Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to see how the media, through the newspaper, "Vi föräldrar”, produces family and parental roles, and to investigate how the image changed over time. Material/Method: The material consists of a number of selected texts from the years 1968, 1988 and 2008. The method used is a discourse analysis based on the three level model by Norman Fairclough. The three levels are the text, the discourse practise and the sociocultural practise. In this study two of the levels, text and sociocultural practise, are used in analysing the texts. Main results: Family and parenting in the texts from 1968 can be linked to the structural functionalist theory in which the core family is central and women and men are assigned to specific roles. I have chosen to call the contents of the texts of 1968 a "core family discourse." The feminist approach has influenced the content in the texts from 1988 which I call a “gender discourse”. The individualization of the late modern period has resulted in freedom for the individual without specific gender roles or traditional family frameworks, which are evident in the texts from 2008. I have therefore chosen to refer to the 2008 texts as a "lifestyle discourse".

This thesis attempts to examine the relationship between liberal intellectuals and the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) in Turkish politics. The Justice and Development Party was elected to power in the 2002 general elections, and has been continually in power since. The rise of the AKP was interpreted as a real historical break in Turkish politics since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and sparked the emergence of new public discussions and academic debates on the significance of the party to Turkish politics. The rise and rule of the AKP was also prepared by the formation of a group of intellectuals who classified themselves as liberals or democrats, those focused on in this study comprising mainly columnists in Turkish newspapers. This intellectual stratum showed an exceptional sympathy and support towards the AKP, especially between the years 2002-2011, which also corresponded to the establishment of hegemony of the AKP in Turkish politics and the AKP&#039 / s furthering of neo-liberalization. This study analyzes the nature and multiple dimensions of the relationship between liberal intellectuals and the AKP in Turkish politics and within the larger context of neo-liberalism. The study employs concepts of hegemony and passive revolution and intellectuals developed by Antonio Gramsci, as a theoretical framework, and argues that this intellectual stratum provided the AKP with an ideological leadership during the establishment of the hegemony of the party in Turkish politics and contributed to the perpetuation of neo-liberalism in Turkey by the agency of the AKP.

Since 1992, the number of short-term mission (STM) travelers has exponentially increased for more than a decade. The purpose of STMs is to spread religious messages to local residents. In order to spread the word of God, STM travelers attempt to interact with local residents. They want to communicate with local residents in the host community and build a relationship with them. Therefore, for STM travelers their relationship with local residnets really matters. Many tourism scholars have argued that hosts-tourists interaction heavily influences both tourists and hosts. In spite of the increased popularity and the importance of host-tourist interaction in the context of STMs, STMs have received relatively little attention from the tourism research field. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to understand short-term mission travelers' interaction with local residents within four existing theories: the theory of leisure and tourist motivation, the theory of cultural hegemony, the gift-exchange theory, and the integrative theory of cross-cultural adaptation. To reach this research aim, this study used a qualitative research design rooted in the constructivist paradigm. A total of 43 STM travelers participated in the interview of this study. Considering the concept of the cultural distance between the participant's home culture and the host culture, American and Korean STM travelers who visited Cambodia or Thailand were recruited. Also, to understand the process of participant's relationship-building and cross-cultural adaptation, both pre- and post-interviews with 26 participants were conducted. The results showed that STM travelers sought personal and interpersonal rewards from the trip, which supports the theory of leisure motivation. Also, this type of travel had similarities with alternative, mass, and volunteer tourism in terms of tourist motivation. Regarding the theory of cultural hegemony, hegemonic power was exercised through STM travelers' work. STM travelers took advantage of an opportunity to provide what locals wanted as an opportunity to spread their religious message. Furthermore, identified conflicts between Christianity and the local culture support the existence of cultural hegemony. Concerning the relationship-building process of STM travelers, the results suggested that STM travelers built their relationship with local people and God by providing a gift to them and positively evaluating receivers' responses. In terms of the theory of cross-cultural adaptation, this study found support for this theory as successful intercultural adaptation led to a personal transformation in travelers. Finally, cultural distance was considered as a dimension of the intercultural adaptation theory. Regarding the perceived cultural distance, American mission travelers reported cultural distance with the host culture whereas Korean mission travelers expressed a cultural similarity to the host cultures rather than cultural difference.

This study explores the role of education as means of creation and maintenance of religious hegemony in Iran and Turkey. In the context of this study, state-sponsored systems of mass education aim to socialize generations of children into accepting the ideology and values of the dominant groups as the normal state of affairs. Hegemony, thus, is advanced not solely by excluding oppositional forces but by moral leadership throughout the total ideological and socio-political structure. Reviewing the notion of education in Islam and the role of the Quran and Sunna and other sources of knowledge in Islam, the study focuses on the impact of Shari'a in forming the theories of state and education in Islam. Representing two different schools of Muslim thought, Iran and Turkey have different interpretations of the state and its role in education which determines the degree of involvement and extent of authority of the political and religious leaders over education. Unity of Islam and the state in the Iranian theocratic system provides an ideologically-laden education which is rooted in one principle: training a new generation of pious, “ideologically committed Muslims”. However, the endeavors of the Turkish secular state have been focused on establishing a mass popularized secular education in order to produce nationalist citizens. The Iranian revolution of 1979 contributed extensively to the awakening of the religious revival, calling for a shift from a Western model of social order to the one deeply rooted in Islamic beliefs and values. The close link between education and ideology in Iran is apparent from the goals set for educating the young, most of them openly political: acceptance of God's absolute authority manifested through the authority of ulama; support for the political, economic, and cultural unity of all Islamic global community (umma) and for oppressed peoples (mustaz’afin); rejection of every form of oppression, suffering, and domination. The four ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic, inseparability of religion and politics, Islamic revival, cultural revolution, and creation of a committed Muslim, have had a direct impact on Iranian education. The “Unity of Education Act” in the Republic of Turkey placed all educational activities under strict government control by introducing a state monopoly on education. Kemalism is based on an emphasis on national and republican principles and secularism in which religion has no place and is left out of the scope of formal education. Hence, the transmission of religious knowledge from one generation to another was only possible through informal channels such as family, the small community or underground activities of religious orders. Islam, however, gradually penetrated the public life in Turkey and challenged the secularism. The goal of the Turkish national education as to unite the entire nation through a national consciousness, to think along scientific lines, and intellectually as well as worldly, leaves no place for Islamic religious education. In spite of the government's emphasis on a secular and nationalist system, Islam remains as a force, particularly in its capacity to utilize new elements required for a modern society. Although Islam has not yet challenged the supremacy of secular education in Turkey, it expanded its influence both in formal and informal education, content and structure.

This examination project examines how masculinity and class affect upper secondary school guys relations towards school and education. The purpose of my project is to expand the understanding of why there is a relation between class, sex and results in studies. The examination is made according to the focusgroup method where two groupinterviews where made. One of the group consist of four guys from a practical upper secondary education and the other consist of four guys from a theoretical upper secondary education. As it shows in the resultchapter the groups also have a different class background.   The result is best understood as a cycle where class strengthen masculinities in different ways, different masculinities have different conditions in the schoolcontext, masculinities and school are factors that strengthen the class differences. In the result I show that both groups have similar view on what to consider masculine, but the guys from the theoretical group point out masculinitie as something negative in opposite to the guys from the practical group. The idea that schoolwork is something unmasculine is clear in the answers from the theoretical group but the same idea can not be found in the answers from the practical group. The attitude towards school and education separates the groups most clearly in the attitude towards university studies. The answers indicate that teachers are one factor to why the attitude towards schoolwork differed so widely between the groups.   In the ending a discussion is held about how school helps to maintain the patriarchy and class differences and how to counteract it.

This paper used the constant comparative method to examine the 12 animated features released by Disney between 2000 and 2010 for: (1) their representation of nonhuman animals (NHAs) and the portrayal of race, class, gender, and speciesism within this representation, (2) the ways they describe the relationship between humans and NHAs, and (3) whether they promote an animal rights perspective. Three major themes were identified: NHAs as stereotypes, family, and human/NHA dichotomy. Analysis of these themes revealed that Disney’s animated features promote speciesism and celebrate humanity’s superiority by justifying the subordination of NHAs to human agency. Furthermore, while Disney’s representation of NHAs remains largely anthropocentric, most of its animated features do not reflect the tenets of animal rights.

The aim of this study was to describe how male social workers who work in the section for children and family in one municipality in southern Sweden, experience that their gender influences their daily work. The main focus is to understand what it means to be a man in the social services department. The first research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their contact with children and parents in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The second research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their working place in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The third research question was how the male social workers experienced that their gender affected the work with women colleagues. The fourth and last research question was how the male social workers experienced what it means to be a man in the present society. The study was based on a qualitative method and contains semi-structured interviews done with five social workers. I analyzed my interviews with the help of a theory which focused on masculine hegemony and with the help of prior research in this area. My results show that male social workers experience both possibilities and obstacles because of their gender when working with children and parents. Male social workers also felt that their gender affected their work with women colleagues.

The purpose of this research was to determine if there is a model of ideal femininity communicated through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines. To assess the representations of women in magazine advertisements, a content analysis of advertisements appearing in three top-selling, demographically-defined women’s magazines (Girls’ Life, Seventeen, and Cosmopolitan) was conducted. Using feminist theory and hegemony theory as critical lenses, advertisements were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Each advertisement was assessed using five criteria: physical characteristics, social context, personality and attitude, and subtext. Using this data to establish the dominant representations of women, it was determined that there is a model of ideal femininity which is developed through establishing common ideals shared by all three magazines and by gradually introducing new ideals which correspond to shifts in real-world interests and experiences of women. It was concluded that a model of ideal femininity is developed through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines, this model is used as a guide to direct girls and women towards specific ideal preferences, attitudes and behaviours, and this model continues to emphasise traditional cultural values and gender ideals which are not necessarily reflective of the range of roles women assume in today’s society.

No description available.

No description available.