Our environment affect us, not least gardens. By practising the ancient Chinese art feng shui, one could find tools how to create harmony and balance in gardens. By paying attention to different energies working with colours, shapes and materials one can create a nice garden with good feng shui. The philosophy, however, includes much more than what plants or what hard materials to choose in the garden. It describes different energies, the movement of energies, which we can learn to live in harmony with.

Using interviews conducted within the municipality of Nam Dich, Vietnam, this qualitative study explores how ethnic minority parents and children navigate around the state's supervision in order to preserve their traditional practices of child marriages. Moreover, the research explores the roles and expectations between individuals within an ethnic minority family as a collective unit. Using governmentality supported by the concept of state evasion, culture bearers and empowerment, I argue that understanding child marriage as a phenomenon requires analysis of cultural context. The paper starts with an introduction of the ongoing relation between the Vietnamese state and ethnic minority traditions related to child marriage. While the Vietnamese state ?s modernization projects aim to empower individuals by creating more freedom within the process of marriage and increasing the opportunity for education and work, certain ethnic minority groups want to uphold their cultural ways of marriage when parental arrangement occurs from an early age.

In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics.

With this essay we would like to examine to what extent the ancient Icelandic literature could count as a part of Sweden?s literal cultural heritage in schools today, if it through seeking information is possible to say whether this literature have any connections to Sweden. Our questions of issue are:1. What kind of connection is there between ancient Icelandic literature and Swedish literary cultural heritage and what are the ancient Icelandic literature premises? in the Swedish upper secondary school?2.

Should I/we move abroad or not? This is a question that surely many of today?s expatriate Swedes asked themselves and was probably largely debated by most. How does is feel to move back to Sweden? I have chosen to contact a number of expatriate Swedes and some that have returned, in order to receive answers to these questions.The aim with this thesis is to study the experiences and thoughts of people living in a different country as to were they were born and also those of people returning to Sweden. I have used a hermeneutic analytical method alongside a socio-psychological identity perspective when I studied the replies of my 69 respondents.

The aim of this paper is to describe and explain which policy instruments for human rights (HR) the United States and the European Union use towards Burma and to examine the priority given to HR in their respective foreign policy. From the results of an empirical analysis this paper seeks to analyze the US and the EU as powers in the international system and aims to explain their behavior from this theoretical perspective. From the theoretical approaches used I conclude that these actors act in different ways regarding the Burmese issue. This is partially due to the structure of the international system. Both actors primarily use different forms of diplomatic tools and sanctions to try to force change for HR in Burma.

The Swedish integration policy acts upon that all citizen should have equal rights and possibilities no matter ethnic and cultural background. In today's Sweden it is more or less a self-evident that immigrants ought to prepare the possibility to preserve their original cultural distinctive character according to the Governments Proposition 1997/98:16. Simultaneously the term integration and its actual meaning and its political significance are not always clear.Immigrants as a categorization are often overloaded with negative overtone and risk to seem discriminated. The category reinforces also a ?we? and ?them? thinking.

This report is the result of a thesis work carried out on the Risifrutti production at the company Procordia Food AB. The thesis is at a master level and is the final work for the author to receive a Master of Science in Innovative production at Mälardalen University. The thesis comprises 30 credits and has lasted for 18 weeks. The thesis is mainly a research on whether it is possible to perform an Environmental Value Stream Map (E-VSM) in a food processing industry and an evaluation if the tools E-VSM and Green Performance Map (GPM) are useful in this type of industry. An extra part to this research is to use the results from the E-VSM and give Procordia Food AB information on improvement potentials in the Risifrutti production. The author has found it difficult to collect some of the quantitative data to the E-VSM, mainly regarding energy, but by using the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool and other Lean tools the author was able to identify and quantify several wastes in the Risifrutti production. Recommendations for improvements based on these wastes have been given to the company. In the research part of this report the utility of the Value Stream Map, Environmental Value Stream Map and Green Performance Map in a food processing industry have been analyzed. The author has found that the Value Stream Map has been a useful tool since waste and unevenness in the tact of the production has been identified. The Environmental Value Stream Map and the Green Performance Map are also great tools when a company wants to analyze their environmental impact and then invest in environmental improvements. However, no profound energy analyzes has been done in the Risifrutti production because of the lack of energy meters for steam, electricity and compressed air in the production lines..

That many creative workers have uncertain and uneven incomes is well-established, but how or why they make a living is not. This paper examines the elusive value exchanges between creatives, buyers, consumers, and other economic supporters, and offers a model of how creatives make a living. By mapping income statistics of Swedish creatives together with in-depth interviews some patterns emerge. This, combined with Bourdieu's theories of social, cultural and symbolic capital, and Knorr's objects of sociality, forms a basis for a structured model of value exchange. The paper shows how creative workers create economic and non-economic capital (capitalization), how they advertise this capital (signaling), and how they convert between different types of capital (conversion) in order to make a living.

One of sociology´s to assess the effects of political decision. According to sociologist Anders Persson the society is changing, and in that change social fear appear. In the reaction of social fear some people are being excluded. In that more narrow frame for normality laws are created that makes some parents and their children ?the other?. Nine years ago the sociologist Eva Kärfve published a book that was very critical to the newborn psychiatrics diagnosing of children as a way of segregating groups in society.

The users of social media channels are today increasing rapidly. Because of this it has become more important for individuals to be seen and stand out of the crowd. The concept of personal branding has become more widespread and is today an important factor for individuals who want to communicate their personality on the Internet.The purpose of this study is to examine the role of personal branding in today?s society and to find similarities in how established bloggers use communication tools to increase their visibility. This has been done through qualitative interviews with individuals who write and shape their blogs depending on how they want to be seen on the Internet.By analysing our findings we came to the conclusion that personal branding is becoming more important in a world that is becoming more and more digitalized.

Adapting the concept of the ?popular cultural memory? and its necessary ?context knowledge? established by Karin Kukkonen, this bachelor thesis seeks to examine how this memory is ?at work? and expresses itself in contemporary fiction, by doing an intertextual reading of the swedish author Amanda Svensson's debut Hey Dolly. Within the intertextual structures of Hey Dolly the reader encounters allusions and references that address almost everything from contemporary popular culture to established authors in the swedish canon, mainly as means for the characters to help them express their emotions and thoughts, by ?choosing? from already available content of popular culture to use and modify. The intertextuality alluding to the popular cultural memory does at the same time address the concept of the ideal reader throughout the novel.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the roles ofthree different public libraries in three differentcommunities. In order to get some answers about the roles ofthe public libraries I have used the following questions: Howis the local cultural policy formulated? How is the locallibrary structured? What or which profiles has the publiclibraries in the three communities?I have made three qualitative case-studies in three differentcommunities. These three communities are somewhatlocated in the same area in order to identify any cooperationbetween them.

Abstract Title: Veckorevyn.com. A study from power relations in the world of blogs Author: Klara Sigfridsson Department for Media and Cultural Studies, Malmö Högskola Tutor: Kristoffer Gansing This is a report that aims to research upon Fairclough´s Critical discourse analysis to emphasise the power relationship between professional bloggers and former amateur bloggers at the fashion-entertainment web page Veckorevyn.com. Professional bloggers as they appear in the research object and their power within the Media seem to be a subject that is very relevant these days. This paper will look at different factors that make professional bloggers popular and as an example on their responsibility as a role model. However, amateur bloggers do have an importance in this discussion as they are more and more competing with the professionals.

There is an ongoing discussion in Sweden about child perspective and child?s perspective.The municipalities? family law units are required to include these perspectives in their investigations. But how do they affect the outcome of custody investigations? This essay addresses that issue. I have looked at how much say children have and how much they participate in their custody investigations.