The aim of this essay is to see how the IOGT, local politicians and the local newspaper acted in the city of Hedemora in Sweden in connection with the referendum held in 1922 whether or not to ban the use of alcoholic beverages. To accomplish this I have examined protocols from local IOGT-groups, the town council and the local newspaper Södra Dalarnes tidning. I find that the local IOGT not only worked with the issue of alcohol but served as an institution that deepened democracy and education in the local community through discussions, study circles and applying pressure on local politicians. The locally elected bodies in turn were generally in favour of the good work the IOGT did, although not always overwhelmingly so. Many of the local politicians that handled the issues of alcohol were themselves active members in organisations promoting absolutism.

AbstractThe aim of this study was to highlight who represents elderly immigrants and apply the theory of social exclusion. We chose channels for representation that we found important in relation to this group. The first part is a study of available litterature of the subject. We found three main arenas: participation in elections, participation in associations and clubs and representation in political institutions. The findings showed a democratic deficit among elderly immigrants, which gave an indication of social exclusion from the political arena and from participation in associations.For the second part we decided to concentrate on the arena of participation in associations and clubs that represent the elderly and/or immigrants.

This thesis deals with local identity and the workplace. We have taken part of stories dealing with local identity and the workplace, by using a qualitative method. We interviewed eleven men working at the same company. The group contained of men from urban areas as well as rural areas. The data from our interviews have been applied to theories of local identity and social theories by sociologists such as Durkheim, Simmel and Tönnies.

The aim of this study has been to investigate the significance of the newly started project Vimmerbymodellen for unaccompanied young refugees. This regarding to how the unaccompanied young refugees are participating in creating networks and meeting points in the local community. Vimmerbymodellen is described as an integration project where the nonprofit sector collaborates with the municipality. The empirical material has been collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews where five unaccompanied young refugees and four involved adults have been interviewed. The empirical material from these interviews has thereafter been analyzed through the concept of social capital, identity and empowerment.The main result of this study shows that participation in the project is expected to contribute to the creation of networks and meeting points which has significance for unaccompanied young refugees.

Children?s participation in their planning in health and social services is important. To make children?s needs more considered they need to be involved in the cision-making processes. Children have the ability to reflect.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine the experience of participation among first line managers within community home care. The study is based on eight interviews with first line managers operating in a metropolitan area in Sweden. A majority of the interviewees worked in private companies.We have used two theories to interpret our empiri: Lean Production and Human Resource Management. The analysis resulted in seven themes: economy, leadership, participation, view on the organization, first line manager, private or municipally operated organization and expectations on the manager. Our results showed that all the interviewees experienced that they were participant in the organization.

This master thesis explores the nature of public participation as a central and most current subject in the field of urban planning. A first impression exposes a seemingly unanalyzed consensus on the values and benefits which public participation provides the process of urban planning. The city may be a concern to all its inhabitants; hence knowledge and opinions of the local public are of great importance for the urban development. But is there really something new to these assumptions, and are the advantages of increased public participation in urban planning always obvious?  By using action research as a main method, I have put myself into the context of the Swedish municipality of Nacka and their projects dealing with the development of public participation.

Introduction: Reducing social inequality in health is a prioritized goal for public health on the global as well as the national and the local levels. Hälsoteket operates through health promotion to reduce inequality in health in the district of Angered in Göteborg, through the improvement of living habits and the wellbeing of the population.Aim: The aim of the study was to evaluate Hälsoteket in Angered through its participants? subjective experiences. Subsidiary aims were to explore participants? perceptions and opinions about Hälsoteket in Angered, how they perceive the health impact of their participation and their motivations for participating.Method: A qualitative method was used to fulfill the aim.

The aim with this study was to give and receive an insight of children?s participation during one day in a preschool. Answers we were interested in finding out were how pedagogues act in relation to children´s influence, participation and interests and how this shows in the pedagogical context. Our own interest of children´s participation was influenced by the new revised curriculum that took place in 2010. Nowadays the pedagogues? have to be more active and reflect and document children´s influence and participation, and therefore we wanted to use this opportunity to create a picture of how pedagogues deal with these new guidelines.We have with an ethnographic inspired approach performed a qualitative study with data collected during one day with focus on children´s influence, participation and interest in one preschool section.According to the result children?s participation and influence this day were controlled by the pedagogue.

The aim of this study was to examine young people?s experiences of participation within the intervention Contact Person. Three questions were asked concerning young people?s experience of participation, aspects that promoted/limited the young people?s experience and the significance they attached to the intervention. The findings in this study are based on phenomenological interviews with five teenagers within the intervention Contact Person.

Already in 1988, different levels of participation in the election between different districts of big cities in Sweden were noticed. The problem with low political participation in specific areas has almost always been theoretically explained through an individual perspective. This study is therefore focusing on the problem from a contextual perspective. The hypothesis for the study is as follows, in the case of Malmö the level of participation in elections are affected by social environment in which segregation will be the single highest factor. The dependent variable, participation in the election was tested by the independent variables representing social environment; origin, education, gainfully employed and income.

The hypothesis of this study is that the local government act in Sweden 1862 was an instrument for the state to keep its´ political influence on the local level. It did not open for local self-government. The swedish historians Dahlkvist and Strandberg description of the Swedish local government act support this hypothesis, as does the analysis of political scientists Pettersson and Söderlind. The general opinion that the local government act opened for local self-government does still exist among many swedish historians.This study had two aims. The first was to investigate the actual extent of self-government in Borgvik, a small municipality in Sweden during the period 1861-1924.

The purpose of this thesis is to give an understanding of how grocery stores relate to local foods. Through a case study representatives for two groceries in Norrbotten have been interviewed regarding why they supply local foods, how they try to influence customers to buy this, and how they decide upon the assortment of local foods. The result shows that groceries supply local foods in order to supply a wide range of products and to mediate social responsibility, in order to create customer loyalty. Concerning how the groceries try to influence customers to buy local foods the result cannot give any clear-cut view. Instead it shows that a grocery that actively works to influence customers to buy local foods markets them in specific ways, while the opposite applies to a grocery that does not actively work for this.

The failure of Structural Adjustment Programs and its neoliberal policies to effectively reduce poverty have led to the creation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) by The World Bank and International Monetary Fund. PRSP, connected to both the Comprehensive Development Strategy and the HIPC initiative, are built on the notion of national ownership and stakeholder participation and thereby expand potential conditionality to include matters of governance. This thesis examines the evolution of PRSP and how the process of participation affects national governance structures. By analyzing the role of rules and norms within the World Bank and IMF from a historical point of view the thesis explains why the participation process has developed the way it has. It concludes that neoliberal norms, still at heart within the World Bank and IMF, have an impact on the process of participation within nation states and thereby its governance structure.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children?s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children?s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children?s participation and manifestations of children?s participation in everyday library work were also investigated.