Today Europe is faced with an identity crisis concerning its borders. Turkey stands at the threshold for an EU-membership while the EU-Commission is trying to formulate what constitutes a European identity. This identity seeking process will determine the future not only for Turkey, but also for immigrants now living in Europe.In this thesis a discourse analysis, underpinned by socialconstructionist theory, is conducted to explore how the European identity has been constructed throughout history up until today. A starting point is that identity always is defined through a dialectical relationship to "otherness". Therefore the analysis is focused not only on what a European identity consists of but also what and who it excludes.

Antropologer anställs idag av amerikanska försvarsmakten inom Human Terrain System. Denna enhet skall med sin expertiskunskap leverera socio-kulturell data till militära beslutsfattare på högre nivåer. Detta har i USA vållat stor debatt, främst vad gäller den vetenskapsetiska aspekten av projektet. Kritiker till HTS menar att det strider emot vetenskapsetiska riktlinjer och god vetenskaplig sed att bedriva forskning på människor där risk föreligger att de kan komma till skada. Syftet bakom uppsatsen är att kartlägga debatten för att se hur denna har förts mellan debattörerna.Debatten har analyserats utifrån artiklar, internetmaterial, samt litterära källor.

I Jönköping har problemet med översvämningar, erosion och materialtransport varit ett stort problem i Strömsbergsbäcken i Jönköpings kommun. Detta har tillviss del orsakats av ett ökat dagvattenutsläpp i bäcken, vilket skapar kraftigaflödestoppar då den ursprungliga fåran inte är ?dimensionerad? för den ökadevattenmängden. Syftet med arbetet är att effektivisera ekologisk dagvattenhantering i stadsmiljö med högt dagvattenutsläpp. Målet med arbetet är i sin tur att framställa underlag för hur ekologisk dagvattenhantering i stadsmiljö kan genomföras och att rapporten skall kunna ge värdefull kunskap till liknande sammanhang.

The purpose of our study is to interpret and understand the experiences that parents to multilingual children have towards multilingualism in pre-school. We are also interested in finding out what these parents think about their children?s development in multilingualism both in pre-school and at home. Our study is based on qualitative interviews. We interviewed nine families that have multilingual children in pre-school.  The data we collected from our interviews has been analyzed using socio-cultural and inter-cultural theories along with previous research. The result of our study showed that parents to multilingual children have both positive and negative opinions about the multilingual concept. Most of our informants had positive opinions about multilingualism in general.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur pedagoger nyttjade informations- och kommunikationstekniken (IKT) för att göra skolans undervisning tillgänglig för alla elever samt deras uppfattning om vilken betydelse IKT hade för elevers lärande och måluppfyllelse. Utgångspunkten var de nationella satsningar som gjorts på lärares fortbildning inom området IKT och vilken effekt det gett samt tidigare forskning. Den teoretiska ansatsen grundade sig på ett sociokulturellt lärande. Fyra pedagoger inom olika skolformer intervjuades. Resultatet visade att pedagogerna i första hand associerade IKT med datorer och i synnerhet kopplat till läs- och skrivprocessen.

This Masters thesis concerns a series of ten police procedural novels, Roman om ett brott, Novel of a crime, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. These books are among the most translated Swedish novels and have been popular among audiences and critics all over the world. The books were produced 1965 1975, a period during which a left wing movement swept over the Western world. Besides from being detective stories Novel of a crime is an analysis of contemporary society, and this thesis will focus on the social and political ideas and the criticism expressed in the books. Theories used in this study are the Sociology of Literature and the Analysis of Ideas.

The purpose of this study was to explore students' and teachers' experiences of the new pedagogical teaching tool, interactive whiteboard, which have gained increased popularity and wide spread usage in the classrooms. An observation during a mathematical lecture was conducted as a pilot study prior to the main research method of phenomenology; based on students? self-descriptions and interviews with two teachers, this methodological approach was used to investigate the subject matter. The interpretation, comparison and analysis of the results surrounding this new teaching method is explained by two theories, constructivism and socio-cultural perspective. The information shared by the students and teachers have been broken down into four categories: enjoyment & interest, practical, insight and no different.

Swedish preschools have a variety of children of different ethnic origins. The intention of this thesis is twofold; firstly to deeply examine how preschool teachers work with languages and secondly how to integrate the Swedish language with other native languages in practice. Hence, the aim is to get a deeper understanding and knowledge about how to integrate multilingual children that have other languages than Swedish as their mother tongue. The data collection for this dissertation is based on observations and interviews with three preschool teachers and child minders. The theoretical background is taken from literature which describes the social cultural perspective.

