The aim of this study is to explore the approach and views on female genital mutilation(FGM) among young women from Somalia, and how they perceive the tradition afterimmigration to Sweden. This is structured under the following questions: What do theyknow about FGM? What are their experiences? And what do they reckon about FGMtoday? The study is based on one recorded interview with a group of young femalesfrom Somalia. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The women?sfeelings were ambivalent though they on one hand opposed FGM because of serioushealth risks, but on the other hand were conscious of the tradition?s great influence inthe social network and daily life.

This is a qualitative interview study about intellectually disabled parents and their children. I have conducted interviews with six professional staff who have some experience working with intellectually disabled persons. In my investigation I used vignettes and those I interviewed had to read the same story about Anders and Britta in preparation for the interview. The six persons whom I interviewed were: a midwife at a mother care centre, a nurse at a child health centre, a social welfare officer at a rehabilitation centre, a "LSS administrator" at a local authority, and two social welfare secretaries. One of the two welfare secretaries works to assess the social situation of children and the other one works with fostercare.The conclusion that I have drawn is that the relationship between intellectually disabled parents and their children is very important.

This research paper aims to show how racism, power, social representations and identity are created and reproduced through the media. The research paper will analyse newspaper articles presented about Cronulla riot in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph using Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, CDA, as a theory and method. The research paper aims to demonstrate how inequality in the Australian society is reproduced by the media through the use stereotypes and certain social representations and how knowledge and awareness about this is relevant to social work of today..

This essay has discussed and analyzed a draft for an idea about a network called EduSync. This idea is based on that teachers and students, attending and holding courses, all over the world should be able to find and interact with each other. EduSync is founded from a new learning theory, connectivism. Interviews, participation in a conference and two workshops have been used to gather information and different points of view concerning e-learning, for example possibilities and problems with this idea of a network.  A comparison of web communities and e-learning environments that exists today was also done. The gathered information from persons as well as literature resulted in a discussion concerning learning and what would or would not be possible with the creation of EduSync.

The purpose of this study is to examine how EU-migrants visiting the social project Crossroads experience their life situation in the Swedish society. Two questions were formulated: (1) How do the respondents describe their situation when it comes to work, housing and social network? (2) How do the interviewees describe and experience the social project Crossroads? The method used was qualitative interviews conducted with five EU-migrants who visited Crossroads. The theoretical framework is the concept of integration and Bauböcks (1996) theoretical model of the ideal society. The results show that none of the interviewees had their own accommodation.

The aim of this thesis is to interpret and discuss the weapon-graves of Viking Age Birka. The weapon-grave phenomenon is deemed differential in relation to the rest of the grave-material of the site, and thus the questions that motivate the thesis is: who was buried with weapons and why? Further questions arise regarding the social aspects of individuals who were buriedalong with weapons. The theoretical approach will be to evaluate any differences in 'social class', 'social age' and 'gender' between the weapon-grave contexts. By conducting qualitativeand quantified analysis of the grave-goods, this thesis adresses both overall and detailed patterns in correlation and constellations between weapons, other grave-goods and terms of burial..

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries? Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not there has been a change in the use of democratic values in textbooks in social science for classes 4-6. The focus lies on democratic values from two different theoretical perspectives, Dahl?s theory of democracy and Habermas deliberative democracy. The method used is a text analysis based on a model made by Lennart Hellspong. The material we?ve analysed consists of four textbooks in social science from different decades, with a range from 1981 until today.

HMS Industrial Networks AB is in need of changing a communications solution that iscurrently based on an ASIC. This will be achieved by moving the communications solution toa FPGA with the help of the programming language VHDL. By doing this, it is possible toreduce the need for specific circuits, get a more flexible platform and thus get a cheapersolution.This report describes a solution for how to move a network protocol from an ASIC to anFPGA. The report shows that the network slave device is working under the guidelines forthis project. This means that it is quite realistic to implement a fieldbus protocol on an FPGA,using VHDL and to maintain the same functionality as the earlier communications solution..

