The national spatial planning guidelines and the subsequent legal regulation in the Natural Resources Act and the Environmental Code has been a part of the Swedish planning system for almost 40 years. In the recent years, critics have claimed that the regulations are outdated and does not work the way it was intended. This paper examines closer why it is perceived that the regulations does not work, with a focus on how the national interests are managed in the municipal planning. Why is the national interests not applied in the municipal planning as intended? Is the error in the system or in the implementation of it? The aim of this essay is to study the gap between theory and practice by studying how the land management provisions in the Environmental Code is applied in five selected municipalities.

AbstractDue to the success of the Populist Party Sverigedemokraterna in the Swedish election of 2006, the daily paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet published a number of columns written by well-known academics, writers and debaters. Their aim was to address the question of why this happened in the election and what it is in the Swedish society today that brought forward these trends. The first and the last word was given to the writer Fredrik Ekelund, and therefore the debate was named Ekelunddebatten.The debaters are fighting to present their view of the world as the only option when categorizing different societal groups and appointing themselves as group representatives. My aim is to unravel these different conceptions of the world and to do this I use the Dicourse Analysis as a method. I discuss the results with Critical Discourse Theory as a theoretical base and also from the view of the current societal discourses: the working class discourse, the multicultural discourse and the discourse of political correctness.I mainly observe four different conceptions of the world with different posing of problems.

Nationalism during the early 20th century, was often shaped around efforts to create feelings of fellowship within the frontiers. Fellow feelings was considered as a necessity to convince the people that their efforts served mutual goals.Beginning in the 19th century, the European nations experienced a great many projects for this purpose. In the early 20th century the efforts grew. The danger of war and the competition for economic power, contributed the increase of nationalist movements. At the same time, many influential intellectuals also expressed apprehensions about the urbanized way of life; measures were necessary to secure the future success of the nation.The national movements in Sweden, played a prominent role in the creation of a greater patriotic feeling.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women?s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood?s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 ? 2013.

This final project includes an analysis and a programme proposal for the area Bergsbrunna södra. The area is situated along the railway between Uppsala ? Stockholm, just south of Uppsala city. A new railway station is planned here, which make the area attractive as residential area. There are several values to take into consideration when developing an area. An extensive analysis and valuation may define and protect different characters and values, and also find the places most suitable to build upon. The area consists of three separate characters of landscape: the wide open cultivated fields, the hilly wooden ground and the more varying little valley. There are visual, cultural, social and ecological values to preserve. The south part of the area is woods with high natural values that borders to a national park in the natural forest of Lunsen.

The Swedish Armed Forces is a public institution and consequently obliged to follow Swedish and international legislation. Thus, they are subjected to contrarious demands from different actors operating in its high-technological and high-institutional environment: to be a legitimate institution and at the same time operate with a high level of efficiency. This thesis is conducted with the aim of investigating whether The Swedish Armed Forces' steering document for gender equality is used to achieve visible and quantifiable results or if the document constitute a medium for reverberating legitimacy. To answer the research question, we applied a critical discourse analysis on the relevant documents and on the conducted semi-constructed interviews with members from different levels and positions in the organizational hierarchy. Subsequently, we came to the conclusion that the Swedish Armed Forces manage the demands for efficiency and legitimacy, which are forced upon them from the technological and institutional environment, by talking about them.

Books and reading are important elements in cultural policy. On 1 January 2002 VAT on books and magazines was reduced from 25 per cent to 6 per cent. The purpose was to increase reading in all sections of the population. A special Book Price Commission was appointed to follow and examine price trends and to work for an enhancement of reading in all groups of the Swedish population. But what form of reading are the BPC talking about? With a theoretical point of departure in the theory of power and discourse by Michel Foucault the aim of this thesis is to explore if there is an existing discourse about reading and, if so, how this discourse is operating in the BPC reports.

