This masters thesis is a study of official political documents in order to discuss privatisation and the Swedish public libraries. In the 1990s public libraries became placed on contractors, and that was said to be one form of privatisation. The main issue for this study concerns driving forces and obstacles for privatisation of public libraries. Another issue concerns advantages and risks. We will also discuss how the future of public libraries will be in this context.

The appointing of Swedish governmental officials has gone through a dramatic change the last nine years. The tradition of officials appointed due to their political experience has been traded against the appointing of experts. In this study I ask questions about this new way of appointing representatives effects how these officials interpret their role. An official that who has never been in the party before appointed, obviously cannot consider the principal of party. With the theoretical approach of normative representation theory (representational style) I perform case studies that shows some change.

The relationship between free trade and the environment is often considered conflicting and the debates surrounding it are infected. My thesis deal with this conflict and how environmental concerns are integrated in three regional free trade agreements, North American Free Trade Agreement, The common market of the southern cone (MERCOSUR) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). I point out how the organizations differ from each other in this respect and I present a possible explanation to why they differ. The explanation is founded on the theory of the environmental Kuznets curve and that environmental concerns will depend on which level of development the member states in the organizations have. To judge and rank the organizations I have composed a model based on a pre-existing description of the trade and environment conflict.

The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way Japan as a nation can be said to have dealt with its dark past - concerning their crimes of war just before and during World War II. To do so, I have placed two chosen war crimes, namely the Nanjing Massacre and the matter of the Comfort Women, in the context of remembrance and commemorating of war, through different kinds of aspects. Those aspects are: the textbook conflict, official apologies, ruthless/unnecessary comments, and visits and commemorations at the Yasukuni shrine.I have found during this study that the nation of Japan has not been able to generate a broadly accepted dominant cultural memory of the war. Henceforth a couple of rival cultural memories are competing and becoming an issue of national division rather than national unity. I have come to the knowledge that there are both domestic and international political factors at play, resulting in this division..

This essay aims to explore continuity in water centric cult within the period of the Christianization of Scandinavia (ca 800-1100 AD) and to understand the changing of symbolism of water in pre-Christian cult and early Christian religion. It has previously been thought that Christian priests took over the old holy wells and renamed them after saint, all to ease the pagan people into a Christian lifestyle. But archaeological evidence shows that the cult at these wells, and other water centric sites, where almost completely abandoned a few hundred years before the Christians came to Scandinavia. The Christians should not have felt the need to transform this tradition since it was only practiced in a very small and supposedly private scale. On the contrary, religious activities at these wells seems to increase with the new religion and perhaps this is explained by Christianity itself.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the term equableness in the Swedish elementary school with a take-off point in the free school reform from 1992. This essay starts with the political background of the terms equableness and freedom of choice and the official governmental guidelines. Research from Bo Malmberg and Gabriel Sahlgren act as a framework for the whole essay as their theories are tested. The main problem is presented as the question: is the debated concern regarding a lowered equableness since 1992 justifiable? Both researchers define equableness as a difference in grades but undertake a collective versus a more individual approach.

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.

This essay discusses the decision of licensing for nursery and school teachers. In Swedish society there has for a long time been discourse about professionalisation within various industries, including teaching. One strategy towards achieving professional status is official authorisation of a profession, which occurs when a profession obtains licensing. In February 2011, the Swedish government announced the decision that nursery and school teachers would be licensed. This means that only those with an education can be employed as a teacher and obtain that license.

Every now and then, in media research studies and in various newspaper articles, schoolboys´ issues reading habits are discussed. Much of what is written concerns boys decreasing marks in the field of literature, in the Swedish language and also their negative attitude towards reading books. Some scholars claim that boys do not read because they consider reading books as a women´s duty. Other people believe that underlying causes for boys negative attitude towards reading is biological, that it´s genetic and consequently physical, and that male and female brains are functionally different. Another theory of today is that boys actually reads, but not that kind of texts and literature that they are exposed to in school.Based on a selection of these opinions and theories, and my own experience and interest for questions concerning school and gender, the aim of this studie was to examine boys worlds of reading.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library.

It is important that children develop their communicating skills to be able to interact withother persons in different social contexts. Without the necessary skills, the child will struggleto understand others, as well as to be understood. My qualitative research takes place in a preschoolclass at a primary school in Stockholm, where I from a sociocultural perspective onteaching and learning aim to clarify how the students? ability to develop their linguisticperformance and their communicative competence is stimulated within this primary preschool?seducational framework. Empirical data was collected both through observations ofthe daily activities in the pre-school class as well as through interviews of three employedteachers.My research indicates that the educational framework in this pre-school class is structured tocomply with the official Swedish Curriculum, Lpo.

The purpose of the study is to examine what effects the law has on principals? approaches to mandatory reporting of child maltreatment (Social Services Act 14:1§). Moreover, the aim is to study if the regulation gets the impact intended. To respond to the purpose, legal science methods in the form of sociology of law were employed aided by qualitative semi-structured research interviews. The interviews comprised six principals in six different schools in the Stockholm area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent some Swedish bishops (1972-2014), mainly archbishops, were influenced by postmodernity as described by Lyotard in his report La Condition postmoderne (1979).This report had a tremendous impact on the western cultural and philosophical debate in general during the very end of the twentieth century. I am trying to find out if this impact could also be observed in the religious sphere and particularly in the Church of Sweden. My theory used, is mainly based on the ideas presented in La Condition postmoderne and my method is a hermeneutical reading of eight pastoral letters. These letters were written during the time that the Church of Sweden transformed from being an officially recognized national church to a free church among other free churches and in this respect ended to be a part of the official governmental power. The terms postmodernism or post-modernity were scarcely used at all in the pastoral letters but on the other hand the bishops seemed to share many of the ideas that Lyotard presented, such as the view on the metahistory/metanarrative and the connection of knowledge to power, the necessity of dialogue and openness and the importance and the role of creating and maintaining language games..

The question of euthanasia has kept pre-occupying and agitating the minds of thinkers, sweeping the globe, pummelling pedagogy, assailing assumptions, and bludgeoning biases. Both the moralist, ethicist, theologian, psychologist, educationist, anthropologist, politician, physician, patient as well as the common man in the street are interested in it. This pervading interest simply arises out of the fact that euthanasia involves the question of life, and life is something that is a common denominator to all men.The controversy hinges on the fact that, there are divergent views on the moral question of euthanasia. While some would unflinchingly opt for euthanasia others would prefer to oppose it to the best of their strength, yet others will remain agnostic about it. But the issue here remains: is euthanasia in any way morally justified? Has human life an intrinsic value? Or is human life valuable only when it is healthy? Are we the ones who decide when to die? Has the physician any right to either assist or terminate the life of the patient simply on account of suffering? Has the patient any right to end his/her life? Are there some conditions in which euthanasia could be allowed? Is suffering meaningless?The topic of my project is: THE MORALITY OF EUTHANASIA IN THE LIGHT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH?S TEACHING.

In this essay I have studied the Swedish Working Class whose part of LO.Ideological texts in LO- Magazines is used to quote texts by collective orindividual terms. Method and theory material show high level of solidarity andequality while theory shows higher level of individualism and autonomy. Myresearch is closer to Boréus than Blocks. Politics taking under the 1980: s apowerful right turns holding a steady course through my material.The question in the essay is: What vision on the collective shows in theLO- Magazine in a time during individualization? Answer to this question is thatthe collective unofficially through LO: s: staff on central level tries to showstrength and unity with terms like solidarity and equality between the sexes.