Alcohol and drug abuse is something that undoubtedly exists in our society today. Our interest in this area was inspired by an earlier study of the influence of socialization on these dependencies. From this we developed new hypotheses concerning men and women?s drug and alcohol abuse. The main purpose of this study was to highlight the experiences and reflections of six women and seven men on their own alcohol or drug abuse.

It is increasingly important for cities to attract visitors, potential new residents and businesses. Jönköping is one of the cities working with place marketing, a strategy that intends to mediate a positive image of the city, in order to accomplish just that.People often have a need to preserve the memory of a trip into something tangible. Anyone visiting Jönköping encounters a souvenir choice, much like the one in many other cities. Linked to the idea of positive place marketing, our work aims to investigate how we as product developers can create a product that en¬hances the image of Jönköping based on the thought that all residents are con¬sig¬nors. Accordingly, we develop three different products from the residents' own image of the city.Our research questions are:Based on the photographs, what image of Jönköping do the ambassadors mediate of their own city?As designers, what in Jönköping's history versus the image of Jönköping today, can we seize in order to give products for visitors a sense of authenticity?As designers, how can we use knowledge of place branding in the development of souvenirs?We performed interviews within three different aspects: history, souvenirs and place branding, all focused on the city of Jönköping.

The use of hallucinogenic plants has throughout human history been used for religiouspurposes, in order to induce mystical states of mind, often interpreted as meeting with godsand spirits. In recent years, this practice has been taken up by people interested in theexploration of their psyche and spiritual side. This group of people, referred to as?psychonauts?, communicate with each other through internet based forum, where theyshare their experiences in so called ?trip reports?. The aim of this study was to see whatrole psychedelic drugs can play when used in a spiritual/religious context, and whetherthese sorts of mystical states of mind could tell us about more traditional mysticalexperiences.

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine.Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten.The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g.

This is an essay about health promotion and organisation development. The problem concerning all health issues that can be tied to work related illnesses has long been a problem in Sweden. For example did this problem alone cost the Swedish government 25 million crones a day between the years 2000-2001. This is a major issue and there is lots of money to save in this area. This is why we wanted to research how to promote health by changing the structure of the selected company.

The purpose of this thesis was to find out what experiences teachers have from using a class blog in teaching. What are the advantages and disadvantages by the use of blogs in education?I have used qualitative interviews with four teachers in grades 1 to 6 who have worked with a class blog in teaching between one and three years.The study has shown that teachers' experience is that the blog serves as motivation and promotes learning for many different pupils and that, together with other digital tools is more equal. The main benefits that teacher mention is the expanded concept of text that offers multiple forms of expression and the authentic reader, which makes it more real, important and meaningful. Other benefits that come up are that it helps students to see their learning and learn from and with each other.

I have studied the curriculum for the compulsory Swedish school, from the curriculum from year 1962 when the Swedish grundskolan became a reality, to the curriculum from year 1994, the one in practice today. My primary interest has been what the curriculum says about bringing up the Swedish youth. My theory has been the British analyst Norman Fairclough?s Critical Language Studies. His thoughts about actual discourse, type of discourse and order of discourse has led me through out this essay.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how swedishness is constructed and narrated in two Swedish documentary series that picture the Swedish participation in the international ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The main focus lies on how the Swedish soldier as such is portrayed, on which values, characteristics and qualities that they are said to embody and how these are linked to notions of swedishness, particularly the strong historical narrative, formed during the second half of the twentieth century, that defines Sweden as a peaceful, neutral and humanitarian state, with peaceful, enlightened and democratically minded citizens. Theoretically it draws on the concept of metanarrative to explain how ideas of shared national origin translates in to a broad organizing discourse, that defines, interprets and communicates notions of what it means to be a Swede and what is needed to make claims on swedishness. Another concept, that of national bodyscape, is also used to further define and explain how ideas of nationality are embodied and take the form of specific characteristics and  personal qualities. The meaning-making in these two series makes use of the above mentioned definition of swedishness as defined by humanitarian concerns, democratic ideals and moral superiority to construct an image of the Swedish soldiers as on the one hand soft, humanitarians, who are needed in Afghanistan because of their especially strong sense of justice and moral, and, on the other, as tough soldiers, who are able to participate in every aspect of the war as fighters.

