Our purpose is to display the meaning of fan clubs and further reveal the potential value of fans. This study has an abductive approach with a qualitative data collection, where empirical material has been collected through a micro netnographic study along with qualitative interviews. IKEA and IKEA Family have been applied together with virtual fan clubs to study the fan club phenomenon. The study is based on prior literature concerning loyalty, customer clubs and brand relations. This theoretical framework was chosen to fulfil the purpose of unveiling the meaning of fan clubs and the potential value of fans.

Title: Creativity and blockings: Non-musicians? experiences of music making The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the ability of music-making can benefit from and/or be inhibited by extra-musical factors, such as one's own or other people's opinions, criticism, prejudice and values. An experiment was carried out, where 10 nonmusicians were instructed to solve a compositional problem (writing pieces of music to a picture) which had been expressed in two different ways, one of which (A) was intended to block creativity and the other (B) to facilitate the creative process. All subjects also had to answer a questionnaire, where their experiences in connection with the task and their attitudes towards music and composition were mapped. The result was that all subjects succeeded in composing one or more pieces of music, regardless of which instruction they had been given.

The interest for food and cooking has probably never engaged the people of Sweden as much as it does today. Especially cookbooks are selling better than ever which has been a quite constant trend since the mid 90's. This study explores the connection between visual communication in Swedish cookbooks and the post-modern values which have influenced the market climate and the visual culture. I have used a theoretical framework as reference consisting of theories of semiotics, visual rhetoric, marketing communications and postmodernism. I have been studying six cookbooks, three from the late 00's and three from the early 90's, from the two separate angles of their graphic design and photographic material.

The objective of this graduate work is to gain a better understanding in how pre-school educators are able to work with music in their pre-school activity to promote child development. We also want to enlighten possible factors for the development of children based on music and to form our own ideas of whether teachers choose to apply music in their didactic practice or not.The point of this essay has been to attempt answering on what importance music makes for children's development and learning in pre-school, and how teachers could work with music in pre-school in order to promote children?s development. Our data consists of six interviews and two observations realized at a pre-school in Södertälje.We took heed from the theories laid out by Lev Vygotsky's which describe four different levels of development that includes educational development in social interaction between teacher and child. Our choice of this theory is inspired by our seeking deeper understanding of Vygotsky's theory´s application to the aesthetic approach in the interaction in meaning making and learning.The result of our study confirms previous theory and research in that music as a form of expression has a major impact on children's development.

This essay aims to explore the philosophical meaning of the expression ?present and real? in Clara ? or, On Nature?s Connection to the Spirit World by F. W. J. Schelling.

The relation between the cave and the circumpolar light conditions has long been a part of the interpretation of the meaning of the Norwegian cave art. This paper explores the relationship by trading the concept of a sensory dichotomy between light and darkness for that of a perceptual relationship between the paintings, the environment and the light..

Snow White is one of the most popular fairytales to our time. There has been much research on the subject. `Lips red as blood- a structural analysis of Christian symbols´ in Walt Disneys and Rupert Sanders versions of Snow White` by Emma Svanström aims not to give a final answer to how Snow White should be interpreted. But rather the objective is to examine two versions in the search for any possible Christian influences and changes in such over time. The two versions are Walt Disney?s Snow white and the seven dwarfs and Rupert Sanders Snow White and the huntsman.

This is a study concerning the conventions surrounding death and it´s rituals during the latter half ofthe 21th century. The study´s main material is the official magazine of SBF - Sweden´s funeral association ? Memento. By studying the undertaker and the self-image of his services at an intervalof years from 1945 to 2005, one is able to notice certain changes of values concerning what afuneral, a chest and a tombstone really is ? or rather how the meaning of these symbols of death slowly shifts from the ?dignity? of death towards the self-expression of the individual.In the 1940´s towards the 80´s, there is much talk of giving the dead a ?dignified? funeral and burial, and this is how the undertaker defends himself against public critique of his or her´sprofession´s ?trade with death?.

