The use of hallucinogenic plants has throughout human history been used for religiouspurposes, in order to induce mystical states of mind, often interpreted as meeting with godsand spirits. In recent years, this practice has been taken up by people interested in theexploration of their psyche and spiritual side. This group of people, referred to as?psychonauts?, communicate with each other through internet based forum, where theyshare their experiences in so called ?trip reports?. The aim of this study was to see whatrole psychedelic drugs can play when used in a spiritual/religious context, and whetherthese sorts of mystical states of mind could tell us about more traditional mysticalexperiences.

Open ecosystems, such as grasslands and pastures, have naturally been shaped by disturbances like fire and grazing. These processes play a crucial role in creating habitats with high biological diversity, particularly favourable for a wide range of herbaceous plant species. In recent years, many of these disturbances have ceased, leading to encroachment, fragmentation and habitat loss. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the effects of fire, herbivory and a combination of fire and herbivory on the emergence of herbaceous plants. The study was conducted at the Ecopark at Nordens Ark.

There is a growing interest for ethical consumption, in general as well as in the clothing industry. The consumption of ethical clothes is a complex phenomenon though, where aspects such as quality, style, function, price, time assets, accessibility and ethical attitudes affect the decision making. Researches that have been executed show the diversities in development between different countries. There are fairly strong indications that the ethical clothing market is more advanced in the United Kingdom than in Sweden and therefore these two countries are objects of this research. The aim with this thesis is to describe and explain what have affected the development of the ethical clothing market in the United Kingdom compared to Sweden. For that reason a qualitative approach has mainly been used, where deep interviews with people within the ethical clothing industry have contributed to most of the empirical part. As a complement secondary data such as statistics of the two countries have been used in order to investigate our area. One useful tool, among others, to investigate the macro environment is the SLEPT model.

Wetlands are important ecosystems and form habitat for both common and threatened species. In Sweden, as well in many other places on earth, there is a lack of wetlands. There is an expressed will to adjust this lack through restoration of wetlands with reduced function and through construction of new wetlands. Follow-ups and evaluations are important steps to optimize these actions. The wetland Vattenparken was constructed 1999 ? 2000 for treatment of surface water.

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine.Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten.The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the understanding of the diagnoses ADHD and DAMP within different professional categories in the educational system, how it is being addressed and how this affect their work with children diagnosed with ADHD or DAMP. We also wanted to shed some light on the debate between Kärfve and Gillberg, about whether the diagnoses of ADHD and DAMP are social constructed problems or biological and genetic disorders. More specifically, our study was of a qualitative nature and consisted of interviews with seven persons working in six different professions within the educational system. The respondents all worked in school environments but with varied roles and thus varied experience of children with ADHD/DAMP. The interviews and literature studies revealed the complexity of ADHD and DAMP and also the diversity of the debate regarding the diagnoses.

The purpose of this thesis is to historically describe how Fédération Internationale deFootball Association (FIFA) interprets how the discourse of anti-racism has developed withintheir own organization throughout the years. In doing so, the thesis lands in a present timeperspective and then aims to identify the norms which FIFA, according to the organizationitself, stands for in regard to anti-racism within world football. That standard of behavior isthen put in contrast with the hidden ideological conceptions which, with the applying of apost-colonial perspective, can be found in the rhetoric used by FIFA in expressing themselvesabout their anti-racism stand.The methodology used in this thesis builds upon a qualitative text analysis approach inwhich solely primary sources available through the official website fifa.com are considered.The study finds that anti-racism is a relatively young concept within FIFA and that the communicatedideal standard of behavior circles around terms such as unity, diversity, solidarityand equality. Further on, FIFA clearly articulates how the universal power of football as suchcan unite people and that FIFA, as the administrator of this the world?s greatest sport, can setan example for the rest of the world to follow when it comes to notions of tolerance and solidarityin preventing racism in the future.In following the terminology provided by the post-colonial theorists Homi Bhabha andGyatri Spivak, and applying the concepts of fixity and essentialism on the rhetoric aroundanti-racism, the study discovers that FIFA, in sharp contrast to the articulated norms, in factexpress ideological conceptions of skin as a barrier of difference between people, and thatFIFA on good grounds can be accused of reproducing racist stereotypes rather than bridgingthem.The study concludes that its findings clearly demonstrates the increased need of consideringsports, and more specifically international sport organizations, as a basis for researchwithin the academic field of International Relations, and that a postcolonial perspective verymuch can provide alternative understandings of how these actors operate and what influencethey might have in the international system..

