In his recent article Professor of International Affairs Charles Kupchan claims that Party Politics has become increasingly important for American Foreign Policy since the end of the Cold War. This assertion makes it valuable to assess how the substance of the Foreign Policy differs between the two American parties in various cases and if this difference is characterized by consistency or by change. In this thesis I examine these Party positions in relation to the European Security Policy.In order to examine this I compare the positions of the Democratic and Republican Parties? policy concerning both the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The purpose of this thesis is to examine the hypothesis that the Democratic Party to a higher extent than the Republican Party is more concerned to maintain good relations to Europe respectively EU.The results show that there are small indications that my hypothesis concerning the two parties is valid.

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.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

This thesis aims to examine why women are prevented from attaining high positions in organizations. By executing a case study through qualitative interviews with employees from the Human Resource Department at the agency for Swedish Armed Forces, this study presents eight general and specific explanatory factors that hinder women from making a vertical career. The general factors include that women are discriminated against, women are perceived as less competent, men have created organizations and it is easier to recruit men. The specific factors include that a hierarchical organizational structure is correlated to inequality, that both the agency for Swedish Armed Forces and leadership are associated with masculinity and that women with civil competence face double misfortune. The division between general and specific factors indicate that the explanatory factors vary between organizations, which among other things implies that equality work should be tailored for the specific organization.

AbstractIn this essay, I have performed a study on peer cultures and how these peer cultures are expressed in a group of pre-school children. My questions are as following:What positions/power positions can be seen in children?s play, and how will these be expressed?How do the children gain access to play?How do children act when they want to exclude other children?In order to understand this I have chosen to do observations as a method. In order to investigate these questions I chose to spend six whole mornings with a group of pre-school children, closely observing their behavior. The focus was on children, three years of age or older.

In this paper the authors are focusing on people that work in psychiatric acute care. How do they identify the individual that is in most need of acute care? How do they judge in this kind of cases?    The foundation in this study is in the qualitative method. The material to this study has been collected by doing qualitative interviews with six people in different professions and positions in psychiatric acute care.   The material that we collected from these six qualitative interviews has been analysed with help from Sherif?s and Hovland?s (1961) Social judgement theory.

Title:                          Leadership development of individuals in management positions Authors:                    Carl Renér and Peter Simonsson  Institution:                Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics Program:                   Human Resource Management Course:                      Business administration ? Organization including thesis, 15 credits Supervisor:               Olle Duhlin (Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics) Examiner:                 Mikael Lundgren (Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics) It is widely known that the role of managers may result in stress and a heavy workload. As a result of this negative effects organisations have to counteract and find new solutions and systems to facilitate and assist leaders in their work. A popular method for leadership development has come to show both in research and in practice, especially in recent years, this popular method is known as mentoring. This form of leadership development is often applied in so called mentoring programs.

The European Union has been working to promote equality between women and men for a long time. Despite this, Sweden still have a gender segregated labor market where men generally has the leading positions. According to European law the member states shall promote gender equality and to take all appropriate measures. Statutory gender quotas for company boards is one such measure that some of the European member states have implemented in national law. The Swedish law has no provisions governing gender quotas and therefore the purpose of this study is to explain how gender quotas for company boards relate to current law, both of European law and national legislation.

Stress is part of everyday life and in the working conditions of the social services in Sweden. Thus each and every person has resources and strategies to cope with those stressors that construct the assumption of stress. The aim of this study was to understand how persons in leading positions of the LSS of Social Services in Kalmar experience and cope with stressors in their leadership and organization and to investigate what factors during working and non-working hours promote health. Influenced by the theoretical approach of Aaron Antonovsky´s Sense of Coherence seven qualitative interviews were conducted with persons in leading positions. They were asked about stressors, coping strategies, resources and health promoting factors that help to cope with stressors.

The European Union has been working to promote equality between women and men for a long time. Despite this, Sweden still have a gender segregated labor market where men generally has the leading positions. According to European law the member states shall promote gender equality and to take all appropriate measures. Statutory gender quotas for company boards is one such measure that some of the European member states have implemented in national law. The Swedish law has no provisions governing gender quotas and therefore the purpose of this study is to explain how gender quotas for company boards relate to current law, both of European law and national legislation.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how young women create their feminine gender positions in relation to their reading. Using qualitative research methods the empirical material has been collected through so called reflexive interviews with eight young women aged 15-17. From their statements the empirical material has been divided into five themes that are important to the young women, as well as to the formulation of the problem. This constitutes the model of analysis. The analysis has been conducted through an examination of these themes from a gender theoretical perspective and through the application of theories about reading and gender.

This thesis is a discourse analysis analyzing public library librarians' talk on the subject of public library meeting places. Within the field of Library and Information Science the public libraries' functions as social meeting places have been scrutinized for more than a decade. Researchers in the Nordic countries in particular have looked at library users' use of the library space and have highlighted the sociologic dimensions of the public library and the meeting place functions. Few however have paid much attention to the library personnel's point of view. The discourse analysis perspective is about language use and how people construct the reality.

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.

The purpose of the study is to investigate educators? attitudes and didactic positions on popular culture as a form and a means of children?s learning in preschool. The questions posed in the study are:? How do the educators define popular culture, which examples of popular culture do the educators give?? How do the educators describe the spoken and unspoken rules and positions regarding popular culture in preschool practice?? What are the risks and benefits when including popular culture in preschool, according to the educators?In this qualitative study four educators from different preschools have been interviewed. The preschools take as a starting point different educational philosofies.

The aim of this M.A.-thesis in social work is to problematize the assimilatoric concept of integration and its discourses in a postcolonial perspective in relation to social work in Denmark.As a support theory I use symbolic interactionism. By using these theories I show how the concept of integration and its discourses, when its aim is assimilatoric, can be understood and problematized with concepts as binary oppositions and hegemony.It is shown that the construction of the discoursive other is a useful term as an instrument of interpretation of power in general. The relevance to social work in relation to the social workers double powered positions, professional and cultural power to define 'the other', in social work with ethnic minorities is shown in relation to the post colonial perspective with support of symbolic interactionism. The white western world hegemony and the social workers power positions in relation to the clients fits to the theoretic frame chosen in the thesis.A second aim in this thesis is to point to new ways for social work and to the necessity to reflect over a globalized world characterized by international migration, ethnic relations and diversity..