According to old european tradition the ideal national state has a unified people, but in reality practically all states has one of several minorities that to a smaller or greater degree differs from the majority. One such minority that have been present in many countries and managed to avoid becoming completly assimilated are the jewish people. Their dream of a state of their own eventually lead to the founding of the state of Israel where they themselves are now in majority. The purpose of this report is to study how the jews historic experiances has affected the political parties in Israel, how they choose to meet the ?challenge? of their own minorities och whatever they treat different minorites differently.

Drawing from the theoretical foundations of the ?critical theory? of the Frankfurt School and the media ethnographic ?cultural studies? approach of the british Birmingham School, this study attempts to sketch out a media theoretical overview of the contemporary state of media culture. Using the term convergence culture as the foundation, this study offers a theoretical background to the two contemporary streams that are the significant and distinct tendencies of convergence culture: intermedial convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies that can be traced back using the past media theoretical approach of the Frankfurt School, and cultural convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies, which lineage in a media theoretical context can be traced back to the british ethographic ?cultural studies? field. Using contemporary drama serials to identify and pinpoint these two stream, this study shows how intermedial convergence expresses itself today through media conglomeration in terms of branding, product placement and marketing as the result of the ?completed? convergence between screen culture and popular music as the current defining state of commodity culture.

Garden center and market gardens are a growing trade, undergoing great changes with new actors and purchasing habits. The interest in gardens and plants is steadily increasing, official statistics show an increase of garden plants and flower consumption, of an annual 3 per cent. Garden centers and market gardens are in great need of development to be able to tackle the prevailing competition, and maintain a steady growth. Many companies are heading for a generation shift and are founding it difficult to find and employ younger managers. The aim of this report is to examine different strategies of garden centers and market gardens through the manager/ owner?s views and opinions about competition, growth and success.

For Swedish companies to compete with low wage countries, developments in theproduction industry moved towards streamlining the entire company. One of themost effective ways for a company to streamline their operations is to review theirproduction. All companies have processes in their production that add no value tothe product. In order to compete, they must be eliminated.The purpose of this report is to reduce work in process (WIP) in the flow ofbashus at Volvo Powertrain in Köping. The aim is also to try to find reasons whyVolvo Powertrain feel that they have problems with the storage principle First in-First Out (FIFO).To meet the objective, empirical studies were conducted at the company whilethe literature in the area was studied.

During the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990?s, the government paid out 65 billion Swedish kronor to save Swedish banks from bankruptcy. In the process, two banks left the private sector to be taken over by the state. This thesis builds on a study from 1998 in seeking to quantify the financial end result for the Swedish government from the subsidies. Taking a cash flow approach and accounting for the time difference, it starts with the money paid out during the years of crisis and subtracts the money that has since been returned to the government by successful management of the relinquished assets.

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

The Swedish group contribution rules entails that group contribution is only allowed when the parent company owns more than 90 percent in a company. To be able to deduct group contribution some conditions has to be fulfilled. One condition is that the receiver of the contribution shall not be a resident of a foreign state. The question that arises is whether group contribution with deductibility is consistent with the non-discrimination clause. In some group contribution situations several tax conventions can be applicable.

This thesis is an attempt to understand how the traditional female gender identity is constructed and what kind of structures that are maintaining it. I also study how this identity is reflected in young women's conception of themselves and in their views upon whether they should sign in to the military service or not.The theoretical framework that I use mainly consists of theories about gender construction, male dominance and the woman's role in the nation-state.The purpose of using this theoretical approach is to illustrate that the traditional female gender identity consists of characteristics that are in opposition to the male ones. The woman should be weaker, less aggressive and more caretaking than men- in sum she is defined as the Other. The structures that constructs this identity is the male dominance, also known as the gender system and the patriarchy.This traditional female gender identity and citizenship role that historically has been allotted to women in the nation-state is still today very vivant in Sweden and is reflected in the fact that the military service is optional for women. Certain parts of this identity is also reflected in the young women that I interview, in their sense of probably not fitting in to the military service, because of their sex and the characteristics discussed above, that are associated with it..

The purpose of this thesis work is to evaluate how the physical behaviour of a pipe bend is affected by the pipe bending procedure. Effects such as initial ovalization, thinning, thickening and plastic hardening from the bending procedure are examined and the mechanical properties of pipe bends containing these effects are investigated.This has been evaluated by creating a detailed Finite Element model of a pipe that is being bent. Then the differences compared to a bent tube in a virgin state, so called Elbow elements and an analytical in-house program have been evaluated. The virgin state refers to a model of a pipe that is bent from the beginning, thus having a homogeneous thickness and not containing any plastic hardening. The Elbow element is a calculationally cheap element, specially developed for accurate calculations of pipe bends in an initially virgin state.The goal with the thesis work is to get a better picture of what happens to a pipe as it is being bent, how this affects the mechanical properties and to evaluate the possibility to develop an easy method for taking these effects into account when using the Elbow element.This report describes the layout of the work and how the detailed FE-model has been constructed.

In today?s society it is not uncommon for people to move across borders. We are more likely to work and study in other countries, initiate cross-border relationships, acquire property in other states and change our residence. Therefore it is not uncommon for a per-son to leave inheritance in several states. The laws of succession differ between countries which creates an uncertainty among the devisors when planning their successions.

About 29 000 different services was given by the Swedish welfare state to children with disabilities within the ages 0-22 years before October first in the year 2008. Studies about children with disabilities and their experiences of their situation have rarely been done and it is therefore difficult to know how they think and feel about their lives. Both Swedish law and the UN:s convention about children?s rights states that children have the right to tell their opinion in matters that are of their concern. Thus, we don´t know much about if and how the Swedish welfare state maintain this right towards children with disabilities.

Due to the political system in Vietnam, all organizations in Vietnam need a permit to operate in the country and consequently, have to balance their mission, their main purpose of being in the country, with the fact that they are dependant on the government to give them the permit they need to stay in the country.With this as our basis, the main focus of this essay has been to identify different types of relations that exist between the Vietnamese state and International Non Governmental Organisations (INGOs) in Vietnam. Since we have interviewed people representing INGOs, our result is based on their experience of this relationship. By using Najam's Four-C's Model, we established that the more traditional INGOs which principally provide services, predominantly have a cooperative relationship with the state, whereas radical INGOs which are committed to policy change, mostly have a relationship which is characterised by conflict..

Dissertation in political science, D-level by Niklas Andersson, Spring Semester 2010. Tutor: Malin Stegmann McCallion?Societies in Crisis ? When Washington Take Over?An economic meltdown wreaks havoc on the world and has plunged the Western world into a spiral of economic stimulus in order to keep their way of life intact. At the same time the same institutions that support these countries have had another agenda for more unfortunate and less influential countries where nothing has been free and everything been to a price of self-sacrifice in order to get the consent of the IMF and the World Bank. Everything according to the points stated in the so called Washington Consensus.The purpose of this dissertation is to research what impact the Washington Consensus has on the state in terms of power over the market and sovereignty.

The purpose of this study is to examine which security approach dominates Sweden?s strategy for combating human trafficking. The two approaches covered in this essay are the state- centred perspective, and the individual-centred perspective. These approaches are being used because those two approaches are on each end of the security spectrum, and it is important to discover from what approach Sweden is working. This is important because it might help us to get a bigger understanding on why certain policies are being made.

The aim of the study is to describe the state of the forest and changes in the Lindberg nature reserve. The study area is a nature reserve with an old coniferous forest, which has not been touched since 1950. The pines in the area have a very big diameter and are 150 ? 200 years old. The spruces are up to 150 years old.