Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

Abstrakt -  As energy prices rise, energy-saving in buildings is becoming increasingly important. By applying different construction and installation technologies, to new buildings the energy consumption can be reduced effectively, compared to similar existing buildings. These technical measures are often an investment in the long term and will reduce energy costs significantly. The purpose of this report is to show how to reduce energy consumption in a small house. It is presented in this report that both building's technical saving arrangements (the sealing of a building) and an installation technical arrangement (changing from the F-system to the FTX-system) would reduce energy consumption in newly built detached houses, if compared with a similar existing house but without these technical measures. The report presents also detailed calculations showing how much energy an existing 2-storey house, built in the year 2007 in Eskilstuna, consumes and how much energy would be saved if these corrective measures were applied to a new building. It is also reported how much money would be saved each year over a 10 year period if the measures were applied. The results show that both solutions are a good investment in the reduction of energy consumption and hence the cost involved. Keywords: energy, heat energy, infiltration, FTX-system, free temperature effectively. .

The aim of the study was to show whether or not there exists, and if so, to understand, a common creativity, vision and imagination of the members of Småland?s Entrepreneurial Academy?s organisation.The method used for this research is the fictive narrative collage , which consists of the collection of fictive stories. The author has also made her own additions to the method. A composer composes songs to the narratives, two artists illustrate the narratives. The research is carried out on the total population within Småland?s Entrepreneurial Academy which consists of 10 permanent members of the organisation.The theory focuses on different areas, such as creativity, vision and imagination as well as on the entrepreneur and the organisation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relations between foster parents and their foster children, what kind of motivation there is behind their involvement in foster children, how they experience the commission and what good parenting mean to them. The study is including eight foster parents. They have experience of both long and short placement of foster children. The results show that all these foster families have at least one child that they have a good relationship with. It is important to know that those children either have spent many years in foster families or arrived to foster families when they were very young or as infants.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how the public library communicates with young users through the library web sites. Four Swedish public library web pages for children are analysed. In the analysis the web pages are treated as a combination of semiotic resources that, communicating as a whole, hold a meaning potential. In order to identify the underlying meaning of the whole I have applied the tools of Kress' & van Leeuwen's visual social semiotics to the chosen web pages.The information value, the framing and the salience of each composition is examined and analysed, as is the size of frame, the perspective and the vertical angle of a selection of images from each web page. The results of the semiotic analysis are then discussed and related to Jochumsen et al:s four space-model and the notion of ?child perspective? and ?empowerment?.The results show that the child perspective is strongest on the web pages that represent the performative space as dominating and that empowerment is mainly represented as ?doing?, ?participating? and the ?free choice?.

Background: Recently, the Swedish food culture has expanded by leaps and bounds. Interest in food and cooking has taken more space in the Swedish welfare state. Products and icons, such as organic free range chicken or Per Moberg have had greater impact on the way we consume food. Consumers have become increasingly aware of what they should and should not be eating. With an increased interest in food, supply and distribution channels have become increasingly important for the major grocery retailers (Board of Agriculture 2011).

Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. To prevent and change this the society need to develop good approaches and interventions to promote physical activity. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate which experience existing users have of smartphone training applications. Also to study if this can be a possible resource for health promotion. Six active users applied to participation after they had seen an ad in social media.

The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to the obstacles that affects the internal trade of waste within the EU. The essay doesn?t in any way encourage pollution or illegal handling of waste but unfortunately there are large profits to be made from illegal destruction and recycling of waste and especially hazardous wastes. Therefore the dependable companies handling waste must access a market with fast and flexible (but predictable) regulations as well as lower transaction costs to help make the environment better and encourage a strive for increased recycling. There are examples where some waste only can be sent to a land-fill within the country but could be recycled in other EU-countries.

