The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

This Masters Thesis includes a survey of recreational habits and the attitudes towards forests of the people of Sätra, a suburb of the city of Gävle. The study also includes the planning and design of a forest suited for education in the same part of the city. The thesis is a part of a project called Tätortsnära skog, commissioned by the Swedish forest agency. The project aims to survey the recreational habits of the general public in the regions of Dalarna and Gävleborg. Tätortsnära skog is focused on cities with a population of more than 20 000 inhabitants, of which Gävle, Sandviken, Falun and Borlänge all fall within the category.

Nature conservation has for a long time been founded on the assumption that high ecological values depend on low human impact. In Sweden this has led to forests with these characteristics being strictly protected from human influences. However, it is also known that historical land-use can enhance ecological values in forests. Mountainous forests in Sweden, which have not been affected by modern forestry, have for a long time been considered as untouched by people. However, forest history research has in recent years shown that even these areas have been used by people for a long period of time.

This essay, Pictures from a death-bed, expands on the pictorial genre called post mortem portraits, a field with long history in the western society. A post mortem portrait is an artwork where the artist paint or photograph the model after her or his dead. My survey delineates to treat two specific pictures, one from the seventeenth century and one from the twentieth century. Both of them are portraits of dead boys on their death-beds, but the first one is a painting and the other one is a photo. By this survey I wanted to find both similarities and differentials between the pictures; if they were made by the same reasons, if you could see anything different between the portraits by children and by the portraits of adults, and finally, if there were any cultural or religious connections between the pictures and their existents.

The purpose of this thesis is to show how a good approach can be designed, focusing on the southern approach to the Swedish town Vilhelmina. Prior to the car being part of everyday life, the approach was a road where the town showed itself from the very best side. When the amount of traffic increased, so did noise and other disturbances, and as a consequence industrial areas replaced the residential buildnings at the approaches. Today, the pendulum is turning back and in recent years the approach is regarded as a place to introduce the town. The approach is also the place where cars should slow down from the speed of the main road to the speed of the city.

?The management of innovation is inherently difficult and risky, most new technologies fail to be translated into products and services, and most new products and services are not commercial successes. In short, innovation can enhance competitiveness, but it requires a different set of management knowledge and skills from those of everyday business administration? (Bessant et al. 2005 p.

Abortion remains a contentious issue, which greatly raises ethical problems. This thesis examines the leading arguments in the Swedish abortion debate around the ? in terms of legislation ? critical years of 1938 and 1974. With Foucault's genealogical method, Butler's theories of gender as a social construction in relation to power and doxa, the study examines what the development of the argumentation says about the views on morality, the woman's body, life, individual and state? How has the arguments pro and against abortion changed over time and what does this say about the norms that guide and orientate the arguments? The most obvious change in argumentation is seen in the shift from an absolute moral and conservative position into an increasingly relativistic and liberal position, and this study will argue that this shift has its prerequisites in the changing status of the citizen and state.

For the Swedish artist Björn Lövin, the personal was a problem. In his first exhibition in Moderna Museet, Lövin observed through the fictitious character Mr. P (for »Personality«) the ruptures in the Swedish welfare state. The exhibition Konsument i oändligheten och Herr P:s penningar (Consumer in Infinity and Mr. P?s Money) (1971) was composed of two environments, through which a veridical working class apartment and a high street with life-sized mannequins and furniture characteristic of its time, visualized the societal discrepancies in the welfare state as well as the art world of the early 1970s.

Based on an analytical overview of post-Communist civil society development in Russia, the present thesis attempts a critical discussion of general civil society theory from the perspective of its relevance for the case study in question. The text consists of three closely interconnected, mutually reinforcing parts. In the first part, major issues of current civil society research are being thematically presented and discussed. The second part concerns itself with the case study as such. It is divided into two parts, one dealing with the relations between state and civil society in Russia, the other with civil society and the individual.

The aim of this paper is to describe the position of the Swedish welfare state within the shaping of a Swedish national identity. This is done through the study of Mångkulturåret 2006, and its rhetorical context. The point of departure is that history is formed continuously in current speech and a text analytical method has been used. Mångkulturåret was issued by the Department of Culture as an extended perspective of Cultural politics. The rhetoric used in the official document Agenda för Mångkultur is analyzed through a comparison with earlier official documents on the field of multiculturalism and integration.

The overall purpose of the essay is to initiate a survey and highlight, on the basis of sufficiently material, the dealings between Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a member of the resistance and the Swedish Church and/or its representatives. The purpose of the survey is to structure Dietrich Bonhoeffers activities in Sweden and highlight its implications.The following research questions have been used:1: What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer doing in Sweden and what persons did he meet?2: What was the role of the Swedish Church during the Second World War? 3: What was the impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffers visits to Sweden?In conclusion, this study of the contacts between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Swedish Church has shown: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in Sweden on two occasions. He met representatives of the Swedish Church, which was engaged in issues related to ecumenism, resistance and peacework. Although the persons he met were representatives of the Swedish Church they sometimes acted as individuals with a Christian philosophy.

The conditions for art in Romania have gone through big changes since the collapse of the regime in December of 1989. Under the Communist regime the artists had to work within a dualistic system completely unlike the one that developed in the West during the same period.Similar to the other countries of the former Eastern block, the communist Romanian state had understood the great potential that art has as a form of propaganda. Thus the regime secured full control over the art that would be allowed into the public space. In response to the confines set on the artistic expressions, a non-official art began to develop alongside the official art of the state.These two layers of Romanian art history were dissolved when Ceausescu?s regime finally came to an end in 1989.

The overall purpose of this study is to make a survey of the extent as to which youths have witnessed acts of violence and or violence in close relationships, and which underlying factors, sex, class, and ethnicity ? characterize youths with such experiences. The study also aims to explore their attitudes and strategies and what the consequences are for youths of witnessing acts of violence, with respect to attachment to adults and other social networks. The primary data have been collected in two upper secondary schools. The study includes 101 students.

Background: Documents and legislation inform us that parts of the public health service of Sweden, at a political level, aim to support people?s sexual health. Statistics show there has been an increase among young woman, seeking help for sexual pain during intercourse. The diagnosis that the media has come to observe lately is vulvar vestibulitis. In general there is a lack of knowledge about the existence of this state of pain and its causes, which impacts woman to get appropriate help and support in time.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how administrative officers at the Swedish social insurance agency experience and deal with the goal conflicts they may experience. Furthermore, the purpose is to gain a greater understanding on how they perceive their role in the implementation process, and their position as the link between the citizens and the state. Two potential conflicts are examined; between quantitative goals and performance measures and those more qualitative and hard to measure; between economic values such as cost efficiency and productivity and democratic values such as the rule of law. The other conflict examined is that between implementing and following the laws set forth, take into account the individual needs and interests of the citizen. The theoretical framework consists of Lundquist?s theory on public officers as the guardians of democracy, which means that they should not only implement laws and rules according to political intentions, but also make sure that the democratic values and principles are followed in the relationship between state and citizen.