This essay deals with the same task that utilitarians have tried to solve for a long time, what is happiness? In the eighteenth-century utilitarians suggested that happiness should be the base for social political decisions. But the lack of definition disposed so that GDP became the measurement of happiness, which proved to be wrong when the unhappiness continued to increase. More than two hundred years later scientists came up with a new definition of happiness and new ways to measure it. And during the last decade economists have taken the discussion to a higher level.So once again we?re dealing with the same old issue, if happiness ought to be the base of social political decisions.

People recieving social assistance is today very common in Swedish society. Of those receiving social assistance single mothers is one ofthe largest groups. The purpose of this study is to examine how single mothers with social assistance experience themselves to be treated by social services, how this treatment affects their confidence in the social services and how they experience it is to live with social assistance. To answer the question, we use qualitative interviews with three clients. Previous research has shown that single mothers receiving social assistance experience vulnerability, and how they perceive it is affected by how they are treated by their social secretaries.

Despite the fact that men dominate substance abuse research and that most programs to target substance abuse therefore are developed by and for men, very little is known about the fact that substance abusing men can also be parents. Mothers are up until today regarded as the most important parent even though society is changing and fathers are taken a more active part in childrearing. The average father today still spends significantly less time with his children than the average mother does and marginalised drug abusing fathers often disappear from their families altogether. The goal and purpose of this paper has been that through a qualitative analyses of written sources and qualitative interviews with healthcare professionals and social workers recognise how marginalised drug abusing fathers interests of taking part in their children's lives are met by healthcare, treatment and child protection agencies and how we can understand marginalised fathering as an extension of how we view ordinary fathering. I wanted to examine if there are any specific actions taken in involving these men as fathers and how we can understand their situation.

Information overload is by no means a new concept, but has come to prominence the last decade. A generally accepted definition of the phenomenon does not exist. The main question in this master thesis is how to define information overload in order to create a connotative concept for information science. This thesis reviews the nature and causes of information overload, and considers possible solutions, both individual and technical, and their relevance to the information professional. The review of the results shows that researchers seldom or never give a legible definition of what the concept information holds.

In recent years the concern about the future of the European Union and itssupposed lack of democracy, efficiency and legitimacy has increased. Thisconcern has resulted in extensive debates and the establishment of a conventionwith the task to create a draft treaty for a European Constitution.The aim of this essay is to study how the three theoretical concepts,democracy, efficiency and legitimacy, have been described and used in the debateabout the future of the European Union. My main interest is to see how theseconcepts are described in a debate regarding a political system that goes beyondthe borders of the nation-state. I have made a comparative textual analysis of thedebates taken place in Sweden and Spain during a period of over two years. Ihave, for instance, found out that openness and clearness have a prominentposition as democratic values together with equality and justice (in Spain) and theinstitution of accountability (in Sweden).

The purpose of this paper has been to examine the ways in which professionals describe their work with pregnant drug-addicts. The paper raises the following questions;· How does the deviant behavior, that using drugs during pregnancy can be described as, affect the professionals in their work with pregnant drug-addicts?· How do the professionals experience their own role, and the roles of other professionals?· In what ways do they work in order to reach a favorable result with these clients?The paper is based on qualitative material, gathered through 14 interviews with professionals. By using theories of deviant behavior and attachment-theory between a child and its mother, our intention was to analyze the empirical results.From our interviews we have learned that the professionals consider some factors as more important than others for a favourable result in their work with pregnant drug-addicts. Such factors are for example the significance of a cooperation between different authorities and ethical awareness in meeting with the client..

I en tid då allt fler röster höjs angående FN:s ineffektivitet har vi valt att undersöka hur organisationen behandlar medlingsuppdrag i mellanstatliga konflikter. Utifrån den pågående konflikten på Cypern och kriget mellan Iran och Irak på 1980-talet ser vi hur FN som tredje part har agerat dels utifrån ett systemperspektiv och dels på medlingsnivå. De valda konflikterna grundar sig i liknande frågor om nationell identitet, etnicitet och gränsdragning. För att täcka flera problemområden använder vi oss av realism, socialkonstruktivistisk organisationsteori samt erkända medlingsteorier.Efter att ha analyserat konflikterna har vi sett att FN är i behov av reformer som stärker möjligheterna att medla fram lösningar i konflikter, då rådande omständigheter gör FN beroende av stöd från andra aktörer och egna medlemsländer..

