Dust, our smallest common denominator                                                                                                                                                                 Charlotta Lindvall ABSTRACT  I find it fascinating to know that we are all made of the same material as the stars and that everything is connected to each other and in a constant movement and transformation, a recycle of material. We are all made of stardust. In fact all life is sprung out of dust.In my essay I investigate the dust and ask the question if there are any traces in the dust. I look at the history of the dust and how it has affected us and our world through the decades. What does this small and airy but oh so unappreciated dust tell us? Why do we want to get rid of it? Is it possible to find a sense of belonging in the big context by investigating the dust and its origin and could I transform such a low material as dust into something magic that makes people reflect on our origin and belonging and how everything is connected? In my work I use dust as a material and in the essay I compare my work with other artists who have worked with dust as a material.Dust is everywhere because its source is from everything.

The thesis explores what is meant by multiculturalism in today's Sweden based on burial grounds and funerals in a minor municipality. This is done through an ethnographic case study of the municipality of Vara. The study aims to investigate how multiculturalism looks and is responded to. The study maps which aspects are placed on multiculturalism in a minor municipality and which adaptations and compromises are highlighted. This is done within the framework of theories concerning multiculturalism and social identity, and the result of the empirical case study is presented by applying the theories to the material. From burial places and funerals, social collective and individual identities are analysed based on the social categories of religion/faith/secularity and place belonging, based on the perspectives of rituals and traditions as well as the location of the grave. The study finds that there are several aspects of multiculture in the burial grounds, as multiculture not only includes cultural influences from immigrants but also the different preferences of the local villages, in combination with the development of society, and Sweden in general.

This is a qualitative study that has investigated four people's experiences of making a physical change of life. With narrative depth interviews, the study was characterized by the informants own experience of their experiences and thoughts. With questions surrounding their experiences of alienation, belonging to the standard, people's attitude and prejudices against their appearance. The investigation revealed that the informants experienced shared experiences and things that separated them. The conclusion based on the people in this study was that people with low self-esteem are at greater risk for experiencing alienation.

This study aimed at supplementing the Swedish National Agency for Education?s (Skolverket) study (2006) I enlighet med skolans värdegrund? which investigated whether textbooks in various school subjects went against the fundamental values in the curricula Lpf94 and Lpo 94. Due to this study?s supplementing intention, this study uses a similar title as Skolverket. By adding a new subject (Swedish) to Skolverket?s study, this study also strived to show how discrimination might be present in other subjects than the ones Skolverket involved in their study.

This essey aims to investigate how inherited and acquired resources has influenced the choice of education. It is in this essays ambition to understand how the recources operates in a process from childhood to a certain education. The study was conducted using eight qualitative interviews with firstyearstudents in nursing and economics courses at Linnaeus University. By using Bourdieu's theories about habitus, capital and horizon of possibilities I wanted to understad how the students inherited and acquired recoures had operated in their choise of education. The main conclution is that the educational choice is strongly influenced by the individual's social belonging and must be understood as a result of the individual's history.

The purpose of this study was to examine how a local newspaper, Landskrona Posten, describes the youth that commit crimes. More specifically the aim was to see what kind of discourse the newspaper had about the young criminal and to see if that picture could create and confirm stereotypes. The theory and method used in the study is a discourse analysis. The study was based on nearly seventy articles that were published in Landskrona Posten in 2006. Three items were identified in the newspaper's description of the youth.

This thesis aims at examining to what extent a few, algorithmically very easily extractable document features can be used to classify electronic documents according to genre. A set of experiments is therefore carried out, using only 11 such simple features in an attempt to classify 84 documents belonging to electronic academic journals into three manually identified genres: table of contents, article, and review. The 11 features are also divided into three sets, containing metrics of words and sentences; punctuation marks; and URL links, respectively. The performance when using these sets of features is then measured with regard to classification accuracy, using a k-NN classifier, four different values of k (1, 3, 5, 7), and both leave-one-out and 10-fold cross-validation. Best results are achieved when using all three feature sets (i.e.

 Becoming an adoptive parent is not always easy. There are positive and negative factors affecting the parent?s experience. The aim of this study is to examine being an adoptive parent to an internationally adopted child based on association, parenthood and ethnic belonging. Frame of interpretation consists of attachment and separations, parenthood and family and ethnic origin and belonging.

