<p>This licentiate thesis describes the Swedish pornography policy and how this policy affected the pornography industry. The main aim of the study is to survey the development of the Swedish porn industry 1950-2000 and to consider how it was imagined both as an industry, and as a commercialized form of sexuality. The focus is on the relationship between the pornography industry and the state, and to study this relationship, the thesis is divided into three different but related parts.</p><p>The first part concerns the institutional settings with main focus on the abolition of censorship in 1971. The political debates about legalizing pornography are studied in order to ascertain how industry and its actors are conceptualized in this context. It also draws attention to why regulation of the industry was considered necessary in the first place, as well as the how changes in the legislation affected the economic development of the industry itself.</p><p>The second part concerns the Swedish pornographic press. My purpose is to map out all publishing houses that produced pornographic magazines from 1950 to 2000, and to chart some aspects of their economic fortunes. The history of pornography and connections to technological change is also studied in terms of estimating the influence of the video breakthrough on sales figures and market strategies for the publishing houses that had to deal with this development.</p><p>In the third part, I study the regulation in action, i.e. when the publishers of pornographic magazines are prosecuted. I analyze all of the pre-1971 prosecutions – that is, the prosecutions that took place before regulation was removed. Using these records, it is possible to determine how the regulation was implemented, what content was considered harmful, and how that changed over time. This material, that includes the preliminary investigations from the police, also shows how the pornography producers handle the institutional settings to escape responsibilities and punishment.</p><p>In this thesis, I show that the pornography industry in Sweden has a complex and changing relationship to the state. Although pornography is unwanted by politicians during the period, pornography is allowed to publish pictures without any restriction on sexual content in the 1970s. The argument for the deregulation is that censorship is incompatible with a modern democratic and liberal state. Pornography serves as a modern dilemma when the phenomenon is viewed as incompatible with a modern society, conflicting with the goal of gender equality, and when a regulation is seen as incompatible with the idea of basic liberties in a modern democracy.</p><p>When it comes to the industry it shows that, quite unexpected, a lot of companies are run by women or as family businesses. There are no empirical grounds for the claim that pornography is an all male industry then, at least not in the Swedish case. The study also shows that the Swedish pornography industry was well established before the law change.</p>

<p>This licentiate thesis describes the development of the Swedish computer and video game industry. The main focus is on the Swedish game development industry. Little research on the industry has been done and the purpose is to define the companies involved and to create an initial overview of the development of the industry. This overview will later be used as a platform for the doctorial thesis.</p><p>Games are a growing culture form and today a lot of people are playing different types of computer and video games. Internationally the industry has expanded and some of the successful games have