This is a tale about energy and power. It describes the geographer Halford Mackinder?s geopolitical theories and compares them with current views outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael T Klare, among others. With a critical approach it also provides a historical account of a Europe that stands in front of an energy struggle so severe that the current world order seems destined to fall. Oil and natural gas, has since the beginning of the 20th century, been used as a geopolitical tool in order to create dependence, control and even sometimes overthrow empires.

It is a common-held belief that the social worker for the most part uses oneself as a ?tool? in working with clients. This study seeks to examine that ?tool? in the context of treatment of teenage boys with psychosocial problems such as criminal behavior, drug-abuse and/or abusive home environment. The main purpose is to identify the conceptions of masculinity, and more specific hegemonic and subordinated masculinity, of the professionals working with the boys.

Sarah Kane?s first play Blasted (1995) has often been read in a normative and biographical way by critics, authors and previous researchers. This essay makes a supplementary close reading of Blasted from gender and genealogical perspectives and utilizes theoretical works by Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault. My study makes clear that the characters different positions in language and talk create and maintain a power imbalance between them. Efforts to change and develop one?s individual position in language and talk are being made throughout the play since it is the only way to bring about a change in the social power structure.

The theory of ?security communities? is generally understood as ?dependable expectations of peaceful change? between groups and whether or not the African Union can be said to meet that criteria has been contested in the research community. One of the central disagreements lie in the nature of the region?s conflicts, of which a majority are intrastate but with tendencies of transnational involvement. This paper seeks to understand how extensive this involvement is and how it affects the possibility of classifying the African Union as a security community.

Detta arbete avslutar magisterutbildningen inom Industriell design vid Luleåtekniska universitet. Arbetet har utförts på uppdrag av Agency-9, utvecklareav Javabaserade 3D-motorer. De har tekniken för att producera dataspel avtoppklass men ingen grafisk formgivning och produktion, och är i stort behovav att få igång detta. För att visa upp funktionaliteten i deras 3D-motorAgent FX vill de även ta fram ett demo. Metoderna som använts under arbetet baseras på teorierna om systematiskproblembehandling som lärs ut vid Institutionen för arbetsvetenskap, LTU.

This thesis is a discourse analysis of six rape trials, with the intention to analyze how the plaintiffs?? resistance is described. The overall aim is to investigate whether there are forms of resistance that the courts find more desirable and if there are any rules for how resistance should manifest itself. I will also investigate how the rape is itself described by the plaintiff and courts, respectively. I will analyze how this affects the understanding and attitude toward what has happened.

From an investigation by Finansinspektionen and KTH (2009) it is apparent that financial advisors and their clients develop relations, believing that they understand each other, while in fact, they do not. The media tends to notice the conflict of interests between advisors and retirement annuity clients. The aim of this study is to create a greater understanding as to why misunderstandings occur between advisors and clients. This will be accomplished by a quality study of how advisors and trade unions assess how the relationship functions. The theoretical part consists of theories concerning relations and uncertainty.

This study demonstrates that there is variety of treatment interventions for children exposed to intimate violence. These interventions are differentiated in design but a common ground for them all is that they strive to provide a chance for children exposed to intimate violence, to be able to speak about and process their feelings and violent experiences. The study?s aim is to, with a qualitative approach, seek understanding for the different actors who practice social work, see upon their task in the treatment interventions that are provided for children exposed to intimate partner violence. The study is based on mapping the existing treatment interventions for previously mentioned target group, in Malmö.

In this paper respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was examined in relation to two kinds of threatening pictures, biological and nonbiological. Based on the results of prior research the hypothesis was claimed to note a difference between the two types of pictures regarding RSA and gender differences regarding cardiac activity due to the emotional stimulus. ECG and respiration were collected from 36 adults, 17 women and 19 men. There were no significant relationship between the different types of threatening pictorial stimuli, and no significant effects of gender were found. The results support some of the prior research on the topic but are in conflict with other.

The aim of this study is to look how the Social Service has handled custody issues. The study has a legal and social aspect with a purpose to investigate how the law affects the social administration as well as the family. During a period of one year a quantitative and qualitative study was performed within the social administration in a nearby community. The study focus is partly on the relationship between the law, family and society. The main questions have been: Which one of the parents, mother or father, did in fact get the custody and why? How has the children?s point of view been reported in the inquiry? A child needs a well organized everyday life in a preferably conflict free environment.

At the Women?s House in Örebro, a children?s project has started where the work method ?Oasen? [Oasis] model has been developed by two children?s educationists. The aim of this study is, with the ?Oasen? model as a starting point, to deepen the knowledge of (1) how to meet children?s central needs while staying at a Women?s House and (2) what the ?Oasen? model may contribute to the children. The theoretical framework consists of a cognitive approach to the progress of children experiencing domestic violence and a presentation of conceptions concerning children?s needs.

The electronic music studio ?Elektronmusikstudion? (EMS) inStockholm was initiated in 1963. It has had several different managers throughout the years. EMS soon became a rather costly project. Furthermore there have been several conflicts among staff and users wich has contributed to EMS fairly turbulent history.

Due to the political system in Vietnam, all organizations in Vietnam need a permit to operate in the country and consequently, have to balance their mission, their main purpose of being in the country, with the fact that they are dependant on the government to give them the permit they need to stay in the country.With this as our basis, the main focus of this essay has been to identify different types of relations that exist between the Vietnamese state and International Non Governmental Organisations (INGOs) in Vietnam. Since we have interviewed people representing INGOs, our result is based on their experience of this relationship. By using Najam's Four-C's Model, we established that the more traditional INGOs which principally provide services, predominantly have a cooperative relationship with the state, whereas radical INGOs which are committed to policy change, mostly have a relationship which is characterised by conflict..

My purpose in this essay is to show how the staff in an institution for young women with a drug addiction, are looking at themselves as "normal" and the young women as "abnormal", and to analyse how sex and gender are made, in interaction with sexuality and class.The essay is based on interviews and a participating observation. The study is made on a compulsory institutional care institution for young women with a drug addict. To analyse the material I use theories by Beverly Skeggs and Judith Butler.In the study I show that the staff in the institution define themselves as "normal" and intend to act as models for the clients, which are described as "abnormal" in terms of being destructive, boundless and sexual. In making class and gender the staffs efforts to make clients learn domestic values and to make their bodies feminine are shown to be central processes. Sexuality is by the staff seen as something happening only between men and women, and defining relations between men and women as always sexual creates gender.A central tension that I show in the essay is that between normal and abnormal, both in relation to differences between the staff and the clients and in relation to the staffs roles as both models of normal life and of violent and violating keeps of order.

This paper deals primarily with the developmental potential and use of court -based mediation in Swedish law, and its relation to court-based conciliation and the judicial procedure as means to end a conflict.  In Chapter 42, Section 17 of the Swedish Code of Judicial Procedure, a judge, before the parties have their main hearing, can act as a mediator between the parties to settle the dispute. The judge should, according to the law, always try to make the parties come to an agreement before the main hearing. This obligation can be fulfilled either through the use of court-based conciliation, or court based mediation. Mediation as such is rarely used in Sweden, and one of the goals of this essay is to try to provide a tentative answer to why that might be the case.  The second goal is to try to find a consistent, yet flexible notion, of the concept of ?jurisdiction?, and to provide an explanation for the relation between mediation as an alternative method for dispute resolution and the judicial procedure.                                                                                                                                            .