The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how a Swedish public library's collection of books on African history looks like, who the writers are and how Africa and its history areportrayed. The focus of the analysis is on the front and back covers and in some cases on theinformation texts inside the books. The chosen library is the city library of Umeå. The 15books examined were found on the shelf classified as Kp ? the classification for African history according to the Swedish SAB-classification system.

This thesis emanates from the understanding that it is of importance that transgender-themed literature is indexed in accordance with how people who identify as trans name themselves and interpret the concept of trans. Based on interviews with representatives from controlled vocabularies and LibraryThing users who tag transgender-themed material, existing attitudes towards user influence in controlled vocabularies are described and the significance of tagging for transgender-themed material is looked into. With queer theory and postcolonial theory as its main framework the analysis looks at what possibilities there are for users to influence controlled vocabularies and explores possible strategies for a future library catalog that includes the voice of the Other. The study lands in the understanding that many of the resisting attitudes towards user influence within the systems for subject headings in fact lie in the systems? limitations.

The aim of this study is to combine queer theories with quantitative methods. In social sciences, queer theories are being widely and increasingly used. Quantitative method is also widely used, and as a traditional method it can be regarded as a cornerstone in social sciences, sociology in particular. However, the two perspectives, queer theories and quantitative method, seem at a first glance to be very different in their understanding of social phenomena. Queer theories have, with some exceptions, mainly focused on qualitative research concerning such phenomena as sexuality, while the field of science is quite diverse.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of the immigrant-writer. By studying the literary criticism on four debutants, all of whom have been categorised as immigrant-writers, I have come to the conclusion that the critics tend to focus on the authors' otherness. By using postcolonial theory I've analysed the role as representatives of a supposed other reality that is imposed on these four authors by the literary critics. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts of symbolic capital, literary field and position, have been used to contextualise these conclusions. Although the otherness that the critics accentuate seems to work as a negative symbolic capital in a bigger societal perspective, in the author's position within the literary field it grows their positive symbolic capital.

This essay examines the differences and similarities, weaknesses and strengths of the two Cognitive Semantic theories Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Principled Polysemy Approach to Meaning Analysis. To illustrate the two theories, the Swedish verb-particle construction "gå upp" is examined and analyzed accordingly. The results showed differences in the number of polysemous meaning found. The methodological evaluation showed that the differences in the underlying ideas concerning meaning-construction behind these two theories make them incompatible..

This essay is a comparative analysis of ideas about how Islamic terrorism is understood in terms of narrative. The narrative being studied is Occidentalism, Orientalism and postcolonial theory; based on these perspectives are possible explanations analyzed of what Islamic terrorism is all about..

The amounts of theories that deal with naval warfare are many. Several of those are developed under the previous century when tactics and technology were in the eve of development. Many of modern thinkers within science of war often refer to older but recognized theories. The purpose of this essay is to examine if the old but recognized theories are of current interest in modern naval warfare. The questions that are used in this essay are, what is the characteristics of the war of Yom Kippur with Mahan?s offensive and Corbett?s defensive as a starting-point and are there any of the theories that are prominent.

This paper deals with Will Kymlicka's and Charles Taylor's theories of multiculturalism, and the criticism of these theories by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib. It also gives a brief background to the Swedish integration and minority policies and places them in relations to the academic discussion. Taylor advocates cultural survival to be a legitimate policy objective and Kymlicka argues that rights should be diversified in order to adapt to different needs of cultural minorities. The thesis aims to confront the theories with interviews of four persons who voluntarily or by profession work for the interest of minorities. The theories have been operationalized as questions and structured in four themes with the purpose of analyzing the interviews.

Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries, delivers, and then relinquishes a baby to commissioning parents. The arrangement challenges traditional norms and definitions of reproduction, pregnancy and motherhood, and at the same time raises difficult ethical, philosophical and social questions. There is currently an ongoing debate in Sweden, where all forms of surrogacy is illegal. The debate is polemical and harsh, with advocates arguing that surrogacy is defensible on the basis of individual rights and women's right to choose over their own bodies, and those in opposition are convinced on an intersectional basis that women are being used and exposed on the market of surrogacy.The purpose of this study is to investigate the debate on surrogacy in the Swedish context. Using qualitative text analysis, the study aims to increase understanding about the debate over surrogacy by analyzing texts published in Swedish press during 2010-2013.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the democratic situation and developement in Malung and Nyköping, through a perspective of participatory and deliberative democratic theories. The questions I?ve examined are On what priorities the actions of developing democracy are built? Which positive effects have been reached and what problems have arisen? What are the solutions they have found to the problems? How does one experience the results of the experiments and actions taken? What are the similarities and differences between the two cases? and What is their relationship to the theories mentioned above?The questions are answered through interviews with four central actors in each case and examined in relation to participatory and deliberative democratic theories and in comparison of the two cases.The results have been that even if none of the cases respond to one theoretical ideal, they have touches of both theories as well as representative theory. It shows, however, that in Malung the representative democracy theory is the strongest represented in actions and politics, while in Nyköping the participatory democratic theory is stronger. In short, the most positive and negative effects respond well to the theories..

The aim of this M.A.-thesis in social work is to problematize the assimilatoric concept of integration and its discourses in a postcolonial perspective in relation to social work in Denmark.As a support theory I use symbolic interactionism. By using these theories I show how the concept of integration and its discourses, when its aim is assimilatoric, can be understood and problematized with concepts as binary oppositions and hegemony.It is shown that the construction of the discoursive other is a useful term as an instrument of interpretation of power in general. The relevance to social work in relation to the social workers double powered positions, professional and cultural power to define 'the other', in social work with ethnic minorities is shown in relation to the post colonial perspective with support of symbolic interactionism. The white western world hegemony and the social workers power positions in relation to the clients fits to the theoretic frame chosen in the thesis.A second aim in this thesis is to point to new ways for social work and to the necessity to reflect over a globalized world characterized by international migration, ethnic relations and diversity..

In this study I try to answer the question what to consider when teaching about identity andreligious identity in Religious Studies at Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden. This inquiry isbased on the fact that the latest Program manuals for upper secondary school, GY11, instructsthe teachers to talk about identity and religion, while in the Curriculum for upper secondaryscool, Lpf 94, as well as the latest curriculum, SKOLFS 2011, the idea of identity seemslinked with ethnicity.With this in mind I want to clarify what might be meant with the concept of identity. Byreferring to several different identity theories I propose to illustrate the complexity of theconcept. I study gender, queer and postcolonial theory as well as different aspects of classstructure and commodification of identity, all through the perspective of intersectionality.Intersectionality is not a theory as such but a method of studying various perspectives of anissue. It is an analytical praxis of using several angles of investigation and explanationtogether, all phrased with the background of the question of power.

Usability is a way to study how good a website is which is what our research builds upon. On a mission from Liseberg our purpose is to find out if their website liseberg.se is good from a user?s perspective. Our way of carrying this out where grounded upon a qualitative study through observations and following interviews with a number of participants. By compositing tools of method we have started with the theories descriptions of usability tests and we have also used the theories to be able to reflect around and to understand the results from the tests.

In this study I try to answer the question what to consider when teaching about identity andreligious identity in Religious Studies at Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden. This inquiry isbased on the fact that the latest Program manuals for upper secondary school, GY11, instructsthe teachers to talk about identity and religion, while in the Curriculum for upper secondaryscool, Lpf 94, as well as the latest curriculum, SKOLFS 2011, the idea of identity seemslinked with ethnicity.With this in mind I want to clarify what might be meant with the concept of identity. Byreferring to several different identity theories I propose to illustrate the complexity of theconcept. I study gender, queer and postcolonial theory as well as different aspects of classstructure and commodification of identity, all through the perspective of intersectionality.Intersectionality is not a theory as such but a method of studying various perspectives of anissue. It is an analytical praxis of using several angles of investigation and explanationtogether, all phrased with the background of the question of power.

The field of coping has become more developed during the past decades but there is still a lot to be discovered and discussed. Theories of developmental psychology describe the possibility to map a general developmental structure of how the human mind expands. The aim of this study is to contribute to further research in whether there is a reason why we cope the way we do in relation to age. The questions answered in this study was, what coping two girls, whom lived during the Holocaust, used and how the coping found, were possible to interpret from theories of developmental psychology. In order to answer the questions asked a method called Template Analysis Style and three different theories have been applied.