The means to political participation at the local level in Sweden are changing and this change is analyzed through a case study. The first aim is to explore the forms of public political participation in Swedish municipal Älvkarleby, namely public question time in local government, citizen motions and open meetings. A part of this is also to analyze he every day contact between citizens and representatives. The second aim concerns the reasons why politicians decide to support these means to participationThe empirical material consists mainly of semi structured interviews with local politicians, civil servants, participating citizens and local press. Official documents such as public minutes are also used in the process of creating an image of local participation.Local political participation is found to be limited but yet having the potential to strengthen democracy, provided that public decision-makers are open to a dialogue with the participants.Using Kjell Arne Røvik's theories of organisational change, the changes in local democracy can be explained as being partly rational, partly symbolic and partly identity shaping political decisions..

The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention stipulerade att länder med McDonald's inte bekrigar varandra. Uppsatsen undersöker varför denna hypotes falsifierades efter att ha varit giltig i 32 år. Med i första hand kvantitativa metoder identifieras ett antal utslagsgivande faktorer för att ett land ska få McDonald?s. Det konstateras att demokrati förr var en mycket viktig faktor men idag helt upphört att var det, medan närheten till USA idag är viktigare än någonsin förr.

The aim of the study was to examine how child investigators in the police force interpret and apply the notification of preliminary investigation (FuK) and the po-lice act in their child investigative interviews with alleged victims of sexual abuse. Questions at issue were how child investigators relate to FuK 17-19 §§, re-garding child investigative interviews and to FuK 16 § and the police act 3 §, re-garding their co-operation with social services. The theory and method used in this study was Sociology of Law. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight child investigators, one from each police district in Stockholm. The results of the study conclude that despite special qualifications, child investigators may find themselves in difficulty in receiving or interpreting information from chil-dren, therefore they may need to consult a person with expert knowledge.

The Swedish school law says that students who need special education should have all the support they need to reach the qualification that is set up. The arrangements have to be written down in an Individual education plan (IEP). Before the IEP is set up there has to be an investigation about what kind of support and measures the student needs to reach the qualification that is set up. The aim of this study is to examine student?s participation in school and in the progress with their own IEP.I have accomplished a qualitative study by interviewing eight students during the letter part in the nine-year school.

Den här uppsatsen handlar om hur två grannkommuner har valt att organisera kring resursfördelning för barn i behov av särskilt stöd. För att ta reda på detta har vi studerat de av regeringen formulerad styrande dokument samt skolplanerna i kommunerna. Vi har också tagit del av offentliga dokument från varje kommun som visar det mål och visioner de har för skola och utbildning. För att skapa oss en djupare förståelse kring tankarna runt de val som görs och hur de kan te sig ute i de olika verksamheterna har vi intervjuat en skolledare, en specialpedagog samt de ansvariga för resursfördelning på berörda kommuner. Intervjuerna gav oss de svar vi sökte i våra ursprungliga frågeställningar.

Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

The purpose of this essay was to, by the ecology of human development theory, examine 10-year old childrens own experience of their lifesituation outside the time of school. The study was based on qualitative interviews with six 10-year old children from a smaller community in Sweden. The main guestions was:1. What is the experience of being 10 year?2.

This Master's thesis concerns the public library as a public meeting place. Our aim has been to find out why and how the library as a social meeting place has been discussed within the Swedish library community and if there has been a constant core in the discussions from the mid 70's and up to the present day. In order to do this we apply a place and space-perspective. The result of the study is that the core of the said discussions concerning the library as a meeting place is to create belongingness. This is the reason why the library community has an interest in the public library's function as a meeting place with the idea that people, by using the public library in that aspect, may experience a feeling of belonging to the society.

Utredningshemmet in Hässleholm, Sweden, is a special residential home for acute management and investigative evaluation of juvenile delinquents.Utredningshemmet has, since 1991, used an investigative model, which is based on systems theory. The investigative work is done in close co-operation with social workers, youths and their parents.This study takes into account the youths, who have had a commissioned placement to carry out an investigation of their needs of care and treatment, 71 juvenile delinquent cases. They are divided into three one year intervals: 17 cases in 1993, 28 cases in 1998 and 26 cases in 2003.The purpose of this evaluation is to illustrate changes in the social workers, parents and youth's level of satisfaction during the development of the special residential home's investigative model.Approximately one to three months after discharges social workers, youths and their parents completed a level of satisfaction questionnaire. The results demonstrate no significant difference in the level of satisfaction between different time periods. There are, however, differences in satisfaction levels between social workers, who have the highest level of satisfaction, parents, who have the next highest level and finally the youths level of satisfaction..

