Many of us have grown up hearing or using words meant as insults or negative adjectives that were in fact names for social groups. Most of them have gone unquestioned in the mainstream consciousness, but the term Gay in the generally negative meaning has in the past years been given attention as offensive and homophobic, with debates emerging in response over whether or not this is true, particularly on the internet. It is the articles and forum threads from these debates that make out the empirical material for a qualitative study as I ask what these people?s thoughts are about this term and how it is perceived.After a qualitative coding and analysis of these texts, and interpretation of the results based on Erving Goffman?s theory of Phantom acceptance and stigma terms, Judith Butler?s theory of performativity, Ferdinand de Sassure?s theory of signifier and signified and how it connects to the community and Baudrillards theory of simulacra, this is the principal conclusion that I have drawn:For some of the people in this debate, the term Gay and its use is about homophobia and heterosexism, though mostly it?s not overt but a subconscious part of the continued dehumanization and stigmatization of homo- and bisexual people. This is a position I callThe socially focused skepticism.

In the fall 2011 a new grading scale will be implemented in the Swedish school. A government bill suggests a change of the scale from a three- to a six-point scale. The students will also be graded from the sixth class instead of today?s eighth. From the first year of the compulsory school the pupil will get a written judgment.

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

Auditor independence is a subject that has been discussed frequently over the past decade. The meaning of auditor independence is complex and contains both independence of mind and independence in appearance. The environment must perceive the auditor as independent if the audited information is to have any value for the users of the audited statements. The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how auditors can manifest their independence.

Trade is the driving force for economic development. A greater equity in international trade can improve the livelihoods and the well being of producers in developing countries. The small-scale farmers have limited resources and have difficulties to get access to the international market. As a result of this, the Fair Trade movement has been developed and has now formed a trading partnership between the producer and the consumer. This study analyses if the Fair Trade movement can be a way for the workers in developing countries to achieve more justice in their production manner in the international trade of cut flowers and continue to be an important competitor of these products, but with better livelihood conditions. My method has been to do a comprehensive literature study of the Fair Trade movement, in which I describe the certification process, and the market of Fair Trade in Sweden.

Wermland was affected by the Spanish flu like the Swedish national average, about a half percentage of Wermlands population would lose their lives to the flu during the autumn 1918. The flu has for many fallen into oblivion. This oblivion is so wide spread that it´s possible to talk about a "collective forgetfulness". The society have selected to remember 1918 for "when the guns went quiet on the western front" and not for the millions who died from the treacherous Spanish flu. The world had already suffered enough from the four years of war that had been fought, thus the victims of the flu would be honored but would soon fade in to oblivion.  When you investigate deeper you get the picture that the national average don´t do Wermland and its cities or rural areas any justice when a large variations seems to occur within regional areas.

The drug treatment staff attitude towards needle exchange is what investigates in this study. The aim of this study is to see what?s affecting the standpoints in the needle exchange issue and also to investigate if the needle exchange is compatible with Swedish drug policy. The study has a qualitative approach and it?s based on eight semi-structured interviews with drug treatment staff.

The Commission can investigate infringements of the competition rules on its own initiativeor after a complaint from a third party when it suspects the existence of a cartel under Article81 or abuse of dominant position under Article 82. The EC Commission has extensiveinvestigatory powers under Regulation 1/2003 Articles 18 and 20. The visits by theCommission are made unannounced and that?s why they are popularly known as ?dawnraids?. The surprise arrival is essential in the fact-finding process because the Commissionlooks for information, which the undertaking subject would rather not give to the Commissionand takes measures to hide.The Commissions powers during a ?dawn raid? have been subjected to criticism.

The large number of surrendered and feral cats is a big animal welfare problem all over the world. Populations of feral cats arise through a large number of unwanted cats which can lead to surrender of these, through cats allowed to roam free outside which can lead to the owner losing these and through the reproduction that occurs amongst these surrendered or lost cats. One aim of this study is to give an account of this problem. It is however difficult to draw general conclusions about these populations of cats since studies all over the world has been carried out on different types of populations, during different conditions and different periods of time. The welfare of many of these cats is presumably low because they are exposed to risks as disease, starvation, climate, traffic, other animals and humans.

Projects are often spoken of in the terms of rational systems. However, some researchers point out the relevance of viewing projects as sets of relationships. Little is published about what aspects of relationships that are important for the managing of projects. We have argued for the necessity of such research. With previous research, our case study and interviews we indentified communication, responsibility, cooperation, togetherness and trust as important relational aspects in projects.The overall perceived success for projects in this case, was increased with the adoption of new agile methods.

Over 90% of forestry work is carried out today by contractors, thereforeclear agreements between the client and the contractor it is of utmostimportance. Contract Packages for work within the forest sector (APSE) is acollection contract templates that the industry jointly developed for thispurpose. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how forest contractors doto keep themselves updated of the current laws and government regulations,which channels are available to accomplish this and what possible obstaclesmay occur. 20 interviews were conducted with contractors engaged inlogging. The results show, among other things, the availability of and whichchannels most contractors use out of which aggravating circumstances existand how strong they are perceived and what is expected of the client in thisregard..

The aim of this study was to try to get an overall image of how participation is constituted in the organization of AMA, a Human Service Organization (HSO) that is part of the Vasteras municipality.  With focus on mainly participation but also communication and leadership the goal was to find out more about how the governing parts of the organization was able to communicate and create participation amongst their employees. Did the message come across? Using a triangulation method including interviews, surveys and observation hopefully this question would be answered along with trying to depict an overall image of the participation within the organization. The results indicated that there were both differences as well as similarities between the employees and the management with regards to how they experienced participation. A surprising result was that the geographical location was found to have an impact on how the staff perceived participation.

This study aims to disclose how an asymmetric planogram structure of the brand with the highest actual variety may come to affect the brand itself and its category as a whole. The authors of the study feel that there is a gap still unfilled amongst previous extensive research examining how differences in either space or price vary between categories, products or brands. An in-store experiment was conducted by collecting quantitative data from daily sales, observations of customers and questionnaires. The results show that an asymmetric structure leads to customers being more attentive towards the brand, and perceives it to be more dominant over its surrounding competitors. Furthermore, results indicate that the customer perceived variety increases and we see tendencies to changes in sales..

In tune with the cross-border trade the infringement of intellectual property rights has become a growing problem in Europe and the rest of the world. In June 2008 negotiations about a new international agreement was initiated between Europe, its member states and ten other countries, which will restrict infringements of intellectual property rights. The agreement is called ACTA, which stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. On January 26, 2012 the European Union (EU) and twenty-two of its twenty-seven member states signed a letter of intent to the agreement and the EU?s internal processes of the agreement began.

Flexible working conditions is used extensively in organizations today as a way tocreate flexibility for the employer. Recently we?ve been reading in the newspapersthat this approach is a growing problem and the EU has warned Sweden twice thatabuse of these forms of employment must be stopped. The Government has recentlysubmitted a proposed rule change to reduce the possibility of stacking one temporarycontract after another. Borlänge kommun makes themselves more flexible with theintermittent employments.