The purpose of this essay is to discuss the base of sociology from an existentialistic perspective. The discussion takes it's position in the debate on the crisis of sociology, and aligns with Alvin Gouldner's understanding of the crisis. Gouldner believed that the crisis of sociology was mirrored in a sociological method that failed to describe the social reality that it meant to describe; a lack in self-criticism and self-reflexivity, a lack in self-containment in relation to state interests and a lack in moral engagement. This raises a number of questions, which I discuss in the essay. What is the role of sociology in our society? How shall we form a method that responds to the social reality that we sociologists aim to describe? How can we make sociology more moral?Existentialism offers a starting point to describe these questions.

In this thesis I discuss and analyse the use of violence of Basque radical nationalists after the 11th of September 2001 and the bombing of Madrid the 11th of March 2004. The field study is performed in the Basque country with interviews both on the French and Spanish side of the border with representatives from the Basque Nationalist Liberation Movement (BNLM).After the 11th of September the Spanish government continued its struggle against the countries own terror - ETA. But as the research will show the new political context after the 11/9 made it possible for the state to intensify the labelling of groups from the BNLM as terrorist organisations and thereby putting its members and leaders in prison for terrorism. My research shows that this social change may lead to a mobilisation of activists inside ETA, which in turn might create a continuity of the group's use of violence. The scenario is though challenged by an other setting in which the political situation after the 11/9 have made use of violence by militant groups like ETA illegitimate and irrational as a consequence of the mental trauma among the people of the western world.

The aim with this essay is to compare strong girls in classic and modern literature and see how the differences in expectations on these girls are reflected in literature. This study is done with the aid of historical, feminist and new criticism..

During the last decade millions of people have migrated to Europe. Parallel to this development, we see that many countries are becoming more hostile towards immigration. The success of radical right-wing parties (RHP) has been accredited to natives within the receiving countries turning to RHP to reduce their perceived threat from immigrants. Paradoxically, the RHP-support has also increased significantly among the immigrant population given the common assumption that immigrants are in solidarity with regards to shared experiences of immigration. In this dissertation, I argue for the importance of considering the increased RHP-support amongst immigrants, something that has been neglected in contemporary research.

The subject of this study is gender norms in the preschool and children who oppose those norms. The aim is to investigate how the discourses are linked with the way in which preschool teachers and teaching assistants talk about children?s gender identity. This study is founded in feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis, which was a basis for the interpretation of the results. My research questions are:? How do educators express themselves concerning gender norms?? What do educators need to work with a gender critical agenda?? How do the educators describe their work concerning gender, gender norms and children who oppose those norms?? For educators who have experience with children who do not identify with the gender they was given at birth, how do educators describe their own treatment of said children, and how would they describe the treatment from the other members of the teaching team?The study consists of qualitative interviews with five educators who were asked questions relevant to: norms, gender, gender criticism and how they work with those topics.I found both positive and negative aspects of gender work in preschool.

The portrayals of women in lifestyle magazines has been a continuous subject in genderresearch, but have mainly been focused on research about heterosexual women. However, how women are being portrayed through editorial content in an LGBT magazines have shown to be a gap in gender research.The purpose of this study was to find out how female identities were portrayed in theeditorial content in the LGBT magazine QX ? Sweden?s largest magazine aimed atmembers of the LGBT community in Sweden.The analysis of the material was conducted through a semiotic and a narrative analysis. Patterns and reoccurring themes were selected, and furthermore were analysed againstfeminist theories and views such as queer theory, radical feminism and post-modernfeminism.Four different gender archetypes derived from the result of the study: The strongfemale, The passive female, The stereotypical female, and The intimate female. Thestudy did show that women featured in QX magazine were portrayed throughheteronormative patterns, although the magazine represents a larger alternative group..

The purpose with this essay is to analyze Adlerz writing within the context of the fiery debate in the 1880?s between the liberal so called ?cultural radical? members of the student organization called Verdandi, and the conservative, uniform oskarian culture named after the Swedish king of the period. I have applied a version of Quentin Skinner?s method, which focuses on the context of a specific writing in order to find out the authors intention, the effect the author hoped to achieve. My questions regard certain themes I discovered in the text and, more importantly, the relationship between these themes and the surrounding debate.