Ungefär 14 procent av den svenska befolkningen utgörs av invandrare. Studier visar att många invandrare är utsatta i samhället då de kommer till ett nytt land. Denna utsatthet kan vara språksvårigheter, arbetslöshet, rasism och diskrimination. I samband med att invandringen ökar i Sverige ökar även sannolikheten att man som sjuksköterska kommer i kontakt med patienter med annan kulturell bakgrund. På så sätt kan det uppstå det kulturkrockar i mötet med invandrarpatienter.

The contents of the school subject religion in Sweden, has gone through a radical change during the past century. With an origin of only treating Christianity and being a major cultural and social actor, it has developed into more of a multicultural and philosophical subject. The fact that the subject no longer has cultural recognition makes it more abstract and harder for students to relate to. Additionally, religion is experienced as a rather dull subject in school. My essay is therefore written to provide teachers encouragement of interest for religious education, by using humor. The well-known psychologist Jean Piaget claims play to be a prime state of learning.

In the prison of Kumla, Sweden`s highest security classified institution, spiritual retreats are pursued since 2001. The aim is to offer the inmates a possibility to enter deeply into spiritual contemplation. This spiritual contemplation is made possible through the fact that the prisoners carry out a retreat designed after guidelines written by Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises. The purpose of this examination is to study how ordinary institutional life in comparison to monastic life defines and creates different attitudes and roles amongst the inmates. A secondary aim is to describe the consequences of the retreat on individual basis.

The right to freedom of conscience is protected by international conventions and declarations of human rights that have been ratified by Sweden. Nationally, the issue of health professionals? right to freedom of conscience in the abortion care is not resolved by public inquiry. This has led to that Sweden has been notified to the European Committee of Social Rights on the grounds that the country is considered to be violating the Council of  Europe Resolution 1763 and that the proper question to be determined by regulations of the interests that are balanced, based on their legal value in relation to each other. Freedoms, rights and obligations conflict with each other.

Z39.50 is a standard protocol designed to create an interface between diverse computer databases for diverse information needs. Since it has to be adjustable it is also complex and demands a certain degree of expertise when being set. However, the aim of this paper is not to make a theoretical description but to examine certain conditions in practice. From the perspective of Swedish research libraries two principal hypotheses are examined: 1) the implementation of a given technology (Z39.50) is primarily influenced by social circumstances, and 2) the way in which the technology is implemented will bias the results of information retrieval. For this examination we need a framework of theories concerning the relationship between technological development and society, organisational theories and database theories.

The loss of such great wetlands, which has arose in Sweden the last decades, has created a situation that threats both the function and the biological diversity within the wetlands. Many ecological niches can be found in the wetlands and it is one of the habitats where most different species exist. In the 17th Century people started to ditch damp environments, such as bogs, to create a productive cultivated ground. Further ditches were made when the forestry gave large economical profits. The wetlands were impoverished from both groundwater and nourishment, and this led to a great loss of species.In a corporation with WWF and Skogsstyrelsen in Arvika, the University of Karlstad has participated in the Laskerudproject, a hydrological restoration-project in a forest landscape.

We came in contact with the project "Grönplan Danderyd" that aims to create a green structure plan for a municipality of Stockholm called Danderyds kommun. Our thesis is a part of this project and makes it's contribution through the gathering and systematization of the knowledge of the functions of an urban green structure. It also makes a contribution through suggesting how this knowledge can be applied during the construction of an urban green structure plan. We found that "Stadens parker och natur", published by the Swedish National board of Housing, Building and Planning, was a recurrent source of information in the green structure plans that we studied. We saw a need of complementary additions and updates to the rather old report and found literature that adds the developments of the last decade. First of all we have chosen to make themes based on the functions of a green structure that were presented by 'Stadens parker och natur'. The themes we suggest that a greenplanning document manage are: Recreation, Pedagogies and Heath, Biological Diversity, Green structure in the History of Building Cities, Cultural Identity, the Health of the City, Biological Technology in the Municipality and Use and the Users. We found good examples of how to handle these themes in documents that handle greenstructure planning from the municipalities of Göteborg, Strängnäs, Eskilstuna, Malmö, Lund, Västerås and Uppsala.

Continuously grazed grasslands have remarkably high plant species diversity. In Sweden this type of habitat has declined for the last two centuries. Changed land use has caused habitat fragmentation and loss of habitat quality. This has caused a great number of plant species to end up on the verge of extinction. To try to save this unique habitat and the species that are tied to it, lots of resources are laid on restoration of abandoned grasslands. In this study, plant species richness of continuously grazed, abandoned and restored grasslands were related to degree of overgrowth, time since overgrowth started and rate of overgrowth.