The present thesis closer examines what has come to be known as al-Qaida, partly from what al-Qaida is considered to be, partly from the consequences a certain picture of al-Qaida might give rise to. Between 1988-2001 most of this thesis sources refers to al-Qaida as a small, organized core group with some degree of cell structure. From 1991 to present days, many of the sources enlarge the picture of al-Qaida. From now on they start to view al-Qaida as either a network in itself or al-Qaida as a part of a larger islamistic network, not only as an organized core group with presumptive bases in Afghanistan. The most recent of theories regarding al-Qaida looks at al-Qaida as an ideology in itself (al-Qaedaism) or al-Qaida as a part of previously existing ideologies (Islamism, Neofundamentalism and Jihadism-Salafism).Al-Qaida is being seen - by scholars, journalists and terrorism experts - as an organization with a core group, a network in itself, part of a larger islamistic network and an ideology of its own or as a part of already existing ideologies.

This essay discusses sentiments underlying choices to sing in women's choir. The focus is on the female choir La Cappella from Uppsala, which is run at a professional level to constitute one of the premier choirs in the country. The La Cappella members and their conductor participated in a survey with questions about how they view their own role as a singer or conductor in a choir. The questions that this paper is based on are the following: Why choose to sing in the choir? How do the Community and the social network between women affect their decision to sing in a women´s choir? Has the sound of the chorus played an important role in the choice of choir? Interwoven in the text, I discuss and compare La Cappella with choir Flora, a Finnish-Swedish women's choir..

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds.

The first aim of this thesis is to descriptively identify and chart the activities of the strategic intelligence and environmental scanning that take place at the regional collaboration network Regionförbundet Örebro. This identification is essential in reaching the comprehensive and primary aim of the thesis: to discuss, through normative discourse, what the options of improvement are and in which ways systematic operations can be integrating parts in the organization. In order to offer guidance of development from the perspectives of environmental scanning, the question at issue has emanated from activities concerning the present methods of working at Regionförbundet Örebro.During the creation of this thesis, several interviews have been made with people who are regarded to be key roles within the regional collaboration network. An analysis has been made, based on governing documents and answers from the interviews, where possible improvements of the business have been identified. The inferences become parts of a greater potential of amelioration since they are presented as active solutions and proposals that can be directly adaptable to the organization.Our proposals of improvements/ameliorations are constituted by a number of concrete/explicit points such as: a wider public information supply and an introduction of several annual routines and methods..

The aim of this study was to gain an understanding about how people with a former alcohol abuse expresses and gives meaning to feelings of guilt and shame in autobiographical books. In particular the purpose of the study was to find out how the authors writes about feelings of guilt and shame, whether it was expressed explicitly or implicitly, and which meaning the authors gives to feelings of guilt and shame and how these feelings are related to each other. We randomly selected 8 autobiographical books by using different criterias. The foundation of this study was social constructionism, which is also a foundation for one of our analysis methods: discourse analyse. This analysis method was used for the analysis of the expressions that were made in an explicit way.

Vattenfall and Svenska Kraftnät perform start-up tests, where hydropower generators are used to power up the electrical grid in case of a blackout. To monitor the electrical grid, Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) are used. Each PMU is individually equipped with a GPS-receiver to precisely timestamp the data relative to the official time UTC. During the test, it is also of interest to timestamp the measurement signals from individual hydropower generators to later compare with PMU-data, and thus study the power grids impact on the generator. The aim is to work out an appropriate method to make these measurements and to build a data acquisition system, capable of timestamp data relative to UTC, from a generator in one of Vattenfalls hydroelectric power stations. The problem is that the generator is located in an underground station which hampers the reception of GPS-signals and wiring should be avoided if possible. Time synchronization has been solved by using Vattenfalls network, which is synchronized by the network protocol NTP.