This thesis deals with the concept of soft balancing, traditionally defined as the diplomatic means of restraining a dominant state's ability to exercise its military power. As the dominant power in today's unipolar system, the United States, and other states? behaviour towards it, is the focus of analysis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of soft balancing so as to include strategies to restrain also the political and economic capabilities of a dominant power. The thesis also considers the possibilities of soft balancing that small states ? to a large extent overlooked in existing theories on the subject - can possess.As a state with policies that aim to reduce the U.S.

This study highlights the problematic situation fathers encounter when they require help and support in a custodial dispute. Previous research shows the emergence of a new, more involved father. In the light of this earlier research, this study will show a father that is willing to fight for his rights to be a present and engaged parent in the case of a separation from the mother. The aim was to analyze the subjective perceptions of five fathers in custodial dispute. This analysis did not only show how they perceive their role as a father and their masculinity but also the way they feel about the help they got from social services and other institutions.

The aim of this report is to give a picture of how attitudes and behaviours of owners of environment cars look like and how they can be influenced. The alignment lies on environmental cars which run on biogas and ethanol which both are renewable fuels. The starting point is to sort out if it is environmental thinking that controls the choice and use of an environmental car. The feeling is that there are many other factors that can be more controlling, for example the price and the quality of the car. The result of the questionnaire survey which is the foundation of the report shows however that those who buy an environmental car do it mostly because of environmental reasons.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is an important part of society. Learning occurs in all contexts and many students already use various digital media in their leisure time. This article, based on a case study in a One-to-One school. It describes how teachers perceive that their teaching is influenced when their pupils get a laptop. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the focus on one-to-one influence teachers' work in the classroom.

The aim of this degree project is to find out how people who have grown up in families with addiction problems have experienced their childhood and how their adult life has been affected by this. With the help of qualitative interviews with four grown up children to addicts, knowledge has been gained about what was experienced as problematic during childhood, what was beneficial and compensatory as well as how they feel today. The results have shown that their childhood was affected by a deficiency in the ability to parent, weak networks, adjusting, responsibility, a feeling of being left out and few positive experiences. Factors that have been protective are: important people, interests as well as attitude. In adult life many habits from childhood remain.

This essay deals with the influence of leadership on student use of Smart phones as an ICT tool at after school care. I use a qualitative, hermeneutical method that departs from two stories. I also use qualitative interviews with both structured and unstructured questions. My reflections and interpretations are, through the interviews, complemented by my colleagues? views of the use of Smart phones and how that is affected by how the activities are managed.

With starting point in the increasing ill-health in Swedish working life today, in form of for example absence due to sickness and early retirement pension, and the knowledge that the working environment effects peoples health in a big extent, I found it very interesting to inquire into how people within the working life experience health promotion and how this can be developed. A qualitative method was used to receive a deeper understanding for the employees? experiences and data was collected through semi structured interviews with employees on a bank called Ikanobanken, in Älmhult. The result shows, among other things, that respondents find responsibility and the opportunity to influence the learning processes and development important. It also became clear that the respondents find participation, motivation, communication and safety essential factors when related to changes in health behaviours.

When professionals meet people from other cultures, there are some problematic issues that may appear, especially when considering human rights. Every individual has the right to live as they choose, and have the right to their own culture and traditions even if they have immigrated to another country. Female genital mutilation is a tradition that violates human rights. In this study we will look at what conflicts of values that professionals can have while meeting clients who have been mutilated. We have made qualitative interviews with four professionals working in a small town in Sweden in an area where many immigrants live.

The relationship between China and Japan has historically been problematic and, in some ways still is. One of the issues where both of the states cannot agree on is the island dispute. While both states are claiming sovereignty over the island and there do not seem to be an ending to it in the near future. If the island dispute continues to escalate it could have a negative impact in the Asian region and eventually rest of the world as well. However due to the complexity of the dispute a deeper knowledge is needed and a mutual understanding is needed.

This thesis is an attempt to shed light on how the authors of the Swedish Government Official Report, SoU 1999:83, speak about how the globalization affects democracy. The method used is critical discourse analysis and ideological analysis, with the main emphasis on the former. The results of the analysis are then interpreted with central parts of Jürgen Habermas? The theory of communicative action. One of the main conclusions is that an absolute majority of the authors, talk about how the globalization affects democracy in terms of the economic market and the European union.

The aim of the study is to analyse the stories of four homosexual women with Muslim backgrounds about coming out as homosexuals, from an intersectional perspective. The experience of coming out as lesbian and the intersectionality are related to different social contexts. The homosexuality becomes a problem in connection to family and countrymen while the Muslim background becomes more of a problem in relationships. Heteronormativity and gender system appear to be cooperating systems of oppression.These women don?t describe themselves as oppressed, but potential oppression is still something that influences their lives.

The past years in Sweden has been infected by a discussion about immigration and immigrants, both spoken in politics and media. The aim of this essay is to study the attitude about immigrants in the third period of immigration in Sweden found in the local press. And also what image the press gave of immigrants. The study looks at Smålandsposten, which is a large local press in the Växjö area. During the period for this study was the attitude in the local press very negative. The studied articles in Smålandsposten shows a profound idea of a ?we? and ?them?.

To encourage and increase the motivation to physical activity by using new information and communication technology, in order to change our behaviours into a more healthy lifestyle, could be one approach to promote public health. In our study we examine how gamification, which is about implementing classical game design elements from the computer world in a non-gaming context, can be a tool to increase the motivation for physical activity. Since similar studies already have been done we chose to focus on analyzing how different player types from Bartle?s taxonomy can be affected by the usage of a gamification application. A group of students were therefore picked and during a two weeks? period they used the application Fitocracy where they logged their daily excercise.

This essay is about "factionstexter", a combination between fact and fiction, and the problems that can occur when reading them. I present previous resarch on this subject and I focused on docu drama and dramadoc. Bo G Jansson is the researcher I used most frequently in this essay. He describes various types of faction texts in film, television and literature. Annette Årheim´s thesis stands for the didactic portion of the essay.

Personalnedskärningar är ett resultat av det pågående oroliga arbetsmarknadsläget. Flera aktörer jobbar idag med servicetjänsten omställning vilket är en hjälp för arbetsgivare att hantera nedskärningar och övertalighet genom att få uppsagda medarbetare att komma vidare i ny sysselsättning. Trots en lågkonjunktur har omställningsarbetet visat på uppnådda lyckade resultat. Studien undersöker och sammanställer individers upplevelse av att genomgå ett omställningsprogram samt undersöker vilka faktorer som har betydelse för individers hantering av stressen i denna påfrestande arbetslivsrelaterad förändring. Tillämpningen av problemfokuserad coping undersöktes bland 71 deltagare som genomgått omställning i antingen kommunal eller privat sektor. Resultatet visade att deltagarna tillämpade problemfokuserad coping i relativt lika stor utsträckning oavsett yrkessektor.