This thesis has focused on the construction of homosexual parenthood in Swedish law and preparatory work. The purpose was to describe the norms about legal parenthood and examine if and how homosexual parenthood was included in the normative parenthood. The study was jurisprudential and based on methods such as sociology with a juridical focus and critical discourse analysis of the juridical texts. The theoretical framework was the critical discourse analysis as well as a queer perspective, both influenced by social constructionism and a poststructional theory. The conclusion of the study is that parenthood is described from what is presumably best for the child, which is two parents of different sexes and biological origin.

Studiens primära syfte är att utveckla ett teoretiskt ramverk som kan bidra till en ytterligare teoretisk förståelse för staters agerande i FN:s säkerhetsråd. Ramverket vilar på en rationalistisk grund och bygger på tre förklaringsmodeller; en första med fokus på internationell makt och säkerhet, en andra inomstatlig förklaring och en tredje institutionalistisk förklaring. Ramverket appliceras sedan på en fallstudie där Kinas och USA:s agerande i säkerhetsrådet analyseras. Bland studiens slutsatser bör framhållas att säkerhetsrådet av stater anses vara en viktig institution och att det råder en påtaglig respekt för rådets prejudicerande makt. Studien visar även att säkerhetsrådsmedlemmars beslut till stor del är resultatet av långsiktiga kalkyler utifrån reciprocitet och ryktespåverkan, samt att den historiska kontexten påverkar hur staters agerande tas emot av övriga medlemmar.

Sedan en europeisk identitet först nämndes i 1973 års ?Declaration on European identity? har många symboler och begrepp myntats för att försöka definiera och tillkännage något unikt europeiskt, EU-medborgarskapet som det mest konkreta exemplet på europeisk enhetlighet. Den här uppsatsen analyserar särskilt hur denna utveckling har sett ut i tre dokument publicerade inom EU och med liknande syften: att driva på integration och sammanhållning. Genom att analysera dem utifrån en pluralistisk mångfalds- respektive partikularistisk enhetsdiskurs tydliggörs EU:s identitetsdiskurs. Vilka värden har kopplats till det europeiska över tid? Samtliga dokument hänvisar, med olika mycket betoning, på pluralistiska såväl som partikularistiska värden som grund för en europeisk identitet.

With background in the acknowledgement of the current period of major change in the characteristics of traditional Swedish foreign policy, considering the membership in the European Union, as well as the new contextual scenarios that Sweden has been situated in after the end of the cold war, this thesis aims at scrutinizing the Swedish Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2010. The purpose of the thesis is further to localize continuity and change in the ideas which Sweden has explicitly stated in its foreign policy. Based on the theory of institutionalism, the thesis also aims to bring forward plausible explanations built on the main empirical findings. This has been done by identifying different types of goals and means within realism and liberalism as well as categorizing each theory within three ideal types.The chosen research method has been a qualitative text analysis with focus on an ideational analysis. The material on which the descriptive analysis is based upon is constituted by the annual statements of government policy in parliamentary debates on foreign affairs.The results of the thesis show that the ideas that are related to solidarity, consensus and active foreign policy are constant through the period of examination.

This master?s thesis deals with the development of the Swedish library catalogue. The thesis primarily has two purposes. Firstly, it describes how the Swedish library catalogue has developed from its first appearance until today. As the Swedish library sector is very extensive the authors have chosen a few catalogues which they have studied more thoroughly.

Uppsatsen tar sin utgångspunkt i den allt mer ökade efterfrågan av produkter som producerats i överensstämmelse med mänskliga rättigheter. Uppsatsen behandlar Lunds kommunstyrelses beslut att rekommendera dess förvaltningar att använda Rättvisemärkt kaffe och te. Syftet med uppsatsen är att se på vilket sätt, och i vilken omfattning beslutet har implementerats i organisationen. För detta har vi använt såväl en teoretisk referensram i form av nyinstitutionalistisk organisationsanalys som empiriskt material. Det empiriska materialet utgörs av interjuver med anställda inom kommunens förvaltningar. Till detta har ett bakgrundkapitel som behandlar den innehållsmässiga innebörden av begreppet hållbar utveckling, utifrån såväl en internationell, nationell som lokal aspekt lagts. Avslutningsvis är slutsatserna att det inom kommunen finns en konkret vilja att vidga innebörden av begreppet hållbar utveckling.

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.

