Studien avser undersöka hur unga Jehovas vittnen håller sin tro övertygande. Frågeställningar har varit hur de hanterar den mångfald av världsuppfattningar, värderingar och normer som inte är förenliga med Jehovas vittnens lära, hur deras tro bekräftas kontinuerligt samt om de upplever sig skilda från den icke-troende världen. Tre unga Jehovas vittnen har intervjuats för denna studie. Deras svar har relaterats till vad tidigare forskning och sociologiska teorier säger om att hålla tro övertygande, att vara ung och religiös samt om att vara ett Jehovas vittne. Frågeställningar och syfte besvaras genom ett flertal faktorer som träder fram i studien: församlingen utgör en starkt normbildande primärgrupp och utgör en stabil plausibilitetsstruktur.

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent some Swedish bishops (1972-2014), mainly archbishops, were influenced by postmodernity as described by Lyotard in his report La Condition postmoderne (1979).This report had a tremendous impact on the western cultural and philosophical debate in general during the very end of the twentieth century. I am trying to find out if this impact could also be observed in the Religious sphere and particularly in the Church of Sweden. My theory used, is mainly based on the ideas presented in La Condition postmoderne and my method is a hermeneutical reading of eight pastoral letters. These letters were written during the time that the Church of Sweden transformed from being an officially recognized national church to a free church among other free churches and in this respect ended to be a part of the official governmental power. The terms postmodernism or post-modernity were scarcely used at all in the pastoral letters but on the other hand the bishops seemed to share many of the ideas that Lyotard presented, such as the view on the metahistory/metanarrative and the connection of knowledge to power, the necessity of dialogue and openness and the importance and the role of creating and maintaining language games..

Thid thesis concerns pre-Roman religion in Gaul, taking as its starting point Caesar's De bello Gallico. Caesar's account of the Gauls and their Religious customs is compared with the accounts of Lucan, Pliny the elder and Ammianus Marcellinus. These are also compared to, and contrasted to, the archaeological evidence. There is some discussion of the nature of the common interpretations of this evidence. The concept of 'the Celts' is touched upon, since much of the relevant evidence has, in our time, been thought of as Celtic.

The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

The purpose of this thesis was to find out whether the main class C (religion) in the Swedish classification system Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek is well adapted to classify materials published in or imported to Sweden, and handled by Swedish libraries today. The questions we put to ourselves were:1. How easy to understand, and how useful is the main class C religion today?2. What, in the main class C, is satisfactory?3. What, in the main class C, is inconsistent, anachronistic or incorrect?4. What, in the main class C, is in need of change or renewal?The method that was used was a number of interviews with librarians and cataloguers. We have interviewed eight librarians from six different libraries, of different types, but all with a relatively large collection of Religious materials.Though all of our respondents have expressed a feeling that all the major religions deserve equal treatment in the classification system and a similar division of space, after some pondering on the subject, our respondents have agreed that a larger space for Christianity is warranted considering the composition of the current collections and publication. Our respondents have in some cases expressed that there is a lack of instructions as to how the subdivisions of the main class C (religion) is meant to be used.

Islamic masculinity which quite often associates with oppression of women has remained an underexaminated category despite its constant presence in the debate on honour related oppression. Honour has primarily been studied from a feminine point of view and theories of masculinity have taken insignificant interest in the issue of honour. The aim of this study is to understand what attitudes boys/young men from the Muslim world have toward native Swedish men and what these attitudes do imply for their own conceptions of masculinity and honour. The ambition of this study is also to make explicit the similarities, differences and connections between honour and masculinity.The empirical basis of this study consists of twelve interviews with boys/young men from the Muslim world about their notions of honour and masculinity. The theoretical platform arises from theories of masculinities and honour.Some prominent ?patterns? that I have found:- That Religious norms and rules appear to be significant in how the masculine manners of conduct should be adjusted.- That honour and women as carriers of men?s honour, play a crucial role for the constitution of proper masculinity.- That the Swedish context and its policy of equality seem to threaten the obviousness of the islamic masculinity.

The purpose of this essay is to examine Marjane Satrapi?s comic novel Persepolis from a gender and postcolonial perspective. To reach this I have used several theories from mainly three different fields of theory: gender studies, postcolonial theories and theoretical texts which focus on the form of comics.My analysis has shown that idols, heroes and other cultural symbols are important for the creation of the main character Marji?s identity, but that she at the same time has many Marxistic influences. These casts of mind do not stand in opposition, but become an expression for her hybridity.

