The purpose with this thesis is to understand the relationship between a square?s design and its function as a public meeting place, were Sundstorget in the city of Helsingborg is used as a study object. The architect Jan Gehl developed a theory of people?s outdoor activities in his book Livet mellem husene (1996). He divides the activities in three categories; 1) necessary activities, 2) optional activities and 3) social activities, which are differently affected by the place?s design.

The society of suburbs is frequently discussed in media, which often focus on the problems related to these areas. The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine how Swedish contemporary youth literature may contribute to create, strengthen and articulate social representations of the society of suburbs. The analysis is based upon six youth novels published during 2003 to 2007. The theoretical framework consists of two parts and is based on Anthony Giddens? theories about late modern society in which the youth novels in our study take place, and those living conditions that this society creates.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and expand the knowledge of how bereaved spouses in palliative care handled their grief. Attempts were also made to distinguish common patterns among the experiences that the bereaved spouses expressed.  Furthermore the study aimed to understand how the bereaved spouses handled their grief, and to understand what helped them to move on. A qualitative method was used in this essay, related to the purpose of investigating the spouses? emotional experiences. The questions used to reach an understanding of the matter were: How did the bereaved experienced their grief? Were there important contributing factors worsening their grief or making it easier? How did the bereaved persons handle their grief, and what helped them to work things through and carry on with their lives? The result was analyzed by using Antonovsky?s theory; a feeling of coherence, Lazarus? coping theory combined with Folkman?s revised coping theory.

This essay takes its point of departure in the need for modern day public libraries to legitimize their place in today?s society. Societal changes call for constant reinvention of libraries and as part of this reinvention, new light is being shed on the public library?s role as a meeting place. By investigating contemporary debate articles published in Bibliotek i samhälle and Biblioteksbladet, two major Swedish library magazines, this essay aims to categorize and compare different conceptions of the library?s function as a meeting place.

Background: Physical activity is important to sustain your health, but there are also other factors which can influence health. One of them is the degree of sense of coherence. Aim: The main purpose of this study was to examine if there existed a correlation between amount of physical activity and degree of sense of coherence (SOC) in adolescents in the northern parts of Sweden. This study also dealt with differences and similarities between and within the whole examination- group and subgroups. Methods: A SOC- questionnaire with 29 items, developed by Antonovsky, was used.

Purpose: Our aim is to get an insight on how home care workers experience, handle and looks upon their work. We also want to form an opinion of how home care workers experience the relationship to the clients they meet.Questions: How does home care workers experience their daily work with their clients? Home care workers daily meet many different sorts of clients with different needs, how do they handle this? What kind of support does home care workers get in their work?Method: A qualitative design with semistructured interviews.Conclusion: The most central conclusion from all of our interviews were: that home care service workers has a very stressful and demanding occupation, that the work has a low status, that the personnel has a big responsibility for the wellbeing of other people and that they often find their work satisfying and fun. To have someone to talk to and exchange ideas with was also mentioned by the informants as a vital part of feeling support in their work. From the Antonovskys theory, a sense of coherence, and Goffmans views of the society, we also find that the larger part of our informants feel a high sense of coherence and that when they have to adjust to their different caretakers they play different roles..

The present essay aims to understand the work of art as place on the basis of Martin Heidegger?s conception of work in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes from 1935. That is, a place that cannot be understood in accordance with the physical-technological space, but which cannot either be thought of as mere temporal spacing. This is accomplished by reading Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes through the shorter essay Die Kunst und der Raum from 1969. Despite the time difference, Die Kunst und der Raum opens up Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes in such a way that the work cannot be understood as if it were only a temporal event ? as the cause initiating a temporal process or succession of truth.

We have written this paper about gambling problems with the purpose to give us and all of our readers a sense of understanding. With the term understanding we mean that we all know what type of activity gambling is but not a lot of us know how it feels for individuals that due to their addiction play almost every day and sometimes several times a day. By somehow trying to explain what kind of experiences people who engage in gambling feel, we hope that we somehow can increase our knowledge towards these persons and towards gambling. We are well informed that the content of our particular subject that we?ve chosen is massive and that more research needs to be done about or subject since there are no simple answers that can explain gambling behavior so easily.