This essay examines the using of consensus method for decision making within the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the process that led to the decision to adopt its usage. The main question of my essay is why the method was introduced to the WCC and what motives lay behind its introduction. Other questions are how the consensus method works; both in theory and in practice, and what the predecessors and prototypes for the method are.The consensus method belongs to a broad Christian tradition of spiritual discernment and spiritual decision making. The New Testament, in particular Acts, gives examples of decision making in the early church which show that discerning God's will was considered essential. However the most influential model for the consensus method have been the decision making process of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, and also the consensus model of the Uniting Church in Australia.

The main purpose of the thesis was to investigate if mothers of girls with Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism experienced the same stressors regardless of society and culture or in which way the stressors might differ.A special purpose of the thesis was to investigate if the society by different types of support could relieve stress and eliminate or reduce stressors.The method of the thesis was to interview three mothers in Sweden and three in Spain, who all had a daughter, 10 - 15 years old, with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.The result shows that mothers in both countries experienced equal level of stress, though the Swedish mothers got more support from the society. However, the stressors differed. For the Spanish mothers the main stressor was the girls´ problems at school. The main stressor for the Swedish mothers was how to find time to fulfil their different roles, e.g. mother, wife, housewife, professional, friend.

Denna examensrapport har kommit till som resultat av en varumärkesanalys av bioteknikföretaget Novozymes nya varumärke "Rethink Tomorrow". Syftet med studien har varit att komma fram till hur jag ska presentera varumärket samt den nya produktionen på dotterbolaget Novozymes Biopharma Sweden AB i en stillbildsfilm. Utöver varumärkesanalysen har jag även gjort en kvalitativ enkätstudie där dels tidigare kunder och dels potentiella nya kunder var målgrupperna. Enkätstudien visade på vad som är viktigt att poängtera i filmen när det gäller information om själva företaget och produktionen..

Vi gör i vår uppsats en samläsning mellan kritisk diskursanalys och diskursteori för att undersöka hur medvetenheten om diskriminering och stigmatisering av riskgrupper artikuleras i den svenska hiv/aids diskursen. Genom att utgå från ett kritiskt socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv, frågar vi oss hur denna medvetenhet konstitueras av intersektionen mellan ?ras? /etnicitet, kön, klass och sexualitet. Vi är intresserade av att söka förändring i diskursen och avgränsar oss därför genom att närläsa två offentliga dokument, AIDS-delegationens informationsbroschyr från 1986 och en SOU-rapport från 2004. Vi kommer i vår studie fram till att medvetenhet artikuleras genom ett konstruerande av riskgrupper, där genus och sexualitet inledningsvis står i fokus, men som senare lämnar en allt större betydelse för kategorin ?ras? /etnicitet i diskursen.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the way George W. Bush used the language as a means to exercise power in an attempt to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom. The theories used to answer the purpose are discourse analysis and three different moral metaphors that are applied on the data.The collected material for the metaphors is constituted of cognitive linguistic books from prominent linguists, such as George Lakoff, Alan Cruse and William Croft, and the material for the discourse analysis is also collected from prominent discourse analysts such as Michél Foucault and Norman Fairclough. The official White House website provides the material for my data. The scientific method used in this study has been qualitative text analysis where the hermeneutic approach has been an essential part of it.The main question: In what way did George W.

Ända sedan det kalla krigets slut har diskursen om den liberala demokratin varit hegemonisk. Det, menar vi, har skapat en osund situation där demokratins utformning och innehåll inte längre diskuteras. Därför har vi valt att undersöka den globala rättviserörelsens demokrativision, den enda som idag skulle kunna representera ett legitimt alternativ till den liberala demokratin. Eftersom det är en ostrukturerad grupp av diverse organisationer, rörelser och aktivister är det svårt att nå fram till en samlad vision. Vår analys bygger huvudsakligen på World Social Forums ?Charter of Principles?, en samling grundläggande principer som bildar en gemensam grund för alternativa politiska forum.