Detta examensarbete är en diskursanalys av läroplanerna Lgr 80, Lpo 94 och Lgr 11. Det syftar till att undersöka mening och betydelsebildning kring begreppen miljö och hållbar utveckling i läroplanen, samt att undersöka hur detta har förändrats efter att begreppet hållbar utveckling myntades i samband med Brundtlandskommissionen 1987. Forskningsöversikten presenterar etableringen av hållbar utveckling, och ger perspektiv på hur dess tre dimensioner i form av ekologi, ekonomi och en social dimension har tillkommit. Forskningsöversikten presenterar även miljödidaktiska perspektiv på hållbar utveckling och hur begreppet har tagit plats i skolan. I forskningsöversikten presenteras även internationella influenser av begreppens innebörd och mening.

This paper investigates how Swedish upper secondary school students relate to the financial support available from the Swedish state of education. It also looks at the attitudes of such students to the new CSN[1]truancy rules as they apply to school politics.Is there a difference in students? attitude to these truancy rules and does that difference depend on the students? socio-economic standard, whether they come from a wealthy background or a marginalised society or whether they are ethnic Swedish? Does this in any way affect the attitudes of the students?This financial support is only paid to those students who do not skip school. If they lose their right to this contribution because of truancy, their parents will also forfeit the right to the financial subsidies to which they may be entitled. Naturally, this may affect students in different ways, depending on what kind of financial situation their family is in.Do some students go to school out of their own financial interest or out of that of their parents? Through focus-group interviews, students have expressed their opinions, told about their experiences and stated their attitudes with regards to these matters.

In this thesis, the introduction of smoke-free restaurants and bars in several EU Member States in a policy convergence perspective is studied. The thesis sets out to explain whether policy convergence has occurred and the possible explanations connected with it. It is stated that 15 out of 25 EU Member States had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars up to April, 2006. Out of all the countries in the world, 35, including the EU Member States, had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars. The result is analysed by using policy convergence theory and by putting the case in a global environment where tobacco control has become an ever more central theme for public health policy.The EU Member States are different in several ways considered to be important factors for policy convergence, such as cultural, institutional and socio-economic similarities, and the conclusion is made that EU membership has been a most crucial factor for the rapidity of the policy diffusion.

Global Software Development (GSD) is based on a geographical distance where teams are spread throughout the world. The related research have for a long time addressed the challenges presented by geographical distances. GSD is basically a necessity for many businesses to use in order to reduce development costs, reduce production time and to maintain high quality. The study aims to investigate the relationship between the reality of a specific maintenance project. Thus, our research question: How do distributed maintenance teams experience temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances? To achieve the purpose of the study, we chose to perform a case study of a global consulting company which recently started a new system maintenance project.

This is a qualitative study with a reflexive approach. The aim of this masters thesis is to describe how the internal information is managed in Borås Theatre and Borås Public Library related to the internal flow of information within the organisations according to descriptions of different units, staff and work tasks. Ten qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees at the Theatre and the Library have been conducted. The organisations have been studied separately. The interviews are presented according to six categories presented in the theory chapter as a result of the study.

Over the last decades there has been a steady increase in the representation of women on the political arena. Despite of this there are still fewer women in comparison to men in political organs particularly at the municipal level. It is therefore of great importance to examine which different factors that tend to effect the female representation at this level. Doctor of philosophy at Umeå University Jessika Wide presented in a study from 2000 that the share of women in the municipal councils tended to depend upon cultural, socio-economical and political factors. Other scholars also mean that women have specific interests and therefore are more represented in some areas.

The main aim of this thesis is to introduce a normative perspective to surveillance studies. I examine how the use of videocameras or CCTV-systems can create a social sorting and, then, try to answer why it ought to be reconstructed based on a normative study.For the empirical analysis I use Foucaults theory about the panopticon, maintained by the psychological subjection of the common citizen in the modern world, together with Lianos theory of a more socio-cultural surveillance in the post-modern world. The empirical examination is, furthermore, guided by a theory that describes the construction of the stranger, which today, is not explicitly excluded, because everyone is a stranger in some way, but rather depicted as the other due to institutionalization.The post-modern society today can no longer be built upon a common or divine moral or norm. Thus, I have chosen a normative method, using a deliberative democracy derived from Habermas, focusing on the communicative practice, that can engage and include every citizen in a democratic process. This is necessary for both deciding whether videocameras should be installed and whom and why some should be under surveillance ? to avoid a social sorting that both can constitute and undermine social trust and increase the gap between the governing and the governed..