Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

The purpose of this essay is to examine how the adventure is accomplished as a project, and how this is vindicated, through science or by other means. The scientists of today are not seen as adventurers or heroes, at least not as they used to, but this image lives on as a sort of role or social institution, that can be used by anyone and in any purpose. These roles could be seen as a type of rules for the modern adventurer, and act both as a limit or a possibility. This essay compares two North Pole travelers, Ola Skinnarmo and Salomon August Andrée..

With the political situation that prevails in the world, the need for contingency planning for the ecclesiastical heritage has become actualized with the aim of protecting the churches and their assets in war and armed conflicts. In accordance with Kulturmilj?lagen (SFS 1988:950) chapter 4 ? 15a, the Church of Sweden and its organizational parts are responsible for ensuring that contingency plans for the ecclesiastical heritage are established. In the legal statutes, it is not clear how this is to be carried out, who is responsible for all practical aspects or what is to be protected, something that creates gaps of knowledge regarding logistics, roles and selection. This means that there is currently a lack of principles and practice around the protection of the ecclesiastical cultural heritage, as contingency planning for cultural heritage is a fairly new phenomenon that has not been practiced in times of peace.

This is a qualitative social psychology study, which aims to describe how mothers with 1-2 year old children develop their identities, seen from Symbolic Interactionistic perspective. Five young mothers have been interviewed, through qualitative interviews and self reports. Through this data I have attempted to establish how these women develop their identities when they have been mothers for 1 or 2 years. The conclusions I have drawn is that the identities change radically with becoming a mother and all respondents take different decisions outfrom their identities as mother. There seems to exist a need of more knowledge about how to bring the identity of a woman and a mother together and create a new entity.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to make suggestions as to how librarians can promote young reluctant readers to help them find the joy of reading. We want to show how the comprehension of these children and adolescents can be translated into action in the librarians work with reading promotion.Our main questions are:? What attitudes do the librarians find that children and adolescents, ages 9-15 with reluctance to read, have towards reading?? What do public- and school librarians do to stimulate children and adolescents, ages 9-15 that are reluctant to read, to feel the joy of reading?? What role or which roles can the public- and school librarians have in the work of reading promotion, targeting children and adolescents with a reluctance to read?We have used Beers's theories about reluctant readers and reading promotion, Chambers's model and theory ?Reading Circle? and his theories about conditions that promote a ?good reading environment?. We have also used Smidt's theories about the librarian's different roles in the work of supplying literature.The method we have used is qualitative and based on literature and interviews with 7 children- and school librarians that all of whom work or have worked with reading promotion for children and adolescents in the ages between 9-15, that are reluctant to read.Our results show that in order to gain understanding about the attitudes towards, and relationship to reading, our targeted group have, the librarian has to be aware of the inner conditions that these children and adolescents have. These inner conditions are going to affect the work and the result of the reading promotion activity.

Upper secondary schools programme - a qualitative study about the collaboration of the Youth- and family team, the upper secondary schools and the police to prevent drugsAuthor: Åsa GöranssonSupervisor: Björn JohanssonThis essay discuss drug preventative work performed by the members of the ?Upper secondary schools programme?, which is a part of the Youth- and family team of the Social Services. They perform this work in collaboration with the police and upper secondary schools in Örebro.The purpose of this essay is to investigate and describe this collaboration. More specifically, the purpose is to study the contents of documents of the municipality of Örebro concerning drug prevention aimed at youths through collaboration and compare with the actual work that is carried out by the Youth- and family team through collaboration. Further issues dealt with are possible improvements and if the parties concerned feel a need for a documented structure concerning their way of working.I have used a qualitative method and I have interviewed members of parties concerned.

