Uppsatsen har för avsikt att undersöka hur den nypaganistiska, och i första hand nordamerikanska, rörelsen Church of All Worlds reagerar mot förändring och institutionalisering. För att förstå institutionaliseringsprocessens bakomliggande krafter och identifiera dess konsekvenser, är det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen att utifrån en fallstudie av Church of All Worlds undersöka hur organisationen under sina verksamhetsår förändrats i fråga om (1) förhållande till samhället, (2) ideologi, (3) organisatorisk struktur och (4) ledarskap. Utgångspunkten är att betrakta rörelsen som dels religiös och spirituell, dels organisatorisk och ekonomisk, varför uppsatsen lutar sin teoribildning mot både religions- och samhällsvetenskapen och mot organisationsteorin. Som samhälleliga samt organisatoriska faktorer till Church of All Worlds institutionalisering finner vi den postmoderna motreaktionen mot industrisamhällets missförhållanden samt kritiken mot existensen av den objektiva sanningen. Institutionaliseringens följder är emellertid att rörelsen slutligen upptas som en del av det sen-moderna samhällssystemet.

This thesis explores how participants and leaders in ?Alpha?, an introductory course to the Christian faith, relate to and practice faith in Sweden. Sweden has often been viewed as a secular country where religion has been seen as irrational, outdated, and as something that belongs to the other but not to the self. Through the eyes of Swedish Christian practitioners, this study explores what kind of relationship my informants have to Christian faith and God while also exploring how living in a secular or post-secular context affects their way of believing and interpreting God and the stories written in the Bible. Furthermore, understanding of the Bible is viewed in the light of the concepts ?mythos? and ?logos? which highlights where Western explanatory models fail to explain and understand mythological stories.

The Church of Sweden had barely 6.5 million members in 2012. Just over 1% of the members visit a church service regularly every Sunday. The number of visitors in worship services has diminished continuously for a very long time. From 1990 to 2010, the annual number of visitors at the main worship services has decreased by 50% from 9 million to about 4.5 million. The service activities can still be maintained at the current level because the many passive members still pays their membership fee.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

The topic of homosexuality was until recently a taboo in Russian public discussion, but has during the last years become a hotly debated issue. Analyzing what I call the new homophobic narrative I isolate and examine two ways of ?othering? homosexuals, constructing them as strangers, when sexual minorities are discussed in today´s Russia. Sexual deviants are portrayed as threats to the nation and are connected to the West and its influence. Using analytical tools from queer theory, security studies and postcolonial approaches I discuss different ways of configuring the relation between nation and sexuality, identities that are interwoven in the homophobic narrative.

This thesis is based on qualitative text analyses of four works of fiction, used as teaching materials in the school subject of Swedish, from a queer theoretic perspective. The purpose of the study is to examine how sexual identities and expressions are being presented, as well as what positions are offered a reader, in relation to the heterosexual norm. Basis for this thesis are the schools fundamental values, which highlights the importance that intolerance be confronted through both knowledge and active measures, and the syllabus, which states that fiction should be viewed as a tool for identity development as well as an understanding of the outside world.The analyses reveals a distinct connection between the generally accepted heterosexual norm and a professed (or taken for granted) heterosexuality which is being carried out by the characters or the books as a whole. Out of the four titles only one disputes this norm, by offering a wide range of sexual identities and expressions. These expressions, however, are being invalidated ? through insufficient ability to relate to the norm ? or made invisible ? through an imagined heterosexuality which, by superiority over other expressions, excludes them..

In this essay, I make a queer feminist analysis of Mats Strandberg?s and Sara Bergmark Elfgren?s teenage novel ?Cirkeln?, which is about six teenage girls who learn that they are witches with a mission to save the world from demons. Using Judith Butler's theories, I examine the norms of sex/gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality found in the text and how these standards are created. I also analyze whether, and if so how, these standards may change when the magical elements enter the text.I also discuss the fact that older Gothic novels with magical elements often have been regarded as queer through history. .

