The first purpose of this thesis is to investigate if, how, and why the perceived collective identity in the town of Karlskrona has changed. Collective identities can due to their socially constructed nature change rapidly in light of new collective experiences. The reason for suspecting such a change in Karlskrona is the immense impact that the change in the global economy, according to Saskia Sassen, has on cities. By interviewing politicians and media representatives from Karlskrona the perceived identity is drawn. The second purpose of this thesis will then be to test if the identity as it is perceived by Karlskronas habitants differ from the one that town officials present through city marketing.

This comparative linguistic textstudy focuses on the relationship between a newspapers own outspoken political standpoint and it´s ambition of being an unbiased provider of objective information. This connection becomes particulary interestering in times of election when a newspapers role as provider of information is of great importance for the citizens. When a newspaper reports an event to the public, the reporter always has to choose from a small selection of possible linguistic forms when representing the story. Through linguistic analysis of these forms we can see that the final choice is often not a complete arbitrary one. We compared two daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Dala-Demokraten, that stod on opposite sides in the Swedish EMU-elections 2003.

AbstractDetta är en explorativ studie om processer bakom beslutsfattande. Studien innefattade 52 studenter, 20 män och 32 kvinnor. De fick genom ett frågeformulär svara på frågor kring det viktigaste beslut de fattat i verkliga livet. De flesta angav att det viktigaste beslut de fattat handlade om flytt- och resebeslut (29 %) eller studie- och karriärbeslut (44 %). Delar av frågeformulären kodades sedan utifrån kategorier från en tidigare publicerad studie kring centrala beslutsteorier och tre nya kategorier framkom; self-efficacy, self-actualization och what others will think.

A young adult is defined to be in the ages 16?25 and it is during these years that they step in to the job market. Many young adults feel pressured by society to have a job and to keep it. There are motivational factors such as money, activity level, variation, social contacts and personal development that drives the young adult to want a job. The purpose of the study was to examine which motivational factors are significant and the difference between the genders.

AbstractIn the literature on multiculturalism and group rights there is a strong tradition that sees diversity as something directly paradoxal to unity. In this tradition, scholars put forward a view of multiculturalism as a divisive and exclusionary process which breaks down the cohesion and unity of society. Related to this notion is that of a neutral and universally valid frame of reference in which political dilemmas can be solved; for example a neutral civil sphere where the ?true essence? of society lies. In this essay I attempt to criticise these two notions.

The aim of this study is to explore the fundaments of all psychoanalytic interpretative models, and especially the psychoanalytic literary criticism. Drawing from different fields as affect theory, neuropsychology and Lacan's structural psychoanalysis, strong evidence is found that language in itself contains and transmits affects.The empiric study indicates that different readers of a text, regardless of their interpretation of the text, show similar changes in mood as a function of the text. This seems to be possible as an effect of the separation of the sign between the signifier and the signification. And this supports that the signifier has some kind of direct access to the affects. This is due to the fact that the signifier belongs to the imaginary protolinguistic level while the signification belongs to the symbolic and linguistic level of a higher order.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

Music not only fun but also necessary. This paper investigates how young people describe their relationship to music. The young people - students - in this study are coming from two different districts of Malmö: One with a population with mainly ethnical Swedish background and the other with a multicultural population. The research question is how we can describe young people's relationship to music on the one hand from the social theories which are presented and on the other hand from own experience as a music teacher. Group interviews are used to get the young people's own descriptions.

The background of this study stemmed from the notion that the majority of homeless women with substance abuse, most of all, wanted a secured place of their own to stay. Few involved professionals agreed and instead of perceiving housing as a human right the women were mostly offered various types of short-term social housing. The purpose of this study was thus to examine and analyze how professionals attached to the social services and public housing companies in Gothenburg explained that homeless women with substance abuse were excluded from accommodation on the open housing market. The qualitative approach included ten interviews with eleven professionals in Gothenburg. The theoretical framework consisted mainly of Bourdieu's analytical concepts of field, doxa as well as social, economic and cultural, alongside symbolic capital.

