The aim of this essay was to investigate how religious topics and events are presented in five coursebooks in social studies. To do this the following questions were answered: In which context do discussions about religion take place? Are religions brought up in different contexts? To which extent do discussions about religion occur? The method consisted of a both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The results of this essay showed that discussion regarding religion in social studies coursebooks mainly focuses on wars, conflicts, terrorism and to some degree the human rights. Islam was the religion that occurred most frequently in the coursebooks.

In this paper I aimed to explore the bodily experiences and expressions that Christian charismatics interpret as religious.  The so-called presence of God and the so-called gifts of the spirit were in focus in the gathering of information. My purpose was to find out how the social community of the Christian charismatics affects the subjective bodily experiences that are interpreted as religious by the individual. The main questions were:1: How do Christian charismatics describe religious experiences and their effect on the body?2: What bodily expressions of religious experience can be observed in Christian charismatic contexts?3: Is there a common way of expressing the experience of God's presence (individually or in a group) and how, in this case, can any resemblance be explained?The methods used to answer these questions were qualitative interviews and participant observations, which then were analyzed by the anthropologist Thomas J. Csordas theory of embodiment.

This study aims to investigate how a number of students who are at the end of a teachers? educations program in social studies, geography, religion and history interpret that the national curriculums states that every teacher is responsible for students language development and should be supportive of language backgrounds. In the light of the curriculums the study explores how the teacher education students feel that the education has prepared them for teaching children with Swedish as a second language. The study also examines how the teacher education students think that the teacher education could improve in matters like preparing future teachers to teach social studies, geography, religion and history to second language children.The study is based on interviews with seven university students and shows that they feel a responsibility to develop their future students? language.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the new Swedish curriculum, GY11 brought with it changes to how non-religious world-views are presented in five different books in religious education, RE. The method used to analyze the material was a qualitative content analysis as well as counting the pages that dealt with secular world-views. This was later analyzed using philosopher Charles Taylors description and theory on secularization. This was used to identify secular processes as well as to define wether the books definition and description of secular world-views using Taylors concept of ?exclusive humanism?.The research questions are:? What are the authors writing about when describing the secular world- views?? What differences and similarities are there between the different editions prior and after the implementation of the new curriculum, GY11?? Are the secular world-views presented in a way that is compatible with Taylors concept of ?exclusive humanism??The results that are being presented are, first of all that the change between the different editions are not big.

A paper about islamism and democracy, in particular HAMAS, Hizbollahs and JIH:s view on democracy..

The aim of this study is to make a comparative study between the grievances during the Dacke Warand the German Peasant´s War. These two conflicts may have occurred separately, regarding bothgeographical and chronological distances but also share common issues for this comparative study.Less than two decades separates these two conflicts and they were all by their own serious insurrectionsduring their time. While the German Peasant´s War was the greatest uprising in Europe up tothe French Revolution, the Dacke War was the biggest Peasant Rebellion in Scandinavian history.While the German Peasant War has been studied and researched by historians for a relative longtime, the Dacke War has been neglected in research history. If it were not for the Swedish professorLars-Olof Larsson?s studies during foremost in the 1960s, the Dacke War would have been a historicallyuncharted territory of research indeed.

Since 2007 the American sitcom the Big Bang Theory has spread throughout the world. With its twenty million watchers it is one of the most popular sitcoms of our time. The starting point for this essay is that the humourus series with the more or less geeky main characters is more than just entertainment - it is a part of the mediatization of religion. This means that media is affecting the recipients? view on religion in general and the personal religion.

This essay looks to examine the view on religious and non-religious people thoughts on the possible relationship between feminism and religion. The essay in itself relies on semi structured interviews conducted with five informants where focus has been centered on the informants main thoughts on the subject. The theoretic basis of the study is found in post-structuralistic feminism and intersectionalism. The result will show that while all the informants believe there is a kind of relationship between feminism and religion, this relationship greatly varies depending on the informants? preconception of religion and feminism..