 Euro barometer surveys show quite an astonishing change in Turkish opinion towards European Union. In 2004, 73 % of the population considered EU as a good thing. In 2008, only 49 % were of the same opinion. At the same time, skepticism towards European integration is explained differently in earlier research. Some scholars claim that partisanship may explain attitudes of citizens better than ?cost and benefit? approaches.

Lately an increasing portion of the public debate in Sweden has been devoted to how societies may facilitate entrepreneurship, yet a negligible portion of this debate has discussed the impact of the community spirit on entrepreneurial activity. Further, this connection is a relatively uncharted field in terms of research as well. The aim of this study is accordingly to advance the study surrounding the impact of community spirit on the propensity for entrepreneurial activity and add new empirical data and insights to the existing body of theory. A four-month ethnographic study of the Provo-Orem region in Utah, USA, comprising of in-depth interviews and participant observations, was therefore undertaken with the aim of understanding the community spirit in the studied region and its influence on entrepreneurship. The thesis finds that numerous values such as self-reliance, family focus and security together with a strong Religious culture make up the essence of the community spirit in Provo-Orem.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and question the use of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness in the workplace can be understood as an organization recipe and is now a so called trend. We believe that there may be an issue of how mindfulness at work is advertised when it is described in such a way that it could be the solution to many organizational problems, such as reducing stress, increasing efficiency, creativity and productivity. To get a better understanding of what mindfulness is and what it can bring to a stressful work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four mindfulness instructors. We analyzed the interviews from a theoretical analytical framework consisting of both a constructivist perspective and a power perspective.

Right-wing populism has through the past decades flourished in several countries in Europe. Research has shown that right-wing populism is, with its political starting point in ?the people?, focusing on the majority and is sometimes excluding the minorities from the politics. Since human rights regulations are mainly a protection of minority rights, the aim is to examine if the politics of the Sweden Democrats, as a case of a growing right-wing populist party, is a threat to human rights and in that case, in what respects. The thesis is supposed to answer the question in what respects the politics of the Sweden Democrats contravene with the European Convention?s protection of minority rights.

Bishop Alois Hudal is a man who is often mentioned when the relationship between the Vatican and the national socialistic Germany of 1933-1945 is discussed. In these cases he is usually presented as a Nazi and sometimes even called ?the brown Bishop?. One of the contributing factors for this infamous title, perhaps the most contributing, is the Bishops book Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus. National Socialism is a Weltanschauung with a certain set of doctrines that is hard, or rather impossible, to combine with any other Weltanschauung, whether it is a philosophical or a Religious one.

Denna examensuppsats är skriven på Lärarutbildningen på Malmö Högskola inom ämnet för Religionsvetenskap och lärande och visar på elevers attityder till ämnet Religionskunskap. I min undersökning ingår 78 enkäter som delats ut till elever i år 8 och 9 och tre intervjuer med elever i år 8 och 9. Frågeställningarna som besvaras är: Vilka tankar har grundskoleelever kring religionskunskapsämnet idag? Anser grundskolelever att religionskunskapsämnet är relevant idag? Hur har religionskunskapsämnet förändrats i den svenska skolan under de senaste seklen och hur har debatten kring ämnets existens sett ut? Undersökningen visar på att eleverna tycker det är viktigt med kunskaper i Religionskunskap samtidigt som de anser att ämnet inte intresserar dem så mycket. Min slutsats är att bristen på intresse för ämnet har samband med att det eleverna anser är viktigt och som är i linje med kursplanen inte stämmer överens med det eleverna upplever att religionsundervisningen fokuserar på.

The study aims to describe and analyze the image of Mary Magdalene as expressed in the French artwork from 1400 and 1600s that this study deals with. The study also examines the historical context in order to find explanations for why the images of Mary Magdalene have changed. In the study Erwin Panofsky?s iconographic method is used to analyze the artworks and finding their underlying meaning. Delimitations are made that only works of art made by French artists from the 1400 and 1600s are analyzed and delimitations are also made that Mary Magdalene will act on her own in the works of art.

Suicide research has a long tradition within sociology. Parallel to the Durkheimian tradition, seeking the causes of suicide in societal factors, a more cultural understanding of suicide has been emphasized. Attitudes to suicide have been stressed as important for the understanding of suicide mortality levels in different societies. For Russia, where suicide mortality levels are among the highest in the world, an understanding of this kind might be of particular importance.Based on a survey study from Moscow 2004, attitudes to suicide were studied in relation to social, economic and demographic factors as well as to attitudes to other morally disputable behaviors. Suicide attitudes in different age and sex groups in the sample were further compared to suicide mortality levels in the corresponding groups in the population.