The conflict in Aceh had been going on for 30 years time, but ended after a tsunami hit the area in 2004. The impact the natural catastrophe had on the conflict was that both GAM and the Indonesian government was brought together with the intent of reaching a peace agreement. The authors to this thesis paper ask the question of why it became peace after such long time of war, but also if rational choice theory can explain this event. The answer to the first question is that the tsunami was the main reason to why it became peace. As to the second question, the conclusion would be that, depending on which view of human nature one has, rational choice theory can only answer the question if cultural, religious and emotional factors are disregarded.

Uppsatsen handlar om huruvida sociologin fortfarande är relevant när ekonomivetenskapen breddar sitt studiefält till att inte längre vara självklart ekonomisk utan också ställa frågor som traditionellt legat på sociologins bord. Genom en teoretisk analys av statistiska resultat angående användandet av inköpslista i samband med matvaruinköp undersöker uppsatsen huruvida ekonomins klassiska handlingsteori, rational choice, och dess antaganden om homo economicus är tillräckligt för att förklara de resultat som uppkommer. Jürgen Habermas teori om kommunikativt handlande, och Webers handlingsteori används som exempel på utpräglat sociologiska handlingsteorier vars förklaringsförmåga av de uppkomna resultaten jämförs med rational choice theory. Arbetet visar hur ekonomivetenskapen i sin strävan att bredda sitt studiefält behöver ifrågasätta vissa klassiska antaganden, något som under senare årtionden har inträffat, och att sociologin kan ge förklaringar där klassisk ekonomisk teori faller kort..

Sexual violence in armed conflict is not a new phenomenon. Although it has a long history, it's only in recent years from 1990 that is has been given more attention in science and media. I will in my thesis look at the conflicts of former Yugoslavia and Congo (DRC) and I will use two theories to investigate how the use of conflict-related sexual violence best can be explained. The two theoretical frameworks I have chosen are Feminist theory and Rational Choice theory. The conflicts will be at the center of analysis.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate why Norway is not a member of the EU from a rational choice perspective. In order to fulfil this purpose, two questions will constitute the framework of the study. These are:1. What are the arguments of the EU-opposers in the Norwegian EU-debate?2.

This 15 point level essay intends to carry out an ideological critic of the scientific humanism; the main question the essay asks is: do the Humanists practice a rational dialog. In able to find an answer to this question have I developed an analyze scheme that show what the skilful demagogue should avoid, if he have an interest in practicing a rational dialog. The essay shows that, when it comes to debating their most important issues, the Humanist does not practice a rational dialog. The Humanists deny that other forms of humanism than the one they practice exists, according to their beliefs´ humanism must contain an atheistic attitude to the world. When it comes to the Humanists debates concerning religion they accentuate those parts of the bible that they believe is destructive for mankind, these arguments have no rele-vance and are therefore not rational..

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and develop a useful theory of human behavior that recognizes the importance of our emotions. The new framework, called the theory of emotional choice, is developed by a holistic method in which results from the fields of psychology, sociology and (neuro-) biology are used to mutually support the conclusions. The theory is distilled into six preliminary points, which are based on the finding that we are not thinking as logical, rational and longsighted as is often assumed. Instead the regular human thinking is suggested to be shortsighted, intuitive and ruled by our emotions and our needs for generality, causality and normality.To demonstrate the usefulness of the new framework, it is used in an analysis of financial bubbles. Additionally, the fields of negotiation, election and ethics are suggested as potentially interesting to analyze with the new theory..

Actors deliberately change their preferences, contrary to the assumptions of rational decision models. This study shows why, and to some extent how. Preferences are necessarily ambiguous and unstable. Rationality is a regulating myth which has had a profound influence on Western conceptions of what an actor is.The aim of this study is to help individual actors understand the theoretical grounds of their actions. The analysis provides tools for examining decision methods and preference changes.

We are working on the development and design of an approach to agents that can reason, react to the environment and are able to update their own knowledge as a result of new incoming information. In the resulting framework, rational, reactive agents can dynamically change their own knowledge bases as well as their own goals. An agent can make observations, learn new facts and new rules from the environment, and then update its knowledge accordingly. The knowledge base of an agent and its updating mechanism has been implemented in Logic Programming. The agent?s framework is implemented in Java.

