The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

The aim of this thesis is to study how the recent introduction of video games in Swedish public libraries compares to past introductions of other medias, namely music records, sequential art, manga (Japanese comics), and films on video. In what ways does the introduction of video games differ from the other examples of introductions and in what ways are they alike? In what manner have the medias been introduced? How does the librarians views on video games differ from their views on other medias? The purpose of doing this is that by investigating how new medias have been evaluated in the past, we might gain an understanding of how the introduction of video games links into that tradition. Theoretically, this thesis is grounded in Sanna Talja?s theory of the interpretative repertoires of the music library.

Laura Mulvey was the first to suggest that women and men have different positions on the screen; men drives the plot forward, and the women are objects of masculine desire and lust.The purpose of this report was to look at and compare the two characters from the 70?s - and 80's with two characters from the 00?s - and 2010?s to gain a deeper understanding and insight into how female action heroes are presented. This will be done with the help of the questions; How is the female action heroes that are analyzed in the paper?What are the differences and similarities between the past and the present-day action heroes? Just how stereotypical are the women in their genre? The four female action heroes that were analyzed were; Princess Leia Star Wars, Sarah Connor Terminator and Lisbeth Salander Men Who Hates Women and Katniss Everdeen The Hunger Games.The four female action heroes were analyzed based on Rikke Schubarts categories (Moderarketypen, Amazon, Dotterarketypen, Ha?mnerskan and Dominatrix), the character's personal development, the character's violence and the reason for the character's.Characters from the past were more often presented as more uncertain and fragile than the modern confident characters. The female action heroes of modern times was more independent, strong, and in no need of a man in comparison with contemporary female action heroes.

This study describes what impact activity within Wifstas, Matfors,Grönstas and Nolbys water protection areas have on the quality of the drinkingwater. It considers the use of the area, environmentally dangerous activitiesin the past and present, the geology?s part, what harm hydroelectric power damsmay cause if they break and how climate change might affect the area in thefuture. It also takes into consideration activities outside the waterprotection areas which might have a suspected impact on the water quality. Theresults of the study are that pollution from infrastructure such as roads, orwastewater from treatment plants may cause occasional contamination of thedrinking water, foremost due to flooding.

Lack of political interest and will to deal with human rights violations carried out under the civil- military dictatorship, has characterized the transition and post-transition in Uruguay. The systematic use of torture, arbitrary imprisonments and forced disappearances in the relatively small country created a culture of fear that has been present through out the post-transition phase. Human rights groups have been central actors in the fight for truth and justice and against impunity. This study analyzes how these groups multiple democracy-building functions have contributed to democratic development. It also analyses how the democracy-building functions have been constrained by the political context.

The purpose of this essay is to look at how museums design their activities as tourist destinations through the dissemination of history. In order to research this problem we have posed the following questions: How do museums act in order to animate and interpret history? What does the future hold for the museums? In order to find the answers to these questions we have made a deep-going analysis of the activities of four museums, Nordiska Museet, Etnografiska Museet, Historiska Museet and Naturhistoriska Museet. These museums have been analyzed by means of interviews, observations and the study of documents. Our theoretical perspective is informed by a hermeneutic perspective as well as Foucault´s definition of museums as institutions, and the concept of storytelling.

Filmen Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) presenterar ett antal scener som är till synes orelaterade till filmens övergripande handling. Filmens titel antyder att dessa scener möjligen kan vara minnen ur titelkaraktärens tidigare liv, emellertid finns det ytters lite underlag för en sådan tolkning i själva filmen. Syftet blir därmed att närmare undersöka dessa scener, att söka tematiska kopplingar mellan dessa scener och filmen som helhet, samt att försöka komma fram till hur dessa scener kan ses arbeta med minnen.Laura U. Marks bok, The Skin of the Film (2000), har valts som underlag för den följande analysen i förhoppning att de tankar som läggs fram där skall kunna nyttjas för att tolka och diskutera de nämnda scenerna i filmen. I arbetet nyttjas därtill den metod som förespråkas av det hermeneutiska vetenskapsidealet för att erhålla kunskap.Arbetet visar på att filmen inte nödvändigtvis söker att gestalta minnen utan kan ses locka åskådaren till att minnas genom att presentera bilder som bäst förstås genom kroppslig inlevelse i bilden, kort sagt; filmen söker att aktivera åskådarens minne genom bilder med haptiska kvaliteter.

AimThe aim of this study is to examine students' previous experiences of stay in the nature and their experiences of nature in the context of teaching situations in friluftsliv at GIH. It also aims to elucidate how the teaching of friluftsliv at GIH affects their former interpretation about nature. The questions of the study are: What past experiences of stay in the nature elucidate GIH-students? Have the students approach to nature changed according to the education? If yes ? how? What affects students' perception of nature? MethodTo answer the questions, a quantitative approach (questionnaire survey) and qualitative methods (interview study) was used. The qualitative method is based on phenomenology and hermeneutics.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

The subject of this master thesis concerns the area of change in libraries, with special orientation towards privatisation. Its aim is to investigate how privatisation is portrayed in one of Sweden?s largest library magazines, Biblioteksbladet, in order to gain insight into why these portrayals are what they are, and what consequences they might get. Three theoretical viewpoints create the general base of the thesis; first, Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis (CDA) theory on the relations between text and society; second, Audunsson?s theory concerning how change is dealt with in public libraries; and third, a conceptual framework on privatisation consisting of definitions and perspectives of the phenomenon.

Purpose: This study has been conducted with the purpose to examine representations of men and masculinity ideals in advertising for male grooming products. This study also aims to investigate how the male representation has changed during the 2000?s.Theories: The theoretical framework of this study is based on established theories and past research about gender, masculinity, advertising and visual communication.Methodology: The study has had a quantitative approach and is based on content analysis of print advertisements published in the Swedish lifestyle magazine Cafe? during the years 2003-2012.Conclusion: The result of the study suggests that the representation of men was not versatile, many of the advertisements showed the same representation pattern, which indicated that the metrosexual was the most common depicted masculinity. Past research shows that the notion of men and the male representations in media has gone through major changes during the last decades. However, the results of this study did not find any signs that the male representations were going through any significant change in the examined advertisements.

Care and solicitude about Swedish documentary heritage has varied substantially throughout the years. The main purpose of this essay has been to investigate what efforts have been made to preserve rare book collections at public libraries. These cultural policies have been studied from both a national as well as local perspective. What we have tried to explore can be condensed into three questions: What national initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve the municipal documentary heritage?What initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve thedocumentary heritage of what is presently the municipality of Jönköping? What value do rare book collections at public libraries represent? The results indicate few national efforts were initially made to preserve rare book collections in the timeframe we studied.

The history of Banu Umayya has since the collapse of the caliphate occupied a major part in Islamic historiography. The present thesis analyses the presentation of the Umayyads in Ibn Khaldun?s al-Muqaddima and its relation to previous historical traditions. The thesis examines the social and intellectual context in which Ibn Khaldun stood and how it is represented in his historiography, while also providing an overview of the various socio-political, intellectual and historiographical developments in Islam. The theoretical perspectives are based on the concept of agency, examining the intellectual room for manoeuvre that the historian disposed of while composing the works.

Abstract   Cinematic time is the most complex of all: it is composed of public time (clock), personal time (experienced) and in addition, it can run backwards, be contingent, stored and (re)created. The present study examines some aspects of cinematic time, with special reference to the instant, the moment and the present. The strictly defined instant or moment does not exist. It is a passage between the past and the future and it is impossible to record on film or a photograph. One example is the moment of death, which is an abstraction with zero duration.

Inbreeding has become a problem in some horse breeds. Studies show that it may lead to inbreeding depression which affects e.g. reproduction traits. In the wild there are mechanisms that make horses avoid mating with close relatives. When selection is done by humans this mechanism is removed and intensive breeding for a few traits, for example good racing results, can become a problem.