The aim of this thesis is to assess the strategic importance of Central Asia as a whole and interests of great powers in the region in particular within the theoretical framework chosen. The work shows Central Asia as an area of the New Great Game, analogue of the original Great Game which was played out between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia in XIX century. The parallels between the original Great Game and the New Great Game are drawn in order to understand the scope and the true intentions of the players of the latter one. Also, the security issues in the contemporary Central Asia are explored and analyzed to provide with the background for future predictions. Furthermore, the indirect purpose of the thesis is to examine whether the international system has changed from that of two centuries ago by comparing the structure of the international systems at the time of two Games.

AbstractCities are once again becoming the locus of economic, social and political processes. The effect of these processes on the city is two-fold: one one hand they threaten to fragment and dislocate the city and the actors within them, on the other hand they give actors within cities new opportunities to react and mobilize resources towards different strategies of integration. The latter gives rise to what Patrick Le Galès calls the collective actor-city. The aim of this thesis is to explore the notion of the city as a collective actor in a swedish context by utilizing Le Galès theory of european cities as collective actors in an abductive case study on the city of Malmoe. By utilizing Le Galès five dimensions that make up a collective actor I analyze interviews conducted with city officals aswell as documents produced from the city wide plan of action Welfare for everybody.

This study examined some contradictive results in a report from the Swedish board of Integration. The contradiction was concerning the Swedish populations dismissive judgments of experience a shared ground of values between the Swedish society and those witch are generally held within Islam. These dismissive judgments were given at the same time as the population reported to have a lacking knowledge of Islam in general. To test for psychological aspects of these contradictions, the analysis was based on the theoretical ground of Social Identity Theory and Theory of Attributions. The study used an existing survey that examines people´s estimations of their own and other members of society´s fulfilling of democratic values.

Based on last years events that have taken place, events on the school Lundbergs and the police values of work, has the meaning of having a set of values been questioned. This study aimed to investigate and answer the fundamental values based on the common value basis for the government employees within an organization and how it perceived by employees. The new institutional theory was the framework for this qualitative study conducted with semi-structured interviews. Respondents were employees within the organization. Ethnographic qualitative methodology was the basis for our methodology and we used a thematic model of theme interpretation, communication and knowledge in our analysis.

The purpose of this essay was to examine the role of the acquisition of the Swedish language for integration of adult immigrants given by the seven parties currently in the parliament and other players on the field. The questions were meant to bring light upon the arguments used by the different players concerning the role of the Swedish language, to enlighten which discourses that are constructed, and the contradictions that exist between these. We parted from a postmodern position and used social constructionism to back up our method and theory of analysis; discourse theory. The results revealed three different discourses concerning the role of the Swedish language in the integration process; the liberal discourse, the discrimination discourse and the social democratic discourse. The liberal discourse claims that immigrants have a responsibility to learn Swedish to be able to achieve employment and to provide for themselves.

Theory has concluded that consumers evaluate advertising not only based on what the advertiser's message aims to communicate, but also how the message is communicated. As the most popular activity on the world's largest social media channels is to upload and share photos, it has become crucial for advertisers to define strategies that maximize the reach of photo posts. Two observed variations of images used in posts are graphical images and digital photographs. The aim of this study is to investigate which of these two strategies that generate most positive impact on the sender and its brand. 230 users of the Chinese Facebook and Twitter counterpart, Sina Weibo, were exposed to manipulated Sina Weibo posts after which they answered a survey.

The Stradella system on an accordeon is a complicated construction. It has readymade con-nected chords, these are major, minor, seventh and diminished seventh. To reach other vari-ants of chords you have to combine chord/bass buttons. Which advantages and disadvantages do the use of combined chords/bass buttons mean? How is the pedagogic work affected by using the combined chords/bass buttons? I have interviewed four musicians/teachers to learn about this technique.

This is a historical documentary research study across Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963). The theoretical perspective is based on the historical perspective of knowledge from ancient Greece to the approach of modern symbolic interactionism. The study shows that Boyd, who was Viola Spolins teacher, was a proponent of the modern view of group play theory. 1909 she founded Chicago School for Playground Workers, later transformed to the Recreation Training School. Until 1927, the school entered in Hull-House initiated by Jane Addams.

AbstractAuthors: Carolina Magnusson and Johanna MagnussonTitle:  The balance between research and practice. A study of family therapist?s knowledge retrieval and the application of evidence-based practice.Supervisor: Jan Petersson Assessor: Peter HultgrenDuring our research we discovered that a very small amount of research had been conducted about the effect of the social services. It inspired us to fulfill this study. The aim of the study is to describe and analyze what knowledge family therapists in two Swedish municipalities use in family therapy work.

This thesis deals with past and present political attitudes towards the Öresund bridge. It describes the decision making process which preceded the construction of the bridge, and has a short historical introduction to it. It then presents the attitudes towards the bridge of five different political parties, all represented by regional politicians. This empirical information was obtained through interviews with politicians and literature studies. The author then analyzes the empirical information with the help of the human ecological triangle developed by Steiner, and the center-periphery theories of Wallerstein and Persson.To conclude, the author describes what the central problem is in the case of the Öresund bridge from a human ecological perspective and analyzes the empirical data collected..

The purpose of the study was to find out whether the interaction between mentally disabled individuals and pet positively affects the individual and gives a feeling of well-being to the extent that this might be implicated in the psychologically disabled people?s everyday life in some form of rehabilitation measure. The study is qualitative and builds on an ethnographic design. Data collection was performed through six observations, six interviews and reflections. Interviews were also conducted with relatives and assistants for greater opportunity for follow-up questions, and descriptions of the situation.

Detta examensarbete handlar om övergångsprocessen från studier till arbetsliv för studie- och yrkesvägledare. Syftet med examensarbetet är att undersöka hur nyutexaminerade studie- och yrkesvägledares övergångsprocess från studier till arbetsliv och etablering har upplevts. För att uppnå vårt syfte och för att få svar på våra frågeställningar intervjuade vi yrkesverksamma studie- och yrkesvägledare, arbetsgivare av studie- och yrkesvägledare och sistaårsstudenter på studie- och yrkesvägledarprogrammet. Den tidigare forskning inom ämnet som vi tagit del av har i huvudsak resultatet att övergångsprocessen kan vara en utmaning. Detta eftersom det finns ett kunskapsglapp mellan de kunskaper utbildning ger och det arbetsgivarna kräver.

Bullying in schools is a big social problem in today?s society and it affects the children exposed in a very negative way. The aim of my paper is to find out if there is a group of students who gets bullied by other students more often than others. I want to study if children with functional disabilities get more bullied than children without functional disabilities and,if this is the case ? why is it so?My questions are:Are children with functional disabilities particularly exposed to bullying?How is bullying prevented?In order to get my results I have made three qualitative interviews and analyzed two debate articles concerning bullying of the disabled.

As the title reveals this is a study of female college students alcohol habits in Kalmar,Sweden. During the spring of 2012 a total of 118 female students at Linnaeus universityanswered a survey about their alcohol habits. The survey reveled that as many as 67%percent of the answering female students (according to Audit) have risky drinking habits.The drinking habits are explained using Albert Banduras social learning theory in contextto the Scandinavian drinking pattern. The study concludes that female alcohol habits needeven further research. Furthermore the study shows that student initiation have an impacton the female drinking habits and that expectations of that students drink are to some extentimportant to the development of hazardous drinking habits..

Syftet med studien var att undersöka om anställdas arbetsmotivation var beroende av hur många timmar de reste i tjänsten under en vanlig arbetsvecka. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av två grupper anställda inom det statliga bolaget Vattenfall. Mätinstrumentet som användes i studien var Basic Need Satisfaction at work scale som mäter arbetsmotivation i tre grundläggande faktorer; autonomi, kompetens och samhörighet. Totalt deltog 123 respondenter i undersökningen. Resultatet visade att det i kompetens och samhörighet förekom signifikanta skillnader mellan de två grupperna, där de som reser mycket skattade upplevelsen av kompetens och samhörighet högre än i gruppen som reser lite.