The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what place public libraries have in local politics, particularly from the point of view of the politicians. To answer this, I have interviewed politicians, participated as a silent observer of a public debate, and studied articles on library politics in newspapers and other press. The results show that politicians in general have a positive view of libraries and good co-operation with library professionals, and that they have a fairly up-to-date view of libraries. They are, however, less interested in library issues in general, and are often complacent with the way things are already running. The newspaper studies show that library issues are usually only discussed when a specific library is somehow in danger.

Problem Discussion: Nissan Diesel became a part of the Volvo Group in the end of March, 2007. A year has passed and the integration process is making progress but it is perceived to lack some momentum. Our sponsor would like to understand if there are any potential barriers to the integration process. (Haspeslagh, et al., 1991) and (Pablo, 1994) presents two different sets of determinants that can be used to decide the level of integration; ?difference in organizational culture? and ?strategic task? (Pablo, 1994) and ?Need for Organizational Autonomy? and ?Need for Strategic Interdependence? (Haspeslagh, et al., 1991).

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

This essay is a study of how teachers in social studies relate to three central curriculum concepts; cultural diversity, swedish culture and common cultural heritage.Through unstructured interviews, I have taken part of two practicing school teachers interpretations and understandings of the concepts and their practical approach for teaching about identity. An area mentioned in the core content of the courses Social studies 1a1 and Social Studies 1b.The conclusion of my study is that teachers interpret the key concepts in a transparent manner. It is believed that the main task is to problematize the concepts rather than define them. In contrast to this, the practical teaching is largely based on normative values. An open discussion and a normative practice can be said to balance right on the border between the schools values ??and the demands of the curriculum on transposition of the current culture..

Gender politics in Sweden is considered unique because gender policies (jämställdhet) are integrated into national politics and politicised both in the public and the private sphere. The Swedish case is therefore considered a role model by many feminist scholars.This view has been criticised by both post modern feminists and public administration scholars. Critics imply that the increased immigration and more heterogeneous population have led to a new challenge for state institutions. The Swedish model, with its universal welfare solutions, lacks the ability to recognise differences within groups. Universal solutions that treat everyone the same is no longer the most just way to treat people.The growing use of goal orientation in Swedish public administration has increased the civil servants discretion in the implementation process, and thereby the space for differentiated treatment.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg?s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ?nature? is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ?nature? is tentatively defined as ?that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation?, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections.

The aim of this study was to understand how social workers deal with honour-related violence, with special focus on the processing from sheltered housing. Our qualitative interviews with social workers that work with this kind of problems show that there are both obstacles and opportunities in the processing from sheltered housing. On the negative side are the loneliness, the shame and the guilt that the girls may experience when they need to leave their families. The social services can both be an obstacles and an opportunity. When the girls need to create a new life in a new city they have a lot of opportunities and in the same time it is hard to get to know new friends when you don´t know the city or have much money.

The purpose of this essay is to study the film culture in South Africa in a national cinema-context, focusing on the relationship between anti-apartheid film from 1974-1994 and the film in South Africa today. By pitching the South Africa-specific works of Lucia Saks and Jacqueline Maingard against the over-arching debate on national cinema as formulated by, amongst others, Stephen Crofts and Andrew Higson, this study aims to find whether or not a specific South African national cinema have existed, and exists today, or not. The study finds that an underground culture of documentaries and short films made by and for the black population has been in place since the apartheid, and the distribution method on video and television is still being used to reach the black population today. By re-examining the concepts of both the national, and of national cinema to also include film on video and television, the study shows that South Africa has indeed a film culture that can be called a national cinema..

The aim of this essay is to examine which of the two approaches within the field of conflicts that best explains the conflict between Georgia and Russia using negotiations, dialogue and conciliation. According to the first approach negotiations are used to handle a conflict, according to the second approach negotiations are used to solve a problem.  The focus will be on how the two states acted and how the dialogue from the European Union as a conciliator was brought before the war escalated in 2008. The EU is today an important actor within the international politics and has established close relations to the two states. The conflict goes back in history and is still not solved. In the fields of international studies, there is a realistic view that claims the international politics to be shaped by suspicions between states as main actors. War is never far away, what is claimed to be solved through diplomacy.

When a leader changes to a new post in another kind of organisational culture, what happens then? Could a leader use the same kind of leadership when leading different kinds of groups? Different cultures have different needs and ways to handle things and in the end it all comes to situational leadership. Both leaders and theorists claim that the leader must adjust to what the organisation and its members needs. This paper contains an inquiry of how officers have handled their new assignments as leaders in the civilian world of the municipality. The research shows that a former military leader must also be able to lead another kind of group if they change to a civilian career.

Title: Globalization ? Meeting a new market Author: Anna Nubäck Supervisor: Anders Nilsson Institution: School of Management, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Course: Master in business administration, 15 credits (FED006) Purpose: The purpose of this essay is partly to create an understanding of the decision to establish a branch in Japan and especially to look at if and how the Swedish company in this study has adjusted its corporate culture to suit the Japanese market. Method: Data is collected thru a number of semi constructed interviews. A first telephone interview was followed by an interview made face to face that was also followed up by interviews performed over telephone. E-mails have been used to clear and correct collected data.

This thesis studies the subject on how disabilities are written about in Swedish politics, the programs of the seven parties in the parliament are studied. The thesis is divided into two parts; where the first part is a content analysis to see how often disability are mention in each programme. It differs between one (the Left Party) and 33 times (the Christian Democrates). This first part also works as a backround to the second part of the study. This part of the thesis is built upon a discourse analysis.

The Stockholm Bypass is an infrastructural project planned to be located west of Stockholm. This study investigates the argumentation concerning the project from different perspectives. The theoretical starting point is within Decision Theory. The main theories include Bounded Rationality, Kingdon's study of the political agenda and theory regarding venue shopping, framing and lobbying. The method chosen for this qualitative case study consists of both gathering data through semi-structured interviews and through documents provided by stakeholders and information available publically through archives and media.

Eleven years after broking the Kyoto-protocol, the European Union still stands in the front line, combating climate change. How come the EU, with 27 diversified states, is able to integrate its members to what is widely considered the most progressive climate policy in the world? This thesis takes a closer look at the negotiations that have shaped EU climate policy. Using negotiation-models to categorize different aspects of EU climatenegotiations, several key-findings are presented. The thesis concludes that while EU entered the Kyoto-protocol with little to lose because of external factors like previous energy-reforms in key member countries, it had plenty to win in global influence and the satisfaction of an overwhelmingly Kyoto-positive public.

Probiotics is a special group of health products on the market. The most common type of  these is live cultures of lactic acid fermenting bacteria from raw milk . These include, among others, yogurt and various trademarks such as Hälsofil ®, Acidophilus ®, Dofilus ® and Kefir ®. Such products are often used by patients who are treated with antibiotics to combat the intestinal flora eliminated, thus causing digestive problems. The present work deals with yet another type of health product, viz.