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 purpose of the study was to examine how teachers currently working with students who have a mother tongue other than Swedish. The investigation has been carried out using three qualitative research interviews. It has been shown that some educators believe that inclusion in the regular classroom instruction has been giving the best results for students' language development. It has provided great opportunities for discussion and group work. Teachers have given tips on how to work with these students so that they develop in the Swedish language.

The aim with this study has been to examine and to analyze the discourse of Rosengård in Swedish media. With the concept of discourse is meant here specific ways to speak about and to understand the world, or a part of it. In order to reach increased understanding regarding media presentations and constructions of Rosengård, I have done a study about how Rosengård has been presented in the Swedish daily and evening press during the violent acts that took place in Rosengård in the spring and summer of 2008, when youths regarding to media put cars and containers on fire, and also threw stones at fire engines and other emergency service vehicles when these had to turn out to put out the fires. The collected data, containing newspaper articles, has been analyzed on the basis of the critical discourse analysis, CDA, which is a mould of a textanalytical method. This study applies a social constructivist perspective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish insurance companies communicate corporal social responsibility (CSR). We used two methods for approaching the purpose. At first we approached a quantitative content analysis to investigate in which ways the companies communicated on their websites. In the second part of the study we used qualitative textual analysis to study two companies sustainable reports. The theoretical framework of the study is based on theories of CSR and how to communicate it.

The aim of this work is to understand the recruitment of candidates to the local representative assembly in the municipality of Täby. The method used is qualitative interviewing, of a total of eight local politicians in Täby. The theory in which this work rest upon is based on a new-institutionalist perspective. Of great importance is the thoughts of the politicians involved in the recrution process, what do they think were the reasons that controlled the order of priority in the party list among the pool of candidates? Were there any obstacles for minorities in the politics like for example foreigners, women or young people? The study is taking it?s departure from the politicians who candidated in the election of 2002-2006 and the ones which are candidating to the election this coming autumn.In conclusion the aim is to understand the reasons that gives some of the candidates electable places to the assembly, and what the actors themselves think are the conclusive qualities that matters the most.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to study the information support by the head office of the Swedish social insurance office to its administrators. The thesis only focuses on information that concerns laws, regulations and instructions. The study is based on an interview with the head of the division of law at the social insurance head office and a questionnaire answered by administrators in four different counties. The purpose with the interview was to find out about the information strategy of the head office and in the questionnaire the administrators could describe their opinion of their information support. Our special interest was the information channels and how the administrators were able to absorb the essential information.

The title of this study came about from the title of Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone, where Putnam mentions that less people are bowling in teams than before. Bowling is still a large leisure activity in the USA but people tend to bowl more and more in small groups and less in organized teams. This study deals with social capital and leisure time. Its aim is to find out if some Swedish people create social capital on their leisure time and also how do they spend their leisure time. Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone serves as main background material along with the work by Bo Rothstein.

The main purpose is to illuminate how a company links certain values to its brand in an effort to achieve a competitive position. We have done this by studying the government owned company Svenska Spel and its entrance on the netpokermarket. With Corporate Social Responsibility as a guidance for the company they wanted to offer Swedish gamblers an alternative to the, often morally dubious, international actors. Our thesis has taken an internal (corporate) as well as an external (consumer) perspective on the result of this strive. Our conclusions are that although Svenska Spel is successfully integrating social responsibility into their netpokerbusiness, they are facing a difficulty in making the consumer fully appreciate it.

In this essay I compare the description of the Thirty Years? War in a number of German and Swedish encyclopedias published between 1854 and 2005. The essay is a historiographical research with focus on three areas; the description of the war background, the reason of the Swedish intervention in the war and the picture of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf with the consequences of the war and the peace of Westphalia. I want to analyze the differences and similarities in the way the history is being told in the German and Swedish encyclopedias. The research shows a transformation from a narrative, nationalistic, partial description with focus on individuals and specific events to a more analytical and objective description with focus on structures.

The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent the senior level Swedish school can be viewed as supporting, or counteracting, a colonial discourse that legitimizes global and national injustices. The study is executed through a discourse analysis of five textbooks in social science for senior level Swedish schools.Using elements from Foucault and Edward Said a theoretical framework is constructed, in which a colonial discourse is perceived as structured around four clusters of ideas, namely (i) the use of dichotomies, (ii) the concept of progress and civilization, (iii) the construction of -we- as synonymous with (ii), and (iv) the construction of -the others- as the opposite of (ii) and, therefore, the opposite of -us-.The results show that a colonial discourse is still highly present in the textbooks, in that the texts are structured around dichotomies such as tradition/modernity and democracy/dictatorship. Sweden and the Western world are perceived as closely associated with democracy, freedom, and modernity, whereas -the others- of the world are being associated with e.g. poverty, conflict, tradition, and ignorance. -The others- within Sweden, i.e.

This study aims to examine how social workers, in the Swedish social services, perceive and interpret LVU § 3 from a gender perspective. In total eight social workers participated in the study, attending interviews based on a vignette. From a gender perspective we wanted to found out how the social workers define "other socially destructive behaviour" and understand their thoughts about this subject. Moreover, we aimed to see if social workers perceive any differences between boys and girls behaviour. Based on several theories, two gender theories and concepts we have analysed our result from the interviews.

This essay is written in order to expose the construction of collective identity in textbooks for Swedish as a second language. To help visualize the process that shapes and categorize sub-jects based on a relational identity formation I assume mostly from Ernesto Laclau and Chan-tal Mouffe's discourse analysis theory frame. The paper called it as discourse theory. There are two textbooks in Swedish as a second language to be studied. Based on the textual materi-al found in the textbooks I perform a discourse analysis involving mainly focus on relational identity construction.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the theoretical developments on social entrepreneurship. Our purpose is to create a better understanding of the phenomenon leading to new insights. We have categorized the knowledge of the concept into social economy, social ownership, social innovation and social missions. Drawing from our theoretical review we have chosen four empirical illustrations, Grameen Bank, Wikipedia, Basta Arbetskooperativ, Jörn Hälsogemenskap, and we have shown how these fit into the general description of the social entrepreneur. With help of our illustrations we show that it is complicated to pin point the core of social entrepreneurship as they each have separate structures, innovations, social missions and operate close to different sectors.

Normal children acquire the necessary social habits without being consciously aware of this, they learn instinctively. (Author?s translation from Swedish to English) (Asperger & Frith, 1998, s. 21) This essay is about people who do not learn to socialize, the social habits, instinctively but through conscious learning. We have interviewed three adults with the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome with the aim to let them tell us about what it means to have a neuropsychiatric disability.

In this essay, I investigate Swedish possibilities to influence the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (CAP). After having summarized my findings, I try to explain the structure of influence by using Multi-level governance theory.Ten years have passed since Sweden joined the Union, and many changes have followed in the agricultural sector. By investigating the small country of Sweden's possibilities to influence CAP, I hope to be able to get a notion of the possibilities to influence the EU in general. The essay examines four possible paths for agricultural interests to influence the policy process in Brussels:* Through elected representatives of Sweden in the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and in the Swedish Parliament* Through subnational institutions, such as the local authorities and regional representatives.* Through the Swedish Agricultural Office* Through the Swedish pressure group within the agricultural area, LRFThese four groups all have very different channels to the policy process on agricultural issues. The differences are mostly in terms of decisive power or advisory power and institutional contacts or lobby contacts.