This paper was aimed to investigate how a sexual education website, UMO.se, with an explicit norm-critical approach to their work achieved its goal to be norm-critical and inclusive in terms of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The investigation was focused on a section of the website, "Ask UMO" where the website visitors could submit questions, which were answered by a midwife, a nurse, a counselor, a psychologist, a nutritionist or a doctor. The questions focused on examining how well the "Ask UMO" lived up to UMOs target norm criticism and if there was any differences between the different professions in how norm-critical and inclusive they were. This was examined by a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault and based on Judith Butler's theory of the heterosexual matrix. The study found that "Ask UMO" in 350 of the sections 425 questions reached UMOs goal to be the norm-critical and inclusive.

This paper deals with a partly new development in the Swedish law system, somewhere in the boundary between political science and jurisprudence. A new instrument -artbrott- has successively become more popular among lawyers and politicians. The new instrument -here translated to classified crimes- signifies that the perpetrator is sentenced to prison even though the seriousness of the crime committed is not in itself serious enough for such a consequence. The reason for this policy stance is to create a prevention against crime of that specific character among the public. The use of this instrument has grown considerably both concerning types of crimes as well as in application.

This thesis intends to analyse conditions for a successful implementation of consociational democracy, as a democratic model in Afghanistan. The lack of critical reviews regarding the democratisation-process in Afghanistan initiated the purpose of this study.Lijpharts democracy model was used as the basis in the comparative study. Along with empirical evidence regarding how the complex process of democracy in Afghanistan is progressing, the study investigated whether the identified conditions occurred or not.The choice of which democracy model to use can be crucial for the democratic possibilities to even survive and become established in conflict-affected communities. The principle of consociational democracy is that it is an empirically based normative model that aims to organise the state in a way that works against the risks of majority domination and oppression against the minority.The empirical case study revealed that a majority of the conditions were not met, which then can counteract the possibilities for consociational democracy in Afghanistan. The study has critically examined the prospects for the success of consociational democracy in Afghanistan, and it can be assessed that there is a limited probability for a successful applying of this model..

I have used a discourse analysis as a method and queertheori for the theoretical. In this paper I have analyzed how different wedding magazines write about partnerships, gender-neutral marriage and wedding between homosexuals. I have for some time been interested in the beliefs wedding magazines have about homosexuality and how newspapers maintain heteronormativity implicitly and explicitly. Bridal magazines are anxious to have the marriage as a design and standard when they write about partnership. When they write about the two different forms of marriage, they glorify the religious marriage and pay no attention to civil marriage.

From a democratic point of view the existing organisation with municipality sections in the city of Malmö, Sweden will be examined. The matter of how an alternative organisation should be structured will also be discussed. Two incompatible models of democracy theories will be arranged: libertarian democracy and participation democracy. The intentions with the reform were primary to increase the civic participation. By applying those values that are used to characterize participation democracy it will be shown whether the local participation has actually increased.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study has been to analyse and understand the effects of heteronormative structures in the Swedish asylum process. Homosexual refugees, seeking asylum in Sweden, is in focus when proceeding an analysis about these social structures and normative phenomena. The main discourse, being handled in this study, is between homosexuality and heterosexuality. However, central findings in this study consists of how different approaches, such as gender based identities as well as sexual preferences and ethnic background, combined is influencing the asylum process and the treatment of the asylum seekers.The analysis is based upon legal material, as well as the guidelines and work ethics of the Migrationsverket, which is being compared with theoretical approaches on heteronormativity and structural hierarchy. To achieve a wider understanding of the area and to gain more information, we have also performed interviews with relevant sources.Key-words: Heteronormativity, asylum seekers, homosexuality, power structuresSara Haugbak & Jenny Thomsen, Sociology C, University of Växjö, Sweden.

The goal with our research has been to describe how often and in what way female athletes are represented in the sport section in Sweden?s biggest evening newspaper Aftonbladet. The material we?ve used are the newspapers that we collected during two weeks in 2008, the 3rd of November to the 9th of November and the 11th of November to the 17th of November. We?ve conduced two qualitative researches ? a text analysis and an image analysis ? and one quantitative analysis on our material.

The aim of this study is to examine new interpretations of homosexuality in Islam based on Scott Kugle?s book ?Homosexuality in Islam? and the documentary ?A Jihad for love? by Parvez Sharma. Through a theological perspective, a critical analysis is performed in order to find new interpretations and compare them with each other and with the Islamic legal tradition. Argumentative analysis is also used for both the book and the documentary for this essay.     Both Kugle and Sharma use new interpretations and arguments about love to find space for homosexuality in Islam. They use a Muslim language to have relevance with their discussions to Muslim readers and viewers.