?How does the Turkish debate appear concerning the EU-discourse in relation to political conditionality? Is Turkey accepting the demands that are being made?? These questions are answered in this thesis through a qualitative document analysis of the debate concerning EU as it is in Turkish newspapers and statements made by Turkish political representatives. The debate is used to describe the association?s process in a candidate country through investigating how the process and the relationship between EU and Turkey are discussed within the country. The national debate is then used to compare with the accession process for the Central and Eastern European countries based on conditionality to discover if Turkey is different from other candidate countries and if so explain why.

This thesis examines the reasons to why railway projects conducted by Banverket (Swedish National Rail Administration) could be expected to cause significant effects on the environment, on which grounds the County Administrative Board and Swedish National Rail Administration base their decisions/assumptions and highlight regional differences between the different Swedish national rail administrations regions. Total 24 railway projects, conducted or being conducted, during the time period 2001 - January 2010 have been analyzed and studied. These projects represent eight different measures/activities which are dispersed throughout all five of the Swedish National Rail Administration´s different regions. Swedish legislations demands that the planner of a new railway project shall first conduct a pre-study and then conduct a public consultation which provides the participants an opportunity to provide input. The County Administrative Board shall then decide if the project could cause significant effects on the environment.

Today, nine out of ten municipalities are active on social media and it has become increasingly popular among municipalities that make use of placemarketing to promote their particular region. A problem that is raised in this study is that the population of the municipalities in northern Sweden often is in decline. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a democratic-controlled organization such as Luleå Municipality uses the social media Facebook in its placemarketing, to highlight a place of scale and to attract new residents and stakeholders to move to or visit the city. In order to answer the purpose I have with the help of a critical discourse analysis examined how Luleå Municipality using social media Facebook in their marketing of Luleå as a place. The results were then analyzed using theories of placemarketing, Norrland and the market-oriented municipality.

Swedish Development Cooperation emphasizes the need for collaboration among actors on a national level. In that context, the purpose of the thesis is to investigate how Public Private Partnership (PPP) on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) may influence the changing role of the state. The thesis is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis. In order to investigate the social constructions of reality, the thesis is a critical study of language related to ?Globalt Ansvar: Swedish Partnership for Global Responsibility? to identify through what discourses Collaboration on Corporate Social Responsibility is produced; and the implications in relation to Public Private Partnership.

Drawing on earlier research, and using observations as the method, this study presents a design of a nature playscape for children. Applying outdoor pedagogy to the fundamental structure of a specific location, the study proposes a design of a playscape, over a more obvious design, for instance one based around a quiz walk.The theoretical framework is Gibson?s theory of affordance, and the goal has been to create a "play flow". The study concludes that spatial rhetorics can be an important tool when teaching children about nature..

The last hundred years humans have drastically changed the amount of available nitrogen in nature. Today human activities release twice as much available nitrogen as all natural processes are doing together. We also have degraded nature´s possibilities to take care of nitrogen through the draining of wetlands and straightening of rivers. In order to regain the potential of nitrogen retention in the water systems there now requires a reshape of the landscape we live in. A planned expansion of the mining activities in Garpenberg, Dalarna, would double the content of nitrogen in the waters below the mine.

This paper examines constructions of identities in Swedish news paper articles concerning the European Unions?s Tobacco Products Directive. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) supported by theories of discourse, semiotics and identity formation, this paper argues that constructions of a Swedish ?Us? are distinguished from a non-Swedish ?Them?. These constructions depends on categories such as use of tobacco, science, history and war, which are frequently used in the discourse to separate ?Us?, ?the good? from ?Them?, ?the bad?.

This paper constitiutes graduate work at the Swedish University of Agriculture Science, the Department of Urban and Rural Development, Ultuna. The main objective of this work has been, in part, using the municipality of Runby as an example, to test different inventory and analysis methods directed towards a sociotopic usage perspective. A secondary objective has been, based on knowledge obtained from current research results concerning the usage of green areas, to transfer the analysis results to a proposal for a free space planning over Runby. People living in the countryside often have good access to nature as well as access to a garden of their own. In the city, however, there are considerably less people that have access to a private outdoor spaces so the parks become a type of public living room for all the inhabitants. Through the lack of private green spaces and through the anonymity of the city, an inviting atmosphere is created towards spending time in the park.