I vår uppsats ställer vi oss frågan varför Turkiet, trots över 50 år av demokratiska institutioner bryter mot mänskliga rättigheter samt yttrande- och pressfriheter. Vi har använt oss av en modell som identifierar tre kärnområden viktiga för demokratisering: staten, globaliseringen och civilsamhället.Vår slutsats är Turkiet har en politisk kultur som inte gynnar konsolidering. Detta beror på flera olika faktorer. Transitionen från diktatur till valdemokrati innebar att strukturer etablerades som favoriserade eliter. För det andra finns det en omfattande partikularism i statsförvaltningen jämte det demokratiska systemet.

"Understanding what I write" is a study of university-scientists? work concerning science-information, with the basis in Pedagogical Theory. The empirical material is collected through an inquiry and several interviews with scinentists at the ten universities of Sweden. This inquiry was done within the timeframe of November 2000 to Janurary 2001. The purpose is to find out wich methods scientists use to spread their knowledge to the society and what possibilities there are to improve these..

In Jaunuary 1995 Sweden became part of the European Union. Consequently Sweden agreed upon beeing part of a greater integration project with influences of federalism. However, many argue that the discourse that has been been dominant in Sweden is the discourse where we focus on the national state instead of the EU. In my essay I question whether the discourse about ?nationalstatslogiken? is found in the daily press in Sweden.

The aim of the study was to examine if and how the social service and the social welfare secretary provides against threat and violence in the encounter with clients. The study is qualitative and carried out with six semi-structured interviews with social welfare secretaries and participation observations at the social welfare offices in three municipalities. The theoretical starting points used were symbolic interactionism and strange loops. The result shows that social service and social welfare secretaries both use measures to prevent threat and violence to occur. The precautionary measures mainly used by social services are ; looked doors, alarm device, loose objects removes and interview rooms are furnish in purpose for the social welfare secretary to flee the room at urgent need.

North Korea is considered to be the most autocratic dictatorship in the world today. Its citizens are denied their most basic human rights and North Koreas ambition to pursue nuclear weapons is looked upon with great fear from the international community and the US in particular. Some experts say that the threat from North Korea is far greater than the one possessed by Saddam Hussein. Although North Korea seems to inhabit all the necessary criteria for an US military intervention the United States has openly declared its diplomatic ambitions with the state. Why?With the use of realist and social construction theory this study will bring clarity to why the United States prefers diplomacy instead of a military intervention.

The thesis explores the meaning of the concept "children's best" in relation to the social Swedish parental insurance debate from a post-structuralist view. The main material has been taken from daily news papers and the methodological as well as theoretical basis is provided for by Laclau & Mouffes discourse theory. In particular has the concept "empty signifiers" been of use when investigating "children's best" as a strong argument on both the "pro" and "against" sides of the debate of an individualized parental insurance. The theoretic purpose of the thesis is also to examine the poststructuralist/feminist dilemma in order to approach a more pragmatic and useful model of the two combined provided by Alcoff and Fraser. One conclusion is that "children's best" may never have an objective answer and will be a changing concept in time, ideology preference and discoursive field.

Young women with immigrant background are generally looked upon as victims of patriarchal structures and cultural determinism.The purpose of this bachelor thesis was therefore to have a salutogen perspective. We investigated how young women with a transcultural background are affected by and how they use their experiences from different backgrounds in their creating of identity.We based our essay on qualitative interviews and current research on the subjects of multi culture, identity and youth. The interviewees were seven young women with experience of multi cultural background and performing different kind of artistic activity.The theory and empirical material combined and compared resulted in three themes: affinity, cultural hybridization, and salutogen factors.We saw that for those young women affinity functioned as a basis for creating identity and that their double background enriches them in several aspects. The three major salutogen factors that the interviewees had in common, and we emphasize, are their struggle, open mind and awareness of freedom.The global youth culture has a great impact upon the young women and to some extent we could recognize cultural hybridization. We consider this neglected subject urgent and very relevant for social work in the multi cultural society of Sweden..

This study has examined how social media has changed food companies way of holding contests. The study examines how food companies use contests with the help of social media and how they used to do the contests before the use of social media. We have also researched the users behaviours and opinions of companies contests on and outside of social media.In this study we have interviewed four people responsible for contests on the social media department on their respective food company. We also performed a survey that was published on Facebook and followed it up with interviews from two of the participants.This study has showed that contests on social media, as a technical aspect, have given new possibilities for the design of the contests. But there are still some unexplored areas around contests on Facebook and the companies do not know exactly what the users are demanding.