To be able to feel a sense of belonging, people need to have the possibility to take part of the information from the society. Hearing-impaired don?t have the same possibility as hearing people when they want to take part of the information, therefore they don?t get the same benefit. This contributes to a feeling of not belonging and a sense of limitation in different social occasions. Therefore the society needs to be accessible to everyone regardless disability.

This is a study on the electronic reference work of some Swedish university and university college libraries. The purpose of the study has been to find out how the service works at the different libraries, to study the electronic reference interview and to find what is important when you start a new electronic reference service in the light of Brenda Dervin's sense-making theory study. Furthermore, we examine the aims of the electronic services offered and the differences between electronic and traditional reference interviews. In the background to the study we place electronic reference services in a context by describing the role of information technology and electronic mail in the libraries. The electronic reference interview is studied with the help of literature on the traditional reference interview.

In the 1969 Le Thor seminar, Heidegger stated that his philosophical journey could be characterized by three different themes: meaning, truth, place. The first two of these have been the subject of countless studies and discussions, but the question of place is still relatively unexplored in Heidegger?s thought, despite the increased interest for this topic in his writings. Even though scholars like Jeff Malpas, Edward Casey, Stuart Elden and Miguel de Beistegui have written books and essays on the importance of the conception of place in Heidegger?s thinking, there are still many important aspects of this theme to be discussed, given the importance Heidegger himself ascribed to this topic.In this essay, I therefore wish to pose the question of how one can understand the relation between place and the role of tragedy in Heidegger?s conception of truth.

The aim of this thesis is to develop two idealtypes of politics to help serve as instruments in understanding and analysing the view on politics held by top civil servants in the municipality of Lund Sweden. The two ideal types developed here are symbolic sense making politics and rational instrumental politics. These two ideal types were applied to material from a qualitative survey to help bring out clear results and to help with the interpretation of the material The results of the study showed that the two idealtypes could not help to clearly categorize the civil servants views on management by objectives. But while categorizing the top civil servants views the important features of policy documents the ideal types were helpful. By using the ideal types I came to the conclusion that the view on policy documents was mainly characterized by sense making politics.

The object of the thesis is to propose a new lighting plan for the square Fyristorg in Uppsala, and to describe the process which have led to it. It all started when I choosed the place together with the municipality of Uppsala. I have been doing research and analyzed how the place and it´s existing lighting works both during different times of the day and also in the evening. After researching the place and it´s existing lighting I´ve decided to put up the following goals fot the new lighting design. 1. The general light level of the place shall be experienced as higher than today. 2. The light level of the place shall be adapted to the light levels of surrounding places. 3. The lighting shall be free from glare. 4. The lighting shall be adapted to people passing by. 5.The lighting shall be adapted to the surrounding architecture. 6.

The aim of this project is to investigate the meeting between the city and the sea and tolook into how that could be developed and made use of. I want to find out how you can increase the availability of a specific place and make it more welcoming, I also want to bring life to an already existing space and create a central meeting place in the city. The purpose is to give form to an esplanade along a dock in the central parts of Kalmar. Starting with an analysis of this public place, I want to create a concept that is close to the existing context and communicates the contrasts or associations between for example: city and nature, artificial and natural and indoor and outdoor. The primary object of the project is to add a welcoming, public place to the city where you on an accessible way canfamiliarize yourself with the meeting between the city and the sea.

This thesis discuss the matter of non-profit-making associations as a self regulatory technique out of a theoretical concept of power. The object for the study is the non-profit-making association Ditt Nya Hageby, which work in the neigborhood of Hageby, a suburb to Norrköping. In the study the association is placed in a contemporary postmodern social context and analyzed through semi- structured qualitative interviews, accordingly to hermeneutical method, with five active members of the association as informants. The association consists of members who lives in the neighborhood. Together with a hired organizer they realizes their own ideas in to projects which unquestionably improves the social and physical enviroment in Hageby.