The Disney princess line includes nine films, in our study we have extended this line to include the latest three films from Walt Disney Pictures that follow the same pattern. These films are Tangled (2010), Brave (2012) and Frozen (2013). We have conducted our study using the same method used by England, Descartes and Collier-Meeks (2011) in their study of the first nine films, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs produced in 1937 to Princess and the Frog from 2009. A quantitative study was executed where we focused on gender role portrayal, the main characters behavioral characteristics and performed rescues. We applied the following theories to our result; the Social Constructivism, Laura Mulvey?s theory of the Male Gaze, Michel Foucault?s theory of power and discourse, intersectionality and Claude E.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate affecting factors concerning social workers in social services assessments with cases of abuse. We wanted to see if social workers in social services tend to make different assessments of the need of substance abusers care. Our survey was carried out as a vignettesurvey with complementary interviews as means to deepen the outcome results.Our survey showed that the included social workers in social services in some senses make different assessments when it comes to choice of effort put in for the client. We shed light on different factors and circumstances, which could bear meaning for the social workers in social services assessments. Examples of factors were the social workers in social services age, gender, working experience and attitude towards substance abusers..

The purpose of this study is to examine a preschool's work to counteract traditional gender roles, which strategies are used and how norms about gender roles are produced and treated. The study also examines whether the preschool has an intersectional perspective in it's gender work, which analyzes how they relate to other categories such as ethnicity, race, class, age and sexuality in their work. I have been observing and conducting four interviews with teachers at a preschool with a gender profile. In my analysis I have used Foucault's theories about discourse and power. The results show that the informants had a high awareness of gender and that the main strategies used were: an individual perspective, seeing the individual and not the sex, and a gender-neutral strategy, removing everything that is gendered, for example, in language and environment.

The aim of this Master thesis is to describe why and how public librariesuse the social networks Facebook and Twitter. The focus is to study whatbrought about their use, how the work is carried out, ideas and objectivesbehind the use and what libraries actually convey on the networks. Themethodology is twofold: semi-structured interviews with responsiblepersonnel at four Swedish public libraries, and an ethnographic contentanalysis of four months of the libraries' status updates and tweets onFacebook and Twitter. The theoretical framework consists of a model forthe roles of the public library in society, and of discourses about thepublic library in media.Results indicate that social networks are used to market, make accessibleand inform of the library's resources and services. Furthermore, networksare used to communicate/interact with followers and to inspire people toread.

The aim of this study is to investigate how 20 children discusses norm breaking based on a children?s book with a focus on following questions:How do the children discuss norms based on the children?s book?Are there differences in opinions and comments between children with Swedish as their first language and children with Swedish as a second language, and if so, which ones?The investigation is based on four discussions of children?s literature, which are a method Chambers (2004) means enable the children to put their thoughts and feelings about the book into words.The theoretical frame of the study is founded on post-structuralism feminism and particularly Butler (Ambjörnsson, 2010) and Davies (2003) theories about gender and gender roles.The investigation shows, among other things, that the children are basing their discussions on the norms accepted by the society. But it also shows that there are differences in the way that the children with Swedish as a first language and Swedish as a second language discusses norm breaking. .

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.

This masters thesis aims to explore the branch libraries in Kalmar municipality and their relation to the Information and communication technology ICTsociety. How do they adapt to and assimilate with, the ICT-society? What are their roles in local social networks and do they make a difference there? To answer these questions, critical discourse analysis, CDA, as founded by Norman Fairclough is applied to four interwievs with branch library managers. Other theorists used are Michel Foucault, Chaïm Perelman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A solid description of todays society on different levels is also given.

This study aims to analyse the Swedish Armed Forces website. Through a content analysis with a gender- and organisational culture perspective the study attempts to see how the Swedish Armed Forces portrays women and men. The Swedish Armed Forces is one of the strongest masculine gender coded organisations in our time. Distance caused by gender roles between women and men has been a problem within the organisation, and at the same time they have expectation?s from the society to alter these problems.

The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study between France and Sweden analyzing the veil debate that took place in 2003 and 2004. This debate has been one of the central features of the renewed conflict between the West and Islam post 9/11, and has the presumed oppression of the Muslim veil in focus. With help of critical theory and a differentiated citizenship theory, including gender and post-colonial perspectives, I analyse the veil in a Western context in the arguments presented and the actions taken. Through that I try to distinguish the potential problems posed for the Muslim minorities living in the two countries.Three main areas are covered: the different political actions in the two countries, the consequences for this sidestep in liberal citizenship theory and in what way the view on equality splits the two parties. I conclude: that the French secularism and the Swedish equality have played key roles; the ideal of liberal citizenship is being abandoned for a more partial state; and the view of the veil as simply oppressive is part of a colonial heritage that can be challenged..