Since the mid 60?s, Germany has seen dropping fertility rates and yet next to nothinghas been done to combat this trend until the current regime led by Angela Merkel andher minister of family affairs, Ursula von der Leyen initiated a number ofcomprehensive reforms of Germany?s family policies.Family policy in Germany is being reformed in three ways. First of all parents arenow eligible to receive substantial financial support in order to compensate the loss ofincome associated with a pregnancy and or parental leave. Second, the all but nonexistentpublic child care services are being vastly expanded with the goal of beingable to offer child care service for every child age 0-3. Thirdly the tradition of schoolsending classes midday is being reformed with the aim of letting kids stay in schoolmuch longer thus enabling parents to work full-time as opposed to part-time in orderto be able to take care of kids returning from school.The hopes for these ambitious reforms are tremendous.

The concept of a Sharia compliant financial system has been a frequently discussed topic among scholars, bankers and media since the 1960th. It origins from the prohibition of interest, riba, which is stated in the Quran. Islamic banking is spread across the Muslim world and also exists in some western countries. This paper will try to create an image of what Islamic banking is in theory and in practice. This will be done by looking into the different methods of interest free banking, the Quran and the annual reports of four Islamic banks in different countries.

The concept of a Sharia compliant financial system has been a frequently discussed topic among scholars, bankers and media since the 1960th. It origins from the prohibition of interest, riba, which is stated in the Quran. Islamic banking is spread across the Muslim world and also exists in some western countries. This paper will try to create an image of what Islamic banking is in theory and in practice. This will be done by looking into the different methods of interest free banking, the Quran and the annual reports of four Islamic banks in different countries.

The aim of this study was to investigate how four families in the Stockholm area reason, what kind of preconception they have and what their horizon of expectations is when they make the choice between sending their children to the profile class of municipal/free schools and sending them to the general classes in those schools. The main research questions asked were:What kind of preconception do the parents have about profile classes?What reasons do the interviewed parents have to send their children to a profile class?What are the interviewed parent?s expectations of the profile class choice?The study is built on qualitative interviews with the parents of the families. The empirical data has been analyzed using a framework of theories drawing on the theory of reproduction, the forms of social capital, the ideas created from the word profile and elite and the horizon of expectations. The results show that the parents of the families have a similar degree of preconception about profile classes.

This is a qualitative study on bachelor level at the School of Social Work. The aim of the thesis was to describe how selected municipal commissioners and social workers in Malmö view the complex of problems, and different solutions, concerning homelessness.Malmö, the third largest city of Sweden, is struggling with serious problems concerning homelessness. Possible solutions are being debated, and the opinions differ widely, depending on ideological standpoint. We wanted to find out how selected municipal commissioners and social workers view the complex of problems, related laws and local guidelines, and measures to improve the situation. In order to have a free discussion, but within limits we used semi-structured interviews.Our results show that both the municipal commissioners and social workers regarded homelessness mainly as an individual issue, related to dissocial aspects of the individual.

Studien inriktar sig på att undersöka barns fria lek på fritidshemmet, och vem det är som sätter gränser och regler i leken. Syftet med studien är att få en större insikt om just gränssättningen i den fria leken och till vilken utsträckning barnen får göra detta på egen hand. Studien syftar också på att undersöka när och hur pedagoger bryter den fria leken. Som utgångspunkt i studien har följande frågeställningar ställts: Vem sätter regler i barns fria lek och spel inom fritidsverksamheten? Hur när och varför? Till vilken utsträckning får barn fritt spelrum att sätta egna gränser i den fria leken? Det aktuella forskningsläget inom problemområdet som presenteras är indelat i fyra teman; Lek, samvarokompetens, regler och makt.

Foot rot is a severe claw disease which occurs among sheep and goats in most parts of the world, with outbreaks in hot and humid weather. It is a contagious bacterial infection caused by Dichelobacter nodosus in association with Fusobacterium necrophorum. Foot rot has a negative impact on both animal welfare and economy.This thesis presents how Australia, Nepal, Norway, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden and Uruguay handle foot rot. In the selection of countries the focus was on countries that have control- or eradication programs against foot rot. There are differences in the climate, animal husbandry practices, animal welfare and economic resources in the countries that are presented.