Part of the great acclaim for Anne Rice?s Interview with the Vampire (1976) is due to the wayshe renews the vampire story by reinforcing the traditional erotic dimension and, as a result ofthis, the way she examines the theme of homosexuality already present in Bram Stoker?sDracula (1897). However, this essay shows that Rice?s novel stands in much closer relation toVladimir Nabokov?s Lolita (1955) than to Dracula and that pedophilia, not homosexuality, isthe facet of sexuality which here first and foremost comes into focus. Through a comparisonbetween Interview with the Vampire and Lolita emerges a surprising coherence on the levelsof plot and characterization, which in itself is of importance for our understanding of Rice?snovel as well as Lolita, but it is also interesting to note to what degree these two novels sharea world of concepts and ideas common to actual pedophiles.

Tidigare studier visar att sekulariseringen inneburit stora förändringar på det religiösa området. Studiens syfte var att beskriva hur präster inom Svenska kyrkan i Gävle uppfattade sekulariseringens påverkan. Fokus låg på att beskriva de kvalitativt olika uppfattningar som fanns, då dessa förhoppningsvis skulle ge en ökad och fördjupad vetskap kring sekulariseringens olika verkningar. Det empiriska materialet samlades in via kvalitativa intervjuer där åtta präster gav uttryck för sina uppfattningar. Studien visar på att kvalitativt olika uppfattningar fanns.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the female experience as it is spoken of in the novel Sindhia written by Rut Hillarp (1954) and how the main character in the book violates the experience from a queer perspective. My aim is to through a close reading highlight a number of discourses that underpin the book's imminent theme of love and submission.According to Norman Faircloughs critical-discourse analysis, the text one reads produces a certain amount of discourses that one consumes. This way there is a dialectical interaction that can be set into a practical analysis together with a suitable academic perspective. This is the method I use in this thesis.The academic perspective I add isJudith Butler's queer theoriessupported by Michel Foucaults social genealogyin order to understand/analyze the woman?s position in relation to a social empirical history.I came to the conclusion that Sindhia produces the woman's discourse from an ancient biblical/ mythological time up to modern time.

The aim of the essay is to explore how so called ?safe spaces? are built, and the part that creativity can play in this construction. The essay also explores the duality of idea-based social work that at the same time strives to support vulnerable groups and strives to make social and political changes. The essay has its empirical base in the RFSL Ungdom project ?Tusen bilder, tusen ord? (A thousand pictures, a thousand words).

The purpose of this study is to present a critical analysis of how certain themes of the Norse pagan religion are portrayed in ten selected textbooks used for Religious Science education in grades one through nine. The themes included in the analysis are; the description of the transition from the Norse Pagan religion to Christianity; Adam of Bremen?s portrayal of human sacrifice, and lastly Ibn Fadhlan?s characterization of widow burning. By using a critical knowledge text analysis, and applying a theoretical starting point that pedagogical material analyses and interprets events from a specific perspective; in this case from a Christian perspective, I have from the study concluded that the chapters covering the Norse pagan religion in these textbooks have a distinguished Christian bias seen as the norm. The themes analysed in this study all describe different phenomena in a similar way and make use of the same sources, even though these are often questioned.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how same-sex couples experience the second-parent adoption process. To assist us, we have used our questions: how do the couples describe their experiences of the adoption process? Which are the couples? stories about the experience of contact with the involved professionals? What are the opportunities and barriers for same-sex couples to start a family? How do the couples describe their experience of reactions from the community and society, and how do they think the future will look like for same-sex couples? This study has been achieved through a qualitative approach. The empirical data is based on seven semi-structured interviews with same-sex couples or pair members that want to or have had a second-parent adoption. The theory we have used for analyzing the results is phenomenology with focus on queer theory, heteronormativity, and power.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur socialarbetare i olika kommuner i Sverige resonerar kring homosexuella som vill bli fosterföräldrar. Mina övriga frågeställningar är hur de beskriver ett bra familjehem, och hur de resonerar om barnets perspektiv (när det gäller barn som placeras i samkönade familjehem). Jag har använt mig av den kvalitativa forskningsmetoden genom att telefon-intervjua sju socialarbetare. De teorier som jag har valt, och som jag har använt mig av för att analysera mitt insamlade material är: Socialkonstruktivismen, Gayle Rubins modell om de sexuella hierarkierna, och Queer teorin. Det visar sig att homosexuella fosterföräldrar fortfarande är en minoritetsgrupp. Men trots det betonar socialarbetarna att fosterföräldrarnas sexuella identitet inte ska påverka utredningen.