Rational Unified Process (RUP) är en systemutvecklingsmetod som tillhandahåller ett modifierbart tillvägagångssätt för hur man skall fördela uppgifter och ansvar inom ett systemutvecklingsprojekt. Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka om RUP verkligen bidrar till framgångsrik systemutveckling, och i så fall även till att identifiera de vitalaste faktorer som lett till denna framgång. Fokus har legat på processkvalitet och genom en enkätundersökning, samt kvalitativa intervjuer med användare, har vi kunnat fastställa att metoden faktiskt bidrar till framgångsrik systemutveckling. De mest väsentliga bakomliggande framgångsfaktorerna som undersökningen har identifierat, är RUPs riktlinjer för produktion av dokumentation, konfigureringsmöjligheter av utvecklingsprocessen, stödet för projektledning, samt det iterativa tillvägagångssättet vid utveckling..

The SAB-system (Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek) was created almost a hundred years ago and has often been viewed as insufficient among many academic libraries. KB (Kungliga Biblioteket) has therefore decided to change to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification) which means that the Swedish libraries are now facing a challenge that involves a change to a new classification system. This is a comparable situation that occured when the SAB-system was created. The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the Swedish library sector´s approach to a new classification system, first to the SAB-system and then to DDC.

This thesis, drawing from several empirical investigations, reaches the conclusion that there seems to be a positive correlation between the level of democracy and the level of state capacity in Latin American countries. This correlation is explained by a hypothesis derived from Rational Choice theory. With some important caveats, this conclusion is then applied to the discussion about democracy as a form of government. Within democracy, the thesis also offers an insight into different electoral systems and its possible implications, mostly on a theoretical level. The thesis only exists in swedish as of yet..

Many researchers emphasize the increasing strategic importance of supply chain management, but there is still a lack of concrete guidance for managers faced with strategic decisions in supply chain. Within decision-making theories, the rational decision-making model is the most commonly used. This because of its suitable foundation, enabling a structure to the complex decision process. The rational decision-making model is today not developed to include the aspects of strategic decision-making made in supply chain. The purpose of this research is to adjust a structured rational decision-making model, making it applicable for strategic decision-making in supply chain.

In this essay, I research and discuss new spirituality (or what is commonly known as New Age) within some congregations in the Church of Sweden, Gothenburg. I question how and why this new spirituality has come to be accepted in parts of the Church. My hypothesis is that the church is a part, and a reflection, of a larger change throughout society, and I claim that this change depends much on the individualization and globalization during the last decades.The research is conducted through interviews with representatives from the Church ofSweden who are in charge of new religious activities. During these interviews we discuss their views on the change that has already taken place and is going on today.The interviews are then analyzed by applying rational choice theory on them. I discusswhether the Church can be seen as a producer of goods and services and if the churchgoers canbe seen as consumers of these goods and services.

Rational choice är ett dominerande paradigm inom den samhällsvetenskapliga forskningen. Teorin är väl använd för att förklara politik och politisk påverkan, och otaliga forskningsstudier har gjorts inom dess ramar sedan den fick sitt genombrott. Allt sedan rational choice blivit ett dominerande paradigm har teorin även kommit att kritiseras. Kritiker hävdar att teorin, trots sina fördelar i vissa fall, är otillräcklig för att förklara samhällsvetenskapliga fenomen. Framför allt de beteendeantaganden som teorin utgår ifrån har kritiserats från såväl psykologiskt, som sociologiskt och ekologiskt håll.

När ett IT-företag ska utveckla ett system behöver de en systemutvecklingsmetod. Denna metod används för att de personer som arbetar i ett projekt ska ha en mall för hur de ska utföra sitt arbete. Vad som enligt litteratur verkar vara ett problem idag är att företagen har en metod men använder den inte på ett bra sätt eller inte alls. Detta leder till ostrukturerade projekt utan sammanhang. Om någon slutar i projektet är det svårt för någon ny att sätta sig in i det arbete som gjorts.