AbstractThe aim of this essay is to analyse what roll repression has had in the making of my unpublished collection of poems entitled Hopp som i hare. I examine how the autobiographical subject abortion has influenced the writing process and the outcome of the poems. By presenting literature that?s been important in the making of the collection I show some thoughts and ideas about Post Abortion Stress Disorder, a diagnosis without scientific grounds. In a discussion I go through the whole writing process from subject and genre choice through the revisions till the final version that were sent to be commented by the class in creative writing at Växjö University 2008.

This case study examined what impact the neurological disorder Asperger?s syndrome has on the line of reasoning about religion and spirituality. Also, the question of whether the four informants showed any tendency to use the cognitive tools calledtheory of mind (ToM), existential theory of mind (EToM) and hypersensitive agency detection device (HADD) or not was put forth. From the interviews five themes were extracted: a stereoscopical view upon the world, thoughts on physical causality, prayer used as one-way communication, spiritual agency and intentionality, as well as existential and social questions. These themes were subsequently matched with theories on ToM, EToM and HADD.

Glimmingehus is one of the most well preserved medieval castles in Sweden. This essay examines why it was built ? what were the intentions of the Lord, Jens Holgersen? Even though we?ll never be able to ask him, the answer to the question ?why?? can give us aninsight of how a man of his position thought in the Late Medieval time. To answer the question the castle are explored through three different angles ? the Lord of the castle and thesocial context the castle was built in, the landscape surrounding Glimmingehus ? has Jens Holgersen left any structural clues there, and finally the castle itself ? how has a potential visitor experienced Glimmingehus? The methods are greatly influenced by Gunhild Eriksdotter, who in her book Bakom fasaderna explores the possibilities of an analysis ofexperience together with an analysis of function in the archaeology of buildings.

This report describes a study of how the teachers in Sweden are working with the dialog in their classrooms. The aim was to find out how the teachers are using the dialog in their teaching. And if they think that the dialog has a meaning for the pupils learning, and how they think the pupils learn. Even the difficulties whit the use of dialog in the classrooms and which in the classroom should speak the most was examined. The methods that I used in this qualitative report were interviews and observations of four teachers in the primary school.The research questions in this report were:Which meaning do the teachers think that dialog affects the pupils learning?How does the teachers work whit dialog in their classrooms?Who is leading the dialog in the classroom?Which are the difficulties when working with dialog in the classrooms?I found out that the teachers view on knowledge belonged together with how they worked with the dialog.

This paper examines, through questionnaire, how young students in upper secondary school in Malmo experience social integration. It also contain what they think should be done in order to improve the integration between youth that are ethnic Swedish and youth that have a foreign background. To understand the subject we started with a review over Swedish integration politic and its influence over Malmo and social integration in the country. We have used such theoretical starting points as identity and ethnicity in relations to the social surroundings, social affinity theory and flexible mindedness, making of groups among youth and factors to promote social integration. Our conclusion is that the experience of social integration between the two groups depends on how you experience yourself.

Choir singing is one of the most popular national movements in Sweden but the knowledge of the meaning of this activity for health and well being from the choir singers? own experiences is limited. The purpose of this study was therefore to develop useful knowledge about the meaning of choir singing for participating persons from a health perspective. The data was collected through qualitative interviews with six different choir singers and went after that through a comprehensive analysis which resulted in four main categories: an oasis in the existence; possibilities of meetings and solidarity; goals and musical development; and physical and emotional well-being. The results showed that the choir activity represents a place where the singers can escape the demands and the stress factors of everyday life and where they get the opportunity of meaningful relations with other people.

The aim of this study was to gain an understanding about how people with a former alcohol abuse expresses and gives meaning to feelings of guilt and shame in autobiographical books. In particular the purpose of the study was to find out how the authors writes about feelings of guilt and shame, whether it was expressed explicitly or implicitly, and which meaning the authors gives to feelings of guilt and shame and how these feelings are related to each other. We randomly selected 8 autobiographical books by using different criterias. The foundation of this study was social constructionism, which is also a foundation for one of our analysis methods: discourse analyse. This analysis method was used for the analysis of the expressions that were made in an explicit way.