This thesis scrutinises the material on post World War II Swedish architecture produced by the Swedish Public diplomacy organisation "Svenska institutet" ("The Swedish Institute") during the period of 1945 through 1976. The outset is the dilemma encountered by every such organisation: how can the projected narrative of the own nation relate to as many countries as possible, without becoming too general? And how can the organisation address specific countries, without excluding others?By employing a two-sided model of interpreting the material, where it on the one hand is interpreted from the universal properties projected on the narrated architecture, and on the other hand from the particular ideological notions related to the same, the thesis suggests that the Swedish Institute continously relates the architecture to a West-European and American context by consistently connecting its universal properties to particular ideological notions orientated towards the West.The results underline the malleability in regard to ideological notions connected to modernist architecture. Earlier research in the Swedish context has focussed on how modernist architecture in Sweden, under the local tag "funktionalism", was established in regard to a Swedish audience as a particular Swedish architecture by relating it to a alleged continuos Swedish tradition, as well as to notions of a a progressive welfare state. By studying a similar material, though aimed towards a foreign audience, the thesis suggests that these allegations constitue an elucidatory example of how national and ideological narratives can form within the framework of technological-ideological dynamics of modernist architecture.

This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm.

AbstractIn this essay I discuss narrative in the reconstruction of national identity. I discuss exclusion as a side effect in thick identities. That means that thick national identities always exclude another part. From this I´ve discussed the Swedish identity and its effects in the European co-operation. Identity is a discourse that reconstructs linguistically.

Sustainable development is a concept that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways in different contexts. This essay argues that the discourse of "ecological modernization" has strongly influenced the way in which the concept of ?sustainability? has been constructed in Swedish environmental policy. This interpretation of the concept of sustainability offers the possibility of combining economic growth with ecological sustainability which stands in contrast to the assumptions of Deep Ecology and Green Theory. The aim of this essay is to explore how the concept of sustainability is being formulated in environmental policy both on a national level and in the city of Malmö.Considering these issues in a specific context, this essay focuses on city planning that is as an important instrument to promote urban sustainability both on national and local levels.

This essay examines upper secondary school pupils as well as the Swedish National Agency for Educations views on the education in subject of religion. How they describe its purpose, what content the topic should address, how the education should be implemented and what influence the pupils should have over their own studies. This to examine how the views of pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Education correlate and to analyze how it possibly can affect the pupil?s motivation. The survey is conducted by semi-forging tured interviews and text analysis in order to ascertain the pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Educations opinions on the issues.

This work studied the information flow and information handling among different parties. The study focused on how educational materials on national tests from The Swedish National Agency for Education is managed by school principals and teachers and how the information is passed on to students. The data material was based on observations and interviews at two different high schools. Six teachers and their classes and principals participated in the study. The Agency was also interviewed.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..

The purpose of our study was to investigate whether national adoptions could be an option within the childcare system in Sweden. We wanted to create an understanding of how the professionals agree to this. We have implemented a comprehensive literature review as well as a qualitative study, taking benefit of a phenomenological method of analysis. The result of our study shows that national adoptions cannot replace foster placements but be a good addition to foster homes. Adoption gives the children a more secure and stable life..

By the same time as the recent enlargement of the European Union, where Poland became a member, it was officially stated that the gender mainstreaming-policy was to be integrated into every area of EU. NGO:s working as entrepreneurs for the gender mainstreaming norm in Poland supported the accession largely because they believed it would help spreading the norm also on a national level. Qualitatively analyzing the Polish case and the difficulties gender mainstreaming as a norm candidate meets with I contrast expectations with what could actually be EU:s role in this matter.Arguing that EU is a context with room for spreading norms by both bargaining and socialization, this paper takes a social constructivist approach. Gender mainstreaming as a norm is difficult for EU to apply on their members, and thus was not widely discussed during accession negotiations. In the same time.

The globalisation of the world is believed by some to homogenise individuals from different national cultures. However, the values and norms of an individual are deeply rooted in their national culture and are therefore difficult to change. Since birth these values and norms are learnt through interaction with others within a specific national culture. The differences in values of a national culture are shown in the cornerstones of the nation. These cornerstones are language, aesthetics, religion and social institutions.

Within the political science research it is common to examine the effects on the national parliaments caused by European integration. In this Bachelor Thesis the aim is instead to show what involvement of the national parliaments in the European Union implicates to the European integration process.The object of examination is the introduction of the parliaments as supervisors of draft legislative acts, this is also known as ?the Early Warning Mechanism?, through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. An analysis of answers from the national parliaments in the tests of three pilot cases, conducted by the COSAC, is made with help of Institutional theory and an Europeanization perspective.The main findings show that the mechanism of early warning probably will not become an obstacle for continued European integration, but it could slow down the process in some areas. Most probably though is that the mechanism forces the national parliaments to adapt and to be better equipped to react at events taking place at the European level.

AbstractBackground: Countries can be seen as brands (nation brands) with brand values that transmitto the country?s products. Country-of-origin (COO), the brands nationality, links the productto an associative network of cultural shared national stereotypes. Through associating thebrand with a country or a region, the credibility of the brand can increase and strengthen thebrand. Therefore COO is used in marketing to position a brand.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how luxury fashion brands communicatetheir national identity through analyzing their advertising.

In this paper we explore the relations between context and feedback generated in three user-centered evaluations of a flash-based game. Whether it?s the social context, the physical context or the degree of intrusion from the evaluator, they all contribute to the quality of the feedback received. The selection of test subjects is a narrow process, which gives the above mentioned factors different meaning. Contextual factors have shown to influence the feedback given within both usability and user-experience.

The main purpose of this study is to show how narrative can be understood as cultural practice, how it can be said to function both internally and externally, and to ask questions about how the narrating subject, through the organizing of narrative, positions it self and mediates between the different discoursive contexts of which it is a part. This is done by an analisys of how six swedish soldiers tells the tale of how they came to choose a military carrer and why they have served or want to serve in peace-keeping missions abroad. The source material is primarily collected through unstructured interviews with theese soldiers, but also through textual analysis of a soldier blog. Theoretically the study draws on a combination of the discourse theory of Michel Foucault, narrative theory, Richard Jenkins theory of the internal-external dialectic of identifikation and intersectionality to construct a framework that allows the narratives to be deconstructed and understood as discoursive products of both the military contexts as such and the larger cultrual context that surrounds it. The conclusions of this study suggests that the organizing of soldier narratives are a complex and multifaceted process, in which the soliders must balance between the ideals, values and norms of the military context while also taking into account how society at large views and interprets the practices and forms of military life.