The purpose of this paper is to view Karlstad Municipality and their financial support to non-profit organizations within equestrian sports. Despite the varying representatives of various equestrian sports in Karlstad, there seems to be a single beneficiary within the sport when it comes to financial support from the municipality. The policies and plans concerning cultural development are directly compared to the Karlstad Municipality and its contribution to these organizations within equestrian sports. Through interviews and reports I have studied the process of financial support from the Karlstad municipality using an intersectionality theory based on Nina Lykkes guide on gender studies and feminist theory. Pierre Bourdieu?s theories on field, habitus and capital are also used as a method to enhance the understanding of equestrian sports and its role in modern Swedish society. The conclusion is that the Karlstad Municipality is, for a several of reasons, promoting non-profit organizations within equestrian sports, which are operating as riding schools.

The aim of this study is to describe how reviews of literature in Bonniers litterära magasin and Expressen changed during the period 1964-2004. The investigation is based on 20 reviews of novels and short stories, which are analysed with a method described in Hellspong and Ledin (1997) and inspired by Halliday. The theoretical frame of the investigation is founded on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992 & 2001) and Habermas´social theory of the public sphere.The investigation shows, among other things, that the reviews became shorter and easier to read in both paper during the period. The investigation also shows that the genre´s style, composition and contents are relatively stable, and that current ideologies in society have a tendency to be reflected in the reviewers´evaluation of the books. To generalize, the reviews thus developed from a poetic genre in 1964, to become political in the 1970s, academic in the 1980s, feminist in the 1990s and finally an intermedial genre in 2004..

Following the wake of the AIDS-catastrophe in the beginning of the eighties, homosexual men or 'men who have sex with men' (MSM) have been barred from donating blood throughout the planet. In this thesis I look into the different discourses at play in the context of creating the legal framework for blood donation in Sweden. Genealogically tracing the emergence of the category of MSM and mapping how the category is brought to use in contemporary negotiations on blood safety, I scrutinize how scientific truth is established within blood transfusion practice. I argue that the rationality of risk group exclusion is contingent on economical grounds, and that the foucauldian concept of biopolitics could productively be used to understand this rationality. In particular, the concept of the 'biopolitics of blood' can be employed in order to understand the reluctance from the involved actors to acknowledge the heteronormative consequences of the legal framework of contemporary blood donation..

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers? professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

This thesis concerns the feminist consciousness-raising novel of the 1970s. The aim of the thesis is to examine narrative strategies which, according to the consciousness-raising practice, are adapted to enlighten the political aspects of the personal. The focus is both on strategies that address the protagonist and on those that address the reader. I also examine in which way the use of these strategies is dependent upon ideas of class and gender.I find that the narrative situation, in this case the relationship between the protagonist and the narrator, is central to the use of the consciousness-raising narrative strategies. In Anna-Lisa Bäckmans Fia i folkhemmet och Fia med manifestet, the protagonist Fia is positioned as an oppressed working-class woman, which results in a narrative situation that gives the protagonist a limited space of action and that gives the narrator the power to interpret the experiences of the protagonist.

This text concerns itself with war, the just war theory, and the application of that doctrine on the ?war on terrorism?. I present different views on the theory's place in the discourse, its relevance for unconventional wars followed by the analyses of above mentioned empirical situation.Particular interest is given the criteria concerning proportionality, both ad bellum and in bello, due to in part its difficult nature, and the attention it has received from others. This paper asks the question: Is the just war theory adequate for analysis of modern war?There are few alternatives.

This Master of Science Thesis was a complement project to the PIEp study MENTOL, carried out at a Swedish midsize medical device company.. PIEp nationally works for a long-term increase of the innovation capability of people and organizations. The purpose of this study was to find measuring parameters of innovation that fit medium-sized technological companies and organizations, Another purpose was to evaluate an innovation investment at the company, consisting of external consultant?s education of key personnel in innovation, and a two day innovation seminar with all personnel at the company participating. The methods used during this Master of Science Thesis were: feasibility and literature studies about innovation and innovation measurements, quantitative and qualitative interviews, surveys and workshops.For an accurate measure of innovation it is crucial to a have full understanding of what innovation is, and clarity of the purpose of the measurement itself.