Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation.

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

Private religion is a faith that isn?t practiced in an organised religious community. Many people do not want to accept a religious concept that is already defined. To choose a conception of faith based upon personal preferences fits some modern man better. The purpose of this thesis is to examine if it?s possible to create a personal religion and how such a process looks.

This master thesis is an ethnological study focusing members of a young, urban Jewishdiaspora in Sweden. The study's aim is to problematize and describe the relation between theJewish minority that is regarded as religious, and the secular normative majority societyregarded as non-religious. The study explores questions regarding social positioning,belonging and memory and how Jewish traditions are practiced in contemporary Sweden. Themethodological approaches are interviews and participation observations with a specific focuson food; its symbolic value and how food can materialize identities and communicatememories. The empirical data comprises 24 interviews in total, of which 11 interviews havebeen chosen and thus constitute the material on which the study's analysis is made upon.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

The aim of this study was to examine how sports journalists used religious metaphors when covering football during the time span of the study, and how the athletes were portrayed as a result of the usage. The aim was also to study if the usage differed between the two newspapers chosen for the study, one of which is a morning paper (Dagens Nyheters sport section) and one which is an evening paper (Sportbladet).To answer our questions we used a quantitative and a qualitative method, the later of the two was based on a metaphor analysis. The quantitative method consisted of a content analysis where different variables were examined. The time span of the study is articles from one year.The results show that the religious metaphors were used in many ways. Some religious metaphors, such as ones including the word miracle, were more prominent than others.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how daily encounters between the Danish public libraries and the library-users called ethnic minorities are described within the public library field. Danish public libraries have been assigned to play a larger role in societys strive towards integration of immigrants and refugees. Within Danish politics I find an emphasis on the importance of maintaining Danish culture, but it is rarely expressed if ethnic minorities are, can or should be a part of it. Theoretical and methodological starting points are hermeneutics and text-analysis. My theoretical framework is research about international migration and ethnic relations IMER.

The aim of this paper is to describe and explain how the separation between state and church effects the power relations between state and religious groups and organizations. Former state church, The Swedish church, is in this paper, not included in the definition of religious groups. The reform (?stat-kyrka reformen?) took place between 1995 and year 2000.I?m examining if religious groups had any influence on the reform. My expectation is to give a clearer picture of religious groups and its power position in Swedish politics and society.

In 1809 the citizens of Sweden where given the freedom to practice their Christian faith through the Swedish constitution of 1809, 16 §. This proclaimed that there should be religious freedom in Sweden, albeit restricted to Evangelical-Lutheran faith. Although after the law regarding dissenters was passed in 1860 by choosing another church than the Evangelical-Lutheran church you lost some civic rights, for example you could not become a public official. The freedom to choose religious affiliation was given through the Law of Religious Freedom in 1951. The purpose of this study is to evaluate in what way the concept of religious freedom has developed in Swedish law between 1809 and 1951.In the background I treat two historical events and one era, with focus upon religious freedom, which have in my opinion influenced the view of religious freedom in Sweden during the chosen period of 1809?1951.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

According to old european tradition the ideal national state has a unified people, but in reality practically all states has one of several minorities that to a smaller or greater degree differs from the majority. One such minority that have been present in many countries and managed to avoid becoming completly assimilated are the jewish people. Their dream of a state of their own eventually lead to the founding of the state of Israel where they themselves are now in majority. The purpose of this report is to study how the jews historic experiances has affected the political parties in Israel, how they choose to meet the ?challenge? of their own minorities och whatever they treat different minorites differently.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare how religious and non-religious world views are described and represented in three Swedish textbooks. The main question of this study is: How do three textbooks for the first stage of religious studies in high school represent non-religious and religious world views based on the text analysis tools: ethos, modality and transitivity?The three textbooks that are being analysed and compared were produced in the years of 2000, 2002 and 2009. The textbooks are used when teaching the first stage of religious studies in Swedish high school. The text analysis that I´ve chosen to use in this study is a part of Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis.