Using Varshney's theory about intra- and interethnic networks, this thesis examines how civil society in southern Thailand is built up.During 2004 the violence between Muslims and Buddhists rose in southern Thailand. The government tried to fight the insurgency using violent police and military forces, resulting in hundreds of deaths and part of reason why Thailand is loosing rank in Freedom House's democracy index. Varshney means that a civil society built up on intraethnic networks works favourable to violence between different ethnic groups. Sorting out and defining what is meant by ?ethnic? and ?civil society?, this thesis shows why to look at the insurgency in southern Thailand as an ethnic conflict surviving partly because of an intraethnic civil society.

The study should be seen as an attempt to examine how a group of selected muslims from seven different cities in Sweden relate to Lars Vilks?s drawings of the prophet Muhammed (also called the roundabout dog) and if they feel that their attitude towards the drawings has changed during the seven years that have passed since the first drawing was published in the newspaper Närkes Allehanda in 2007. To understand these selected muslims? approach, experiences and feelings in regards to the drawings I examine in what aspect they find the drawings provocative. I also examine what consequences Vilks?s roundabout dog-project might have had  for individual muslims in Sweden.

Aim: To investigate how three of the biggest political parties in Sweden made use of socialmedia in the election campaign in 2010, and to get a picture of how the parties perceive therole of social media in political communication today and in the future.Method: The research is conducted through personal interviews and qualitative textualanalysis.Theory: The theory that the study is based on is Habermas theory of the public sphereMain results: Social media is today an excellent channel for communication and informationbetween politicians and voters, and they will probably become increasingly important inpolitical communication in the future. So far, they are only an addition to the traditional mediaand are in no way substituted for them. Internet and some social media is an excellent forumfor political debate and opinion-former..

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

The aim of this study was to get a greater comprehension of social welfare secretaries? notion of "good parenting" and furthermore how this is expressed in evaluations of investigations regarding care of children. The empirics in this qualitative study were collected with the help of a vignette containing relevant questions. Moreover interview questions were answered at seven occasions. The interviewees were social welfare secretaries that worked with evaluations of care of children.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the democratic situation and developement in Malung and Nyköping, through a perspective of participatory and deliberative democratic theories. The questions I?ve examined are On what priorities the actions of developing democracy are built? Which positive effects have been reached and what problems have arisen? What are the solutions they have found to the problems? How does one experience the results of the experiments and actions taken? What are the similarities and differences between the two cases? and What is their relationship to the theories mentioned above?The questions are answered through interviews with four central actors in each case and examined in relation to participatory and deliberative democratic theories and in comparison of the two cases.The results have been that even if none of the cases respond to one theoretical ideal, they have touches of both theories as well as representative theory. It shows, however, that in Malung the representative democracy theory is the strongest represented in actions and politics, while in Nyköping the participatory democratic theory is stronger. In short, the most positive and negative effects respond well to the theories..

This essay shows how the concept of virtue can deepen our understanding considering processes of empowerment. A virtue is understood as a trait of character, manifested in habitual action, that it is good for person a to have. Virtues are interpreted as socially constructed. Empowerment is presented as a process toward self-confidence and self-determination where recourses and freedom propels the development toward power for the individual, the household and the community. Why does the concept of virtue deepen our understanding? It is argued that our theoretical perceptive of empowerment needs to better encompass values, norms and practise.

The Saami, a Nordic indigenous people scattered over four countries, has for centuries been regarded as parts of the national populations of the countries in which they live. During the 19th century saami demands for greater influence resulted en several changes, among them the founding of a Swedish Saami Council in 1993. The council became a popularly elected, representative institution with an agenda of its own, but also a public authority answerable to the government. The decision to attribute the council this twofold role was unusual and, from a certain point of view, even controversial: it makes it difficult to determine the location of the power to act in saami-related issues and the legitimacy to do so.This essay is about how the twofold role came into existence, what it leads to and how the seemingly contradictive duality is managed. It has an institutional approach with theories concerning institutions and etnicity as well as institutional change and handling of complicated and ambiguous demands.

The aim of my study is to illuminate the borders, both spatial and aspatial, that are drawn around Europe in swedish politics by using the word in question in different ways. To increase my possibilites of comparing different concepts of Europe, I have chosen to restrict my study toFolkpartiet and Vänsterpartiet, which are the two swedish parties who seem to stand the furthest from each other on issues regarding Europe and the EU. Using theory on borders and bordering, I construct an analytical framework consisting of a separation of three categories of entities, around which borders can be drawn. In my search for both obvious and implicit ways of filling the word Europe with content, I find that both parties speak of Europe in a highly contradictory way, which both includes and excludes peripheral regions of a geographical Europe. My second conclusion is that both parties tend to associate Europe with things that are positive to them.

This thesis is a study of social movements and their possibilities to effect politics by infuencing values in society through framing. I've looked upon social movements from a functionalistic-structuralistic perspective, as if they were carriers of values from people that otherwise won't be represented in the political life. The values that the social movements are struggling for can affect both the opinion and the decision-makers since the social movements in an active way are trying ti influence the society. The thesis examines the political opportunities that social movements hav to mobilise and grow. I have looked at different factors that either improve or make the political opportunities worse.

Uppsatsen behandlar hur Sveriges syn på Estland, uttryckt i Riksdagsdebatten, förändras från 1985 till 2008, analyserat ur ett identitetspolitiskt perspektiv. Identitetspolitik innebär att självidentifikationen av en stat primärt bygger på identifieringen av "de andra" och att upprättandet av en gräns gentemot "de" skapar utrikespolitik. Undersökningen bygger på en kvalitativ analys av riksdagstryck från den berörda perioden och fokuserar på beskrivningen av Estland i debatten. Författaren menar att det under denna tid finns ett flertal tydliga tendenser till förändring som mynnar ut i Estland går från att vara något som omnämns ytterst försiktigt och endast med bakgrund av Kalla Kriget till att bli ett europeiskt Östersjöland som är en nära samarbetspartner för Sverige. Under loppet av denna utveckling blir både Östersjön och Europa viktiga identifikationer för Sverige medan Norden står tillbaka i relativa termer..

This thesis studies path generation for industrial robots of six degrees of freedom. A path is defined by connection of simple geometrical objects like arcs and straight lines. About each point at which the objects connect, a region, henceforth called a zone, is defined in which deviation from the defined path is permitted. The zone allows the robot to follow the path at a constant speed, but the acceleration needed may vary. Some means of calculating the zone path as to make the acceleration continuous will be presented.

In this essay i present a study on political learning of a minority ethnicity whose political history in the institutional form began in 1993. The ethnicity in question is the Sami?s and in 1993 the Sami Parliament was established. The establishment of the Sami parliament radically changed the preconditions for political work. Sami politics came to be pursued in an organized manner in the form of a public authority and democratically elected units.

The similarity between the Russian and the Indian, in a Cold War context, may be ambiguous considering the ethnic-social variables and the period in time from where the Indians relate. However, by analyzing these, as well as other, characters in the exhibition of movies, we could learn something about the ideology of the time from which the movies derive.This study examines ideology and movies in the Cold War era and concludes that the Indian, for example, may be representing the values of the common public enemy, originating from the Cold War ideology. The movies examined, regardless of influence of distinct Cold War themes or lack of such themes, carry attributes that give evidence of typical Cold War ideology. The fear of communism and common enemies connected to a Cold War context, the thought of America as the land of the free ? with the horizon in the ending of the movies as metaphoric to freedom ? and the moral rhetoric that connects to the American thought of a duty as a global savior, are all signs of the Cold War ideology.Even though the messages are somewhat clearer and more distinct in the movies with Cold War motifs, the fact that ideology is projected through other movies as well should be considered essential for the continuing study of movies as cultural artefacts..

This bachelor thesis deal with the Soviet submarine U-137 and it's grounding inthe Swedish archipelago outside the city of Karlskrona and one of Sweden?slargest naval-bases. The actions that took place in October 1981 were specialbecause of the clear violation of Swedish territory. When the Swedish authoritieslater suspect nuclear armament onboard the crisis gets worse. In the thesis wehave examined the Swedish politicians and military and their behaviour duringthe crisis.