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie var att beskriva och jämföra skattning av känslan av sammanhang och tilltro till sin egen förmåga hos patienter med stroke respektive kronisk njursvikt.Metod: Frågeformulären GSE och SOC användes för att mäta tilltro till sin egen förmåga samt känsla av sammanhang hos patienter med stroke (n=63) och patienter med kronisk njursvikt (n=54). Deltagarna valdes ut från diagnosregistret ICD 10 från ett landsting i Mellansverige.Resultat: Båda patientgrupperna skattade högst på delskalan SOC-begriplighet och lägst på delskalan SOC-meningsfullhet. Det fanns signifikanta skillnader mellan yngre och äldre patienter med stroke gällande skattning av delskalan begriplighet. Det fanns dock inga signifikanta skillnader mellan yngre och äldre patienter med kronisk njursvikt. Båda patientgrupperna skattade tilltron till sin egen förmåga ungefär lika högt.Slutsats: Resultatet av denna studie visar att äldre strokepatienter upplever sig ha större begriplighet än yngre patientervilket kan bero på livserfarenhet vilket stämmer överens med tidigare studier.

Swedish dairy production has during the last decades undergone considerable structural rationalisation and the number of dairy herds has decreased to less than 7000. At the same time the average herd size has increased and a large proportion of those investing in new buildings today choose automatic milking (AM). During 2008 more than ten percent of the Swedish cows will be milked with AM. The development has been faster than expected and the need for consulting has increased rapidly. This study aims to evaluate whether a check list originating from the FRISKKO (?healthy cow?) programme can be a useful tool when assessing how well the herd functions in various areas.

Although women have had access to colleges and universities in Sweden for quite some timeand the share of women at the undergraduate level has been high for many years (40% by thelate 1950:s, nowadays women are a majority at that level), still the share of women professorsis low. This paper will study some researchers? view on how a professor should be, and alsohow they relate themselves to that ideal. The method used is qualitative interviews, whichhave then been analysed by discourse analysis. The paper also contains a discussion on thehistory of the universities from the Middle Ages and forward, to show how the impact of thathistorical legacy affects universities today.Eight respondents were interviewed, four women and four men.

Samhället och världen vi lever i är föränderlig, kanske mer än någonsin. Det finns en strävan efter tålighet och snabb återhämtning för att på ett så bra sätt som möjligt hantera händelser och förändringar som vi inte kunnat förutse. Robusta samhällen kan anses framstå som önskvärda i en föränderlig värld. Då samhällen består av människor kan det antas att robusta människor skapar goda förutsättningar för robusta samhällen.Syftet med denna studie är att få mer kännedom om hur en robust människa upplevs och om det finns likheter i beskrivningarna av ett robust samhälle och en robust människa. Studien genomfördes i form av tre semistrukturerade intervjuer med tolkande fenomenologisk analys.

Products and services have for a long time competed with their brands. For some time now, cities have begun to compete with each other to attract visitors and other stakeholders to come to their town. It is important that the citizens feel as they are a part of the message that the city sends out in its communication.Cities are today working actively with their brands, much like regular companies, in order to create the profile and image in order to be competitive against other cities and places. Cities and places are part of a dynamic process which includes both positive and negative events. These events might have an impact on the brands, and therefore it is a necessity to be able to react on these events to make the most of positive things and deal with the negative in a way that minimizes the effects on the brand.Citybranding as a research field is quite new.

We started out the study with a preconception of culture as something that creates difference between groups of people, which had been verified by our prior research. We also had a sense of culture as a polysemous term. Our assumption is also that there is an opinion within social work practice that Swedish social workers are faced with a cultural barrier when encountering immigrant clients.In this study our aim is to examine constructions of the terms cultural competence and culture. Constructions of the terms ethnicity and ethnic diversity are also observed, although the main reason for this is to show what relation these terms have to the terms cultural competence and culture, and how they may give each other meaning, according to the theory of social construction. In addition to constructions, we also aim to bring out discourses around the terms, upon which we will create a discussion about power and dominance informed by post-colonial theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Alcohol and drug abuse is something that undoubtedly exists in our society today. Our interest in this area was inspired by an earlier study of the influence of socialization on these dependencies. From this we developed new hypotheses concerning men and women?s drug and alcohol abuse. The main purpose of this study was to highlight the experiences and reflections of six women and seven men on their own alcohol or drug abuse.