The purpose of this paper is to study the processes of identity and feelings of connectedness among first and second generation of Kurds in the Swedish society.In previous research I assumed that this sense of belonging to a nation includes identity and language. As regards the theory part, I have chosen to use a number of studies to elucidate this issue. The theories used in the study focuses primarily on the understanding of identity. Identity in this context can include linguistic, religious, cultural acts, even nationality or that claiming membership to a particular group.I have implemented twenty-four depth interviews with first and second generation of Kurds in the ages 21?58.

The aim of this meta-study is to present an overview of the methods used in Master theses written at The Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University of Borås, where all Master theses from 1999, 2004, and 2009 has been studied. The aim includes examining if there is a connection between college (Swedish term: kollegium) belonging and methods used but also to examine and compare the qualitative and/or quantitative approaches to the methods. In the 252 Master theses studied, 353 different choices of method are recognized. After taking note of the methods, six categories are created in which the methods are placed. The categories are: Interview, IR-test, Observation, Studies of Text, Survey, and Other.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the majorities view on the minority can affect the minorities view on themselves.The study focuses on the research questions; what does the Roma identity look like? Is there a connecting between the week feeling of belonging to the majority ? Slovaks - that the Roma people feel and the widespread racism, stereotypes and scapegoat view towards Roma that the majority in the Slovak society have? Is the view Roma have on themselves effected by how other see them? Has the situation for the Roma gotten better since Slovakia entered the European Union?An empirical research study has been conducted in Slovakia during the period of April 2006 and interviews with Roma and NGO representatives where done.The Roma people's situation in Slovakia is bad and the discrimination towards them is widespread, both in the working life, healthcare, education system and housing. A lot has happened the last years, before Slovakia entered the EU the country adapted many new laws that strengthen the Roma people place in the society and gave them as a minority more support and rights.According to my findings it is found, and what most of the interview Roma expressed themselves, was that today they have a very low feeling of belonging and being a part of the Slovak society. They also expressed that they are very much affected by the poor view that the majority of Slovak have of them and in many cases they did not even want to try to be part of the society. The NGOs expressed that the situation for Roma in Slovakia is bad and even if it has been improved since the country entered the EU, the NGOs said that there are only a lot of new laws and in reality not much has changed..

AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine whether there are differences in Sense of Coherence between people in monotonous and non ? monotonous jobs with regard to birth order. In this present study, 89 individuals from three different working organizations participated, of which 51 (57, 3 %) of them were men and 38 (42, 7 %) women. The results showed that in varying occupations, firstborn children showed a higher level of Sense of Coherence. In monotonus jobs, middle children prove to have the lowest level of Sence of Coherence.

This is an examinaton of welfare officers and patients experiences of a course in mindfulnessbased stressreduction in primary care. The authors used a qualitative method and a phenomenological hermeneutics scientific philosophical position. The analys of the data appeared by using three theoretical perspectives; cognitive, coping and Antonovskys Sence of Coherence. The purpose was to get a deeper understanding of what mindfulness is, how a course in mindfulnessbased stressreduction can be arranged and how it is comprehended by the welfare officers and previous participators of the course. To get an opinion of the issue the authors wanted to know the welfare officers intention of the course, to which patients they provide the course, what the participators thought about their situation before and after the attendence and if they had assimilated the knowledge and if so how it was applicable.

The Somali community is relatively new in the UK and the majority of Somalis in Bristol are living under poor conditions in deprived areas. According to literature and research relevant for this study ethnic identity seems to be of more importance when threatened by environmental or social changes, such as experiences of migration. Young people are more exposed to such a process of identity construction. The aim for this study was to get a more profound understanding for the significance of migration for young Somali people?s identity formation in Bristol.

The purpose of this study is to examine how consultants define conceptions of diversity and discrimination. There has also been an aim to find connections to the term intersectionality within the consultants? definitions. The link between consultants and academic research is interesting to examine in order to examine what they base their definitions of different conceptions on. In order to explore these definitions and discussions I have used the qualitative method of interviewing each consultant separately at different occasions.