?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

Mass media is becoming more and more personalized and despite common ideas it could actually be a good thing. Instead of affecting the actual content of news coverage it might only have an effect on the way in which news are presented. Famous politicians more regularly become symbols and synonyms for their parties or for the government and are being used to create interest in the beginning of articles.Those are the results from a content analysis of the newspaper coverage of the Swedish parliamentary election in 1976 and 2006 in which the scientist categorized each article in one of four ideal types, counted quotes and analyzed whether personal names were interchangeable with party names without affecting the content. All three methods showing that it is the presentation, not the content, which has been personalized.At the same time, psychology-science tells us about the human brains associative learning processes, where memorizing becomes far more efficient when the information can be connected to an already known person. Increased personalization of news might therefore increase the political knowledge of the receivers..

In the world after the Cold War, internal and ethnic conflicts have been predominant. Ethnic conflicts have their own theories on why they erupt and what can be done to solve them. This essay seeks to analyze how the Ethnic Security Dilemma can explain the causes, and possible solutions, of today´s armed ethnic conflicts.By making an ideal types typology over different types of ethnic conflicts, and then analyzing the Ethnic Security Dilemma´s impact on each conflict type.

After the 9/11 attack the United States declared war against terrorism, which launched a conflict between indefinable transnational networks and states. In this war it became clear that the strategies used in traditional wars between states were not sufficient. New strategies have been discussed, but without any concrete results.In this thesis assassinations of terrorist leaders ordered by states is being presented as a possible strategy in the war against terrorism. Assassinations have been used in all times to shift political power but is today not morally accepted. This thesis aims to show that when used under the premisses of the just war theory, the strategy can be equally morally justified as any traditional war.

Modern democracies rest on a foundation of values essential to their prosperity. Two of those values are freedom of speech and political equality. To many, these values appear to coexist effortlessly. However, what this thesis aims to expose are some of the problems that quickly arise when attempts to interpret the values fail.The thesis investigates a specific US Supreme Court ruling called Citizens United. The ruling enabled corporations and unions to use their own treasuries for unlimited independent political expenditures.

The idea that I put forward in this thesis concerns the democratic system and the threat from discoursive impact on its core values. I focus my normative analysis on three of these democratic values: transparency, accountability and influence ? and what democratic problems the discoursive impact causes in conflict with them. I have used a critical discourse theory to define discourse and discoursive impact, by focusing on the process of discourse, rather than its nature. I deal with the political structure where I claim that the essential relation between citizen and politician is disrupted, due to lack of information and the imminent problems of the existing network society.

In this essay I analyze the performative aspects relating to Marina Abramovi?'s The Artist Is Present, which took place in spring 2010 at MoMA in New York, from the context of the artist and work, institution and documentation. In this performance work, for the duration of the exhibition, Abramovi? sits completely still opposite another chair where anyone from the audience may sit. The art arises through this participation.

This study explores how consumers' attitudes and intentions-to-buy towards an atypical product can be influenced by the presentation of the product and consumers shopping goals. Moreover, another product, which was shown together with the atypical piece, was analyzed in order to investigate context effects. The aim of the study is to provide insights into a rather unexplored subject and help retailers in presenting their assortment in a way which will create a better perception and intention-to-buy towards the assortment. The study was conducted with the help of two studies, the first one aimed to find an atypical item and to see how attitudes could be affected by differences in presentation by comparing it with a typical item within the same category. The second study used the identified atypical piece in order to see the how attitude and intention-to-buy could be altered by presentation and consumer shopping goals.

The object of this thesis is the foundation of ethics. The question is whether there exists a universal core to ethics consisting of a fundamental ethical principle across cultures. This principle could for example be the so-called Golden Rule, which goes as follows: ?You should do to others what you want them to do to you?. The Golden Rule is to be found in many of the world?s religions and is also reflected in secular society.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.

This is a case study on the functioning of political parties and the aim was to explain ?how? and ?why? the Swedish social democratic party changed their policies in the Middle East politics. I wanted to explain this process of change by using Angelo Panebianco?s framework for the analysis of political parties. Angelo Panebianco´s hypothesis is that all parties must be viewed as organizations to understand their functions.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has lately gained popularity throughout the globalized world. Swedish retail industry is no exception. Though increased levels of explicitly claimed responsibilities of companies, a number of other facts points out a development that contradicts this trend. Labour conditions and forms of employment is substantially retrograding, with an increased level of insecurity characterizing the Swedish retail labour market. At the same time, almost all Swedish retail companies explicitly state claims on social responsibility.

This study aims to examine play as a phenomena from a phenomenological approach. This I do by discussing a dominant approach to play, an perspective which is reproduced in the context of pre-school and in where the play and learning is in single focus. Using alternative perspective on play, mainly by Gadamer and Bakthtins philosophical thoughts about the feast or the carnival, contents differ significantly from educational or developmental psychology perspectives. I open up for an understanding of what play as ontology can be understood as, and thereby enable second readings. I illustrate this thought by an empirical example from a pre-school context which where created alongside with the children in the study.

This master thesis is about one of the first female in the Swedish Parliament, Elisabeth Tamm (1880?1958), and her political articles in the magazine Tidevarvet. The aim of this study is to find similarities with Tamm?s political thoughts with the Ecofeministic theory. Due to women?s right to vote 1919 women citizenship was in a political debate.

This study looks at the uses of the temple metaphor in 1 Cor 3:16-17 and 6:19 inlight of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. The aim of the study is to determine if one's interpretation may be dependent on whether the background material for the temple is taken from the Jewish or Greek-Roman world. The study looks at how the terms temple and holiness were generally understood in those contexts, and if the textual context related to the temple metaphor is dependent on a Jewish or Greek-Roman temple. The results of the study shows that while the terms temple and holiness were more or less equivalent in both contexts, a rhetorical analyze of the textual context of the temple metaphor in 3:16-17 is dependent on Greek-Roman temples, such as those in Corinth..