This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

Today an increasing number of schools and organizations are investing in so called Learning Management Systems. Researchers disagree on the pedagogical value of these tools. Some mean that Learning Management Systems cement old-fashioned behaviouristic teaching practices; others mean that the systems provide good opportunities in supporting learning in a socio cultural perspective. The aim of this study is to reach better understanding and increased knowledge of how the introduction of a Learning Management System influences the role of the teacher and how the learning is organized. We have conducted two case studies.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att få ökad kunskap om och förståelse för vilka didaktiska val fiolpedagoger kan göra för att främja elevers motivation till att spela och öva. För att komma närmare ett svar på denna önskan har intervjuer med fyra fiolpedagoger genomförts. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är det sociokulturella perspektivet, det vill säga ett perspektiv där det sociala sammanhanget betonas och där läraren ses som en viktig del i lärandet. Resultatet visar att de fyra intervjuade fiolpedagogerna anser att det sociala sammanhanget är det viktigaste för elevers motivation, eftersom det medför att undervisningen upplevs som meningsfull. De anser även att föräldrar kan påverka elevers motivation och att övning är en viktig faktor för att eleverna ska utvecklas.

Since studies points out declining interest in science among students in Swedish schools, I have in this paper chosen to examine how some students at the Social Science Programme are experiencing the lessons in Natural Science and how to make lessons more interesting according to these students.The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of how teachers would develop new perspectives and tools to make lessons in Natural Science more interesting. I also wanted to investigate whether an intercultural perspective could be a possible tool to increase students? interest and motivation.As a theoretical framework, I have assumed Vygotskij's sociocultural perspective, Habermas's theory of deliberative conversations and an intercultural perspective. Through a qualitative approach, I conducted interviews with students and teachers. The main results showed that students felt that natural Science lessons were too theoretical and undemocratic and that they wanted to have more student interactions, such as discussions and group works.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilken innebörd begreppet ?kulturkompetens? ges i litteraturen samt utifrån detta problematisera dess applicering på praktiken. Begreppet ?kulturkompetens? saknar en enhetlig definition, något som initierat skrivandet av denna uppsats. Studien bygger på en litteraturstudie i form av en kvalitativ textanalys.

We started out the study with a preconception of culture as something that creates difference between groups of people, which had been verified by our prior research. We also had a sense of culture as a polysemous term. Our assumption is also that there is an opinion within social work practice that Swedish social workers are faced with a cultural barrier when encountering immigrant clients.In this study our aim is to examine constructions of the terms cultural competence and culture. Constructions of the terms ethnicity and ethnic diversity are also observed, although the main reason for this is to show what relation these terms have to the terms cultural competence and culture, and how they may give each other meaning, according to the theory of social construction. In addition to constructions, we also aim to bring out discourses around the terms, upon which we will create a discussion about power and dominance informed by post-colonial theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

Denna studie syftar till att öka kunskapen om vilken syn frilansande och undervisande improvisationsmusiker har kring skapandet av ett personligt uttryck och hur de anser att ämnesområdet kan hanteras i musikundervisning. I bakgrundskapitlet ges en överblick av begreppet personligt uttryck och därefter följer en presentation av tidigare litteratur och forskning inom ämnesområdet. Nästkommande kapitel om teoretisk bakgrund beskriver det sociokulturella perspektivet i egenskap av teoretisk utgångspunkt.Studien utgörs av kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra frilansande improvisationsmusiker med stor pedagogisk erfarenhet i ämnesområdet. I resultatet beskrivs analysen av hur improvisationsmusikers syn på hur ett personligt uttryck kan skapas och hur de som pedagoger ser på undervisning inom detta område. Det framkommer bland annat att ett personligt uttryck handlar om att bejaka sin smak och vilja samt att självförtroende, hantverksskicklighet och inspiration är aspekter att ta hänsyn till.

The Swedish regions are new phenomena, from the start from the new regionalism which started in the 1980´s. The purpose of the thesis is to analyze Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen to come to a conclusion which model of region they are and want to be by using theories of regional identity and identity of politics and see similarities and differences. My research question is: Which of cultural, administrative and functional region are Region Skåne and Västra Götaland striving to construct?   The methods I have used are qualitative text- and content analysis to analyze the regions, by using theories about regional identity and identity of politics. Furthermore, I am using some statistic from SOM-institutet to analyze the regional identity in the regions.   The result show that Region Skåne is constructing a cultural region, because of their strong regional identity and that the politicians are using identity of politics to combine the citizens.

This Masters thesis is performed at the request of the National Board of Forestry in order to investigate how the Swedish municipalities use their forests. The study is of general character with emphasis on the social values of the forests. The municipalities? purposes with their forests have varied over time, but lately the social aspects have been recognised as interesting. The social values of the forests can be defined as the values from the forests that contribute to the wealth of humans. This has socio-economic importance for the municipalities. The study was performed as a quantitative questionnaire survey, complemented with qualitative interviews.

In recent years, the right-wing extremist site Avpixlat (?Unveiled?) and the anti-racist blog Inte rasist, men... (?Not a racist, but??, IRM) have established themselves as political actors and platforms for political discussion in Sweden. However, we know very little about them and their impact on democracy.

The essay studies the relationship between communication and organizational culture; to determine if there are any cultural differences between the management of an organization and its employees and to examine how a difference can affect the communication of organizational policies. A case study, where the public school was examined, was used to answer the research question, and interviews were held with relevant people on different levels in the organization.The interviews were analyzed with the theoretical frame of reference as a benchmark. Cultural differences could be identified between different levels in the organization and between the two schools studied. The differences affected how and why people communicated but not how well the respondents understood each other.Keywords: Organizational culture, subculture, Organizational communication, affects, hierarchy..

The concept of quality is difficult to identify clearly. Many attempts to define quality havebeen made, but the resulting definition remains vague.The quality concept (in the artistic sense) has since 1974 played a leading role in Swedishcultural policy. In the spring of 2009, a publication, named ?Kulturutredningen? waspublished. This report suggested a number of changes for the Swedish cultural policy.

This thesis explores the position of book blogs in the literary system through Robert Escarpit's socio-literary model of the book market. Simultaneously the thesis serves as a test for Escarpit's theory: by actively applying his theory and model to a very new and contemporary actor on the book market I hoped to reach or confirm new insights into the usefulness and validity of Escarpit's work for contemporary socio-literary studies.Three book blogs were selected for the analysis and interviews were carried out with the authors. The interview questions were formulated specifically for the purpose of extracting the kind of information necessary for an analysis using Escarpit?s theory. As a complement to the interviews, statistics on the type of books reviewed on the blogs were also compiled.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the users/visitors do at the Filipstads Bergslags Library when they are there. The questions we asked were "What do the visitors do when they are at the library?" and "How do the visitors give priority to the librarys services?" From these two questions we asked a third "How do the visitors view the library and its functions and what function do they see as the most important to them?" The method we used was a user study and we did this at the request of the management at the library. A questionnaire was constructed and handed out in a pilot study. We made some changes in the questionnaire before we started to hand it out at the library.