbstractTitle: How does Europeanization effect Swedish alcohol policy? .Titel: Hur påverkar Europeiseringen svensk alkoholpolitik?Minor Thesis in Political Science, January 2008Author : Markus GustafssonTutor : Lennart BergfeldtVäxjö UniversityThis essay will deal with the influence which Europeanization has on domestic politics. The case I have chosen is Swedish alcohol policy. Thus, the purpose is to explore whether observed changes in Swedish alcohol policy in the years 1993-2005 can be explained by Swedens´s membership in the European Union. To reach this purpose the following questions need to be answered:? What is europeanization?? How has Swedish alcohol policy changed from 1993 to 2005?? Is it possible to connect the changes in Swedish alcohol policy to a process of Europeanizationprocess?The method in this essay has been a qulitative study of litterature.

The Saami, a Nordic indigenous people scattered over four countries, has for centuries been regarded as parts of the national populations of the countries in which they live. During the 19th century saami demands for greater influence resulted en several changes, among them the founding of a Swedish Saami Council in 1993. The council became a popularly elected, representative institution with an agenda of its own, but also a public authority answerable to the government. The decision to attribute the council this twofold role was unusual and, from a certain point of view, even controversial: it makes it difficult to determine the location of the power to act in saami-related issues and the legitimacy to do so.This essay is about how the twofold role came into existence, what it leads to and how the seemingly contradictive duality is managed. It has an institutional approach with theories concerning institutions and etnicity as well as institutional change and handling of complicated and ambiguous demands.

We have made a suggestion for a map based search tool used with a database containinginformation on natural disasters. The database is being developed by NCO (SwedishCentre for Lessons Learned from Incidents & Accidents).We examined both Swedish and international examples of databases on naturaldisasters. The examples that we found were often hard to get the hang of, due to poorcompilation. The problem, that is typical of the international examples, is that the processof data collection is not standardized, as it is performed by different organizations andcompanies with diverse demands on and needs for the database. Therefore, to keep itsymmetrical, there ought to be only one department with the overall responsibility for anational database on natural disasters in Sweden.The natural disaster we based our study on was the flooding in Arvika in the year 2000.We inspected the availability of data about the flooding, and found it to be satisfying.Through contact with the municipality of Arvika, by mail and telephone, and a visit at theArvika municipality office, we acquired reports on the flooding and the joint rescueoperation that followed, and also GIS layers showing the extension of the flooding..

This Bachelor thesis deals with the act of the British Labour Party when they recalled a referendum promised by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Tony Blair promised a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, but his successor Gordon Brown later recalled it when the Lisbon Treaty succeeded the Constitutional Treaty as the legal foundation of the European Union.The main purpose of this thesis was to with help from various theorethical frameworks explain why the Labour Party decided to do this, even if this decision gave the main opposition party, the Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories), the chance to heavily critisize the Labour Party, and picture them as traitors.The research questions were:? What are the reasons that the Labour Party went from being a Eurosceptical party, to become more pro-European?? Why did the Labour Party cancel the promised referendum on the new treaty of the European Union?Various answers were found for the first research question. Among the most important was that it was a part of the over all transition which led to the launch of New Labour.The second research question was answered with three explanatory models based on actions of the Labour Party on three arenas; the electoral arena (based on power, this model claims that the Labour Party act as they do because the know the Tories would not act differently if they were in office), the parliamentary arena (based on ideology, this model claims that Labour want the Lisbon Treaty because it has a stronger social dimension than earlier treaties) and the internal arena (based on the problem of identification, this model claims that the Labour Party identifies itself with the British government, and not just the voters, and are afraid of damaging Britain?s influence in the EU and International politics if Britain says ?no? to the Lisbon Treaty)..

The main purpose of this study is to examine celebrity candidates in the European Parliament election in Sweden and Finland. The theoretical background assumes that candidate voting is beneficial in the election to the European Parliament. Previous research also shows that there are some opponents towards candidate voting, claiming it personalizes politics and it might lead to celebrities getting elected simply because they are well known to the voters.This study is a comparative analysis and analyzes the differences between Sweden and Finland when it comes to celebrity candidates. Furthermore, Max Weber?s theory on leadership will be used to categorize the celebrity candidates further.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive. With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how university students, who are not members of a political party, experiencing existing selective and collective incentives for involvement in a political party. Furthermore, the study will highlight incentives which could help the political parties to increase their membership. The study is based on seven interviews and the respondents were selected after conducting a survey of students? political involvement. The interviews were analyzed through the theory of selective and collective incentives. The study shows that the incentives, both selective and collective, for involvement in a political party in general are weak and that the costs in terms of time, money and education are seen as too high.

The Third International Assessment of Educational Progress (TIMMS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) during the last decades regarding the results of mathematics teaching shows that China have a better performance than Sweden?s.Swedish teacher-guidelines focus on developing student?s individual interest and confidence for mathematics. In the Chinese teaching-guidelines for Mathematics Curriculum Standards, Ordninary Senior Secondary, the focus is given on: Elevate their mathematics literacy necessary for future citizenship and Development of citizen´s qualities (s.3).Teachers are the primary factors that impact teaching and learning of mathematics. Two teachers from Sweden and two from China were interviewed and their methods were compared in my study. The aim of my study was to understand mathematics teaching in China and Sweden.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empirical analysis is a case report taken from the Öresund region, a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark.

This study focused on how local politicians in Kalmar perceive journalists and their intertwined relationship. We based our study on the theoretical understanding of today?s media-centric democratic society. The ?adversary model? offered an understanding of the intricate relations between politicians and journalists.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.