Background: Municipalities are organizations facing a turbulent environment characterized by social, economical and political changes. It is the responsibility of the topleaders of the municipality (the municipal manager and the chairman of the local government board) to manage the situation and to make sure that the organization continuously develops. Purpose: To explain, from a leadership perspective, how the municipal topleaders'duties have developed during the past 25 years. Results: The municipal topleaders have nowadays got more issues to handle. Cooperation, networks and projects have increased, like international issues.

The master's thesis investigates how the concept traditional knowledge is represented by international organizations that are influential in development work and policy making. Departing from a theoretical framework drawing on Michel Foucault, constructed aspects of knowledge and the power relations knowledge production implies are highlighted.A recent interest within library and information science and practice to document this kind of knowledge raises questions about how traditional knowledge differs from other forms of knowledge and how knowledge organizational tools can be applied. Investigations, which critically explore the concept traditional knowledge, the power relations the concept creates as well as the interests and purposes it serves, have been surprisingly absent within the discipline. The focus in this master's thesis is how traditional knowledge is conceptualized by international organizations. A discourse analytical approach reveals the power relations that are inherent in their descriptions of traditional knowledge and how they describe the relevance of the concept for their work.

I have investigated the interaction between man and environment, between my inner reality and a physical place, using a camera as my primary tool. What conceptions do I have and how do they affect how I relate to the outer world? I am not a passive receiver of the surrounding world. Instead I actively (but usually unconsciously) choose what to take in and how I experience it. If we as landscape architects do not reflect upon our conceptions, they will unconsciously affect our decisions. Only when we accept our experiences as subjective, can honest communication take place. By means of literature studies I have connected my own conceptions with different definitions of place: place as enclosure (location, space), place as inner meaning (genius loci) and place as action (the place-creating process).

Because of the mass tourism industry that exploits sensitive locations all over our planet a new kind of tourism came into focus in the 1980?s. This new form of tourism was named ecotourism, and as the name reveals ecotourism deals with low-impact travel. Today, all sorts of places can be gazed upon in a flick of a switch; all you need is a television set. It is well known that destination marketing successfully uses visual media as a tool to sell trips to potential tourists.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, issues related to religion and violence has beenactualized in the media. Do Islamic texts and sources legitimate violent actions? In responseto these questions, some professional scholars of Islam argued that the 11 September terroristswere not really Muslims, but hijackers of Islam. According to other scholars, such argumentsreflect a common sui-generis discourse in religious studies which stresses the autonomy ofreligious phenomena, the priority of faith over cultural production, interior experiences andbeliefs over social practice. The scholars in favor for a naturalistic approach in religiousstudies argues that, in order to approach religion in a naturalistic way, we have to be critical ofRepresentations of religion ? and in this case Representations of Islam ? drawing on a suigenerisdiscourse.

The power of news media to shape public opinion has been widely researched and acknowledged. In the globalized world of today, media Representations of different ethnic groups therefore contribute to social segregation or desegregation. This thesis investigates how Spanish news media frame Spain?s most numerous minority of non-European ethnicity: the Moroccans. Using a quantitative content analysis, we have analysed about 200 news articles in the two most read Spanish online newspapers, El País and El Mundo, published during a two-year period, 2010-2012.

In October 2006 the media began investigating the four ministers Billström, Borg, Borelius and Stegö Chilò who were all being accused of miner tax fraud. The two women, Stegö Chilò and Borelius became the primary victims of an extensive media hunt where the media already had made their minds up; the women had to go. The more the women tried to explain themselves, they only seemed to be digging themselves into a deeper hole and ten days into the ?hunt?, the media got their way, the women resigned while the men, even today remain on their positions. What was it then that made the outcome so different regarding the four ministers when the only thing to really set them apart was their genders?With support of theories from Giddens, Habermas and Thompson as well as theories regarding media, gender and the medias ethical responsibility we have in a qualitatively narrative analysis studied 20 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Expressen.

The aim of our study was to examine how homosexual and heterosexual men and women are represented in the Swedish magazine QX, a magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people. We wanted to find out what kind of roles the persons in QX appears in, and inquire the relationships that exist between them.We analyzed the texts in twelve magazines, from December 2008 to November 2009, in order to get the most current results as possible. We used a discourse analysis, with focus on identities, relationships and the representation of the world. Representations, gender, hegemonic masculinity and stereotypes have been significant theories to analyze our results.The results showed that the successful gay man is the most important person in QX. He is the perfect masculine macho fagot, who is highest in rank.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to explore university librarians? thoughts about the future. The analytical focus is thus on the librarians? Representations of the future. The theoretical framework used is narrative theory with a social constructionist viewpoint.

Sara Lidman?s second novel Hjortronlandet (1955) unfolds in the north of Sweden in the early 20th century. It describes the progress of modernity and the conflicting interests of an old local culture and a new more ?civilised? one. The two cultures are constituted by different value systems and in the novel they are represented by two neighbour communities.

This thesis aims to explore the Representations of musicians and soundscapes on the column of Trajan in Rome. While many different parts of the column have been explored thoroughly, the musicians are not such a part. As such, this thesis aims to explore this gap in research as well as explore how the soundscapes have been represented on the column. By sorting and grouping scenes with musicians into different groups, this thesis has been able to find patterns of representation such as musicians being represented in religious scenes more often than in military scenes and the fact that there seem to be some compositional overlap between the different groups in how the musicians are represented. Grounding the thesis in a theoretical approach that uses the presumed audience and their experiences as a guide for how to represent different scenes, it is argued that part of the reason for musicians being more present in religious scenes than in military ones is because the roman audience were more aware of the actual religious soundscapes.

This thesis explores how three contemporary Mexican women artists, Teresa Margolles, Julieta Aranda, and Minerva Cuevas navigate and critically engage with the global art world through a postcolonial and transnational feminist lenses. The study investigates how their artistic practices address issues of gender, identity, power and violence by examining six artworks by their aesthetic and material strategies, revealing how these artists challenge dominant Western narratives. Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Marsha Meskimmon, Ania Loomba, and Homi K. Bhabha, among others. The thesis discusses concepts of cultural hybridity, the ?third space? and gender to analyze the complex intersections between the local and the global spaces in contemporary art.

The aim of the thesis is to examine discourses about political violence categorised as ?ethnic? in academic literature and the media. Employing the method of discourse analysis, the study analyses news coverage of the wars in former Yugoslavia 1991-1995. The theory applied is based on Michel Foucault?s theory of the relationship between power and discourse in the constitution of knowledge, and the main arguments are supported by the work of the political scientist V.

Människor har olika förutsättningar för att hitta i sin köksmiljö beroende på vilket hälsotillstånd som ligger till grund för den enskilde individen. Det finns personer som har ett försämrat arbetsminne på grund av att de fått diagnosen lindrig Alzheimers sjukdom. Idag ger många köksluckor ingen information om innehållet, och i varje enskild individs kök finns det olika objekt beroende på vad som används. Denna studie handlar om att hitta olika former av åtgärder i köksmiljöer för att lättare kunna hitta, det finns en förhoppning av att problemen med att inte hitta kan minska. Att använda datainsamlingstekniker som litteratur, intervjuer, workshop och fokusgrupp ska det gå att få reda på vilka åtgärder som kan fungera.

The purpose of this essay is to study uses of history in a complementary teaching material in the subject of history. The material in question is a 170 page book titled Hitler och Stalin- En bok om ondska. In English, ?Hitler and Stalin- A book on evil?. Essential to the study is that it is expressed within the material that it might be used as the basis for a discussion of the threats against an open democratic society.