This master?s thesis problematizes how students in two Swedish secondary schools think and speak about, and relate to, topics such as gender, class, ethnicity, religion and sex, but also how they move in, make use of, and interact within, the school space. What categorizing and positionings, if any, can be found? Students in two Swedish secondary schools, in a medium sized Swedish town, have been observed (using participant observation) and interviewed (open ended), the material was then examined with intersectional theory. A majority of the ethnic Swedish respondents position ?the religious? as ?superstitious?, ?frightening? and/or ?backwards?, also many of them equated religion with ?muslim/islam?, a greater understanding for the others religious outlook was shown by students with an ethnic background from outside Europe.

Background: Previous research has shown that the understanding and knowledge about the spiritual needs is not given high priority among nursing staff. During the latest years the body and its functions has controlled the healthcare and the spiritual needs has been placed in the background. All humans have spiritual needs that must be satisfied irrespective of religious background. Aim: The aim of this study was to in a caring perspective illustrate patients? spiritual and existential needs in palliative care.

This essay describes the phases of funeral rituals between the Syrian/Assyrian, and compares the homeland with Sweden. It describes the stage of rituals according to Victor Turner schema of separation, margin or limin, and aggregation. The rituals religious significance agrees with Clifford Geertz?s theory about the importance of religious beliefs for the human being.

The purpose of the study is to analyse the representations of Jewish festivals and how they affect the teaching in three textbooks for Religious Education 1 in Secondary Upper Education. The textbooks are Religion och livet (2007) written by Börge Ring, Religionskunskap för gymnasiet (2009) written by Lars-Göran Alm and Religion 1 för gymnasiet (2012) written by Lennart Göth, Katarina Lycken Rüter and Veronica Wirström. The basis for the study is the phenomenological perspective as described by Émile Durkheim and in particular Carl-Henrik Grenholm and Karl-Johan Illman. It tells that religion cannot purely be understood as a religious belief without its rituals. This phenomenological perspective on religion both the curriculum and syllabus encourages.

This study's main aim is to contribute with an insight regarding how employees of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) experience religion as a component of development work in religious contexts. The study focuses on whether or not religion is given enough space within Sida's development work and if the policies of Sida are enough to cover the needs in religious contexts. To answer these questions we have interviewed six employees of Sida which holds experiences of development work in religious contexts. The results show a lack of knowledge and encouragement of these questions within Sida and that the interviewees experience religion as a complex concept. The study also shows that the interviewees find policies, methods and tools within Sida as inadequate to cover the needs of religion in development work.

AbstractAim: The aim of this essay has been to study how the Swedish church has created the image of their religious activity through media. This has been by studying the three commercial campaigns launched by the Swedish church during the years 2000, 2001 and 2003. Questions asked are: How has the Swedish church chosen to profile it self? Which discourses can be recognized in the campaigns? Which messages has been communicated through the campaigns? How has these discourses created the image of the Swedish church?Method: The methodological framework is critical discourse analysis inspired by Norman Faircloughs? three-dimensional model. Thirteen images all part of the campaigns are analysed using a semiotic method.

This essay focuses on the elderly and their religious beliefs and is based on the origin idea of a secular Sweden, but where immigration has been the source of additional various religious affiliations. This study intends to nuance the problems that previous researchers focused on when doing research on immigration, by interviewing staff members of nursing homes in immigrant dense areas, especially Malmoe, Gothenburg and Stockholm.The aim is to investigate how the allocation of residents, with different religious than Protestant Christians, is distributed at nursing homes and to see if there is a need for adjustments. Additionally, the thesis about immigrants and immigrants' identity and attitudes to Swedish society is discussed with John Berry´s acculturation theories and strategies.The results show that the majority of the nursing homes have residents with different religious affiliations and that some practical adjustments have been done, but it also shows that nursing homes have changed to the extent that they have adapted to a secular society. Ignorance and prejudice contribute to the problem in terms of seeing all residents as individuals and at the same time ensuring adaption according to all their needs, which is exemplified in the solutions made by using multi-cultural staff members and specialized departments. The relationship between nursing homes and the Swedish church continues but the role of the church service has changed.