Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how well a student is prepared as a future librarian at BHS in Borås, when it comes to serving individuals with hearing disabilities at the libraries. The theory and combined methods is that of discourse theory, interviews and Webb searches. The source material for this thesis comprises course material from 2002 and 2003, with the main focus on the spring term 2003 and on what is called the users perspective användarperspektivet. The study is divided into two parts: firstly, to determine the students expected knowledge and his/her future professional identity through this knowledge. The user groups that were mentioned to the students during the education were also linked to the students knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to find out how a few different women with a Roma heritage sees their to succeed possibilities in Sweden.To illustrate these issues has an hermeneutical approach been used. Materials were collected through interviews with Romani women in a municipality in western Sweden. The material created during the interview sessions is based on the five interviewees' interpretations of how they look at their life and the recognition of Roma people.The interview results show that Roma women have gone through various changes linked to school, language, family, work. Young women and their parents have become more aware that education is an important capital to invest in, in order to later obtain a good job and future. When it comes to school the results show that Roma children have become better at reading but there is still some Roma children who do not attend school, even though there is their native language, Romani, in many schools.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the information access of female Ph. D. students in connection with their situation as women and researchers within the academic setting. In order to examine this, qualitative interviews with ten female Ph. D.

This thesis presents a research of Swedes view on sex tourism in Thailand. This research is showing how Swedes sees sex tourism in Thailand and what kind of thoughts they have about it. This research also shows the Swedish view on sex tourism in Thailand and how it differs from the view of the Swedish media and their opinion about the subject. Furthermore, this research shows that the view of this subject differs depending on the respondents? experience of travelling in Thailand.

The overall aim of the study was to take part of teachers' experiences and work force mother-tongue education and literacy development in the Sámi School. The study was conducted through interviews with twelve teachers who teach at two Sámi schools. The focus has been on looking how to work with native speakers teaching at the Sámi School, what factors promote / hinder students' development of their first or second language, and the importance of collaboration between the schools` various professions work with multilingual students reading and writing skills. Through interviews of various categories of teachers, I have tried to visibility problems of the education of minority language children and their reading and writing skills. I discuss the teaching, the importance and the lack / availability of communication and consensus between different categories of teachers.

The aim of this study has been to examine how a few members of the Finnish and non- Scandinavian Romani subgroups experience their own, and their groups, situation on the Housing- and Labour Market. We´ve studied our respondents? experiences of discrimination, which difficulties they think there are, what strategies can be used to deal with these difficulties and also their own ideas on how to improve the situation for the Romani people in the Swedish society. This has been done by six individual structured interviews which have been analyzed with concepts from Symbolic Interactionism, including Goffman?s Dramaturgical Role Theory, definition of Stigma and Kelly?s theory of Personal Constructions.

Uppsatsens vill belysa assyriska ungdomars identitetsskapande och hur detta utförs med två olika kultursystem, och dessutom visas skillnader mellan könsrollerna. Urvalet avgränsas till svenskfödda assyriska ungdomar i 18 - 25 årsåldern. Dessa har oftast levt med en kollektivistisk kultur och en individualistisk kultur redan i primär socialisation. Tidigare forskning som har relevans för uppsatsen presenteras och handlar om assyriska ungdomars livssituation, assyriska genusroller och invandrarungdomar i Sverige. Teoretisk utgångspunkt för uppsatsen är symbolisk interaktionism, med teorier runt socialisationsprocessen, social identitet samt etnisk minoritet i kulturmöte.

The public libraries in Sweden has an obligation to serve all of its citizens, but despite of this they often fail to include their LGBTQ-patrons. Since the year of 2008 RFSL (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights) have arranged a specially designed certification-process based on normcritical criterias that a chosen institution should fulfill to make their work more inclusive for LGBTQ-people. Sollentuna is the first municipal in Sweden to certificate all of their libraries. This study aims to examine what the certification have meant for the public library in Sollentuna and how a normcritical view can contribute to include LGBTQ-patrons at the library. As a method we used a qualitative interview-study to get a full picture of the certification-process and its influence on the public library of Sollentuna.

The aim of this thesis was to explore and analyze the sponsored debates on Newsmill, so called seminars. How does the sponsor use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes? Who is allowed to write in Newsmills seminars?To answer these questions we used both a quantitative survey and a qualitative survey.To examine how the sponsors use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes we conducted a qualitative analysis which included three of the eleven seminars - a total of 26 articles. We examined how the sponsors conveyed the picture of themselves and if the written content in Newsmills seminars contained any hidden marketing. We could see that the sponsor has a great deal of influence on the seminars and also used them to market their brand with hybrid messages.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how preschool pedagogues in Stockholm and in Tornedalen speak about and relate to creative activities. By qualitative interviews in two geographically distant areas, one minority culture and one majority culture, I have collected information from six pedagogues, three in each area. Values in, and the significance of culture in creative activities have been the main focus. From this study I conclude that all pedagogues agreed upon the creative activity having an extensive role in the preschool work. The role of the individual pedagogue within the creative activity is multiple and dependent on where, when and how the activity is carried out.

During the autumn of 2007 I carried out an investigation within the bank and finance Sector. The aim of the investigation was to see how informal aspects could be understood in relation to equality within Bank AB? The main question was: Which are the obstacles and opportunities for equality within Bank AB? To answer the main question I asked the following questions to the material: Are there any gender related different within the organization? How are men and women represented within the internal magazine? Which are the conceptions related to sex/gender within the organization? The investigation is based on a survey, the internal magazine was investigated and finally interviews took place. Throughout the investigation I used organization theory in a gender perspective. With the gender organization theory I examined concepts as structures, leadership, symbolism and changes associated with equality.

This essay examines a presupposed correlation between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context. The more specific purpose is to test the following hypothesis: There is a reversed connection between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context, that is; a strong claim of values give reason to a limited conception of the will of the people and a weak claim of values gives reason for a more unlimited conception of the will of the people.In order to test the hypothesis I examine three different conceptions of democracy, these are: pluralist democracy, deliberative democracy and constitutional democracy. I analyze the way they look upon values, there view of the will of the people and finally if there is a connection between the way they look upon values and the will of the people. Values should be understood in a metaethical context. In other words it is not values in the ?common? meaning, instead its how val-ues in them selves should be understood, and even more relevant, what we mean when we ex-press values.My conclusions are, first and foremost, that there is a correlation between the will of the people and values, according to the formulation of the hypothesis.

To create fair conditions between majority and minority in Sweden is a challeging project. Male immigrants usually do not get same opportunities for a success identity structure and integration into Swedish society as women and children. The aim of this thesis is therefore to critically examine and analyse the processes regarding identity structure and integration for male immigrants with a specific focus on Helsingborg. The object of this study is Mansgrupp, a project which helps men to build up a secure ground for identity structure and which further helps them to integrate into the society. To be able to reach the results I have made a literature study as well as a minor field study in Helsingborg, where I conducted interviews with men from the above mentioned project.