Since Muhammad Yunus, founder of the microloansorganization Grameen Bank, was awardedthe Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the microloansorganization has received much attention. Thewoman has come to play a central role in the microloansorganizations. Her access to capital isis considered to improve her socioeconomic status. The overall aim of the paper is to examinehow access to microcredit considered leading to empowerment of women. To get an idea ofwhat a microloansorganization is the Grameen Bank is used as an example.

The aim with this study was to examine what it is that govern the way that municipalities develop the non-institutional care for youth. An extensive development of non-institutional care for children is a visible trend in municipal social service and probable reasons for this development are, among other things, research that show inadequate results of the institution care and economy. Our main questions at issue were how the municipalities argue the priorities that have been done within their youth care services with regard to the non-institutional care and how they reason considering this? Furthermore we asked why the municipalities have chosen to develop their non-institutional care for youth the way they have and on what grounds they make their choices? This study consists of eight qualitative interviews with politicians and employees in four different municipals along with analysis of relevant documents. We have found that what governs the way that municipalities develop the non-institutional care for youth has to do with that the municipalities found it vital to find alternative solutions to the expensive and ineffective institutional care, that they comprehend that the quality of non-institutional care are higher then of the institutional care and that the non- institutional care is seen as more effective with regards to economic results and achieved treatment results.

The purpose of this study was principally to illuminate and describe how the alteration in law (1994:137) about the reception of asylum seekers and others has been implemented at some different authorities in Sweden, according to separated children; children who have fled to Sweden without their parents or other adult guardians. Beside this I want to, as a part, describe how the child perspective looks like at the authorities. The study refers to illuminate and describe the first time for the separated children in Sweden, which means from the arrival and about one year ahead. Qualitative interviews have been used as a method to especially investigate how the subjects of my interview understand their commission according to the separated children, how the practice situation looks like for and according to the separated children in relation to existing laws and instructions and finally how my subjects of interview think about the above mentioned alteration in law (1994:137), which means distribution of responsibility between Swedish authorities.My study showed that there were implementation problems according to the alteration in law (1994:137). The intentions to make it better for the separated children through the law alteration don't work in a good or satisfying way in the practice situation..

Många människor har husdjur som sällskap och fritidsintresse och allt fler forskare har på senare tid börjat intressera sig för husdjurets betydelse för människans livskvalitet. Antrozoologin är en relativt ny vetenskap där man ägnar sig åt att studera relationen mellan djur och människa. Man har i olika undersökningar kunnat visa att husdjur har en positiv effekt på människans fysiska och psykiska välbefinnande och att djuret höjer livskvaliteten för många (Enders-Slegers, Paul, Podberseck, Serpell, 2000). I denna uppsats undersöks sociala relationer och livstillfredsställelse hos äldre personer med och utan husdjur. Finns det något samband mellan ägande av husdjur, livstillfredsställelse och sociala relationer? Är äldre personer med husdjur mer nöjda med sina sociala relationer samt mer tillfreds med livet än äldre personer utan husdjur? Känner sig äldre människor med husdjur mindre ensamma än de som inte har husdjur? Kan man se någon skillnad mellan män och kvinnor?.

I denna uppsats utforskas det narrativa perspektivet som ett möjligt analytiskt grepp för att komma åt maktstrukturer, där erkännandet av identiteter analyseras som en upplevd domän av dominans. Uppsatsen inleds med en utveckling av begreppet diskursiv makt, vilket görs genom användande av Steven Lukes teori om maktens tredje ansikte. Följande därpå diskuteras hur man med hjälp av det narrativa greppet kan förstå makten som reglerar berättandet av jaget. Denna makt ses som påvisad då teman i metanarrativ och framträder som reproducerade i konkreta narrativ. Resonemanget klargörs genom en diskussion om republikanismen som ett metanarrativ, vilket relateras till hur maktutövning genom erkännandet kan ta sig uttryck..

Since a decade back in time, Sweden is officially recognised as a multicultural society. Different cultures exist side by side and the city of Malmo is one of the clearest examples of this setting. In multicultural societies, the dichotomy of ?us? versus ?them? is common, which leads to segregation and asymmetrical relations of power. The concept of intercultural education is in theory known to be able to create a position of ?us? where every culture is equally recognized and reinterpreted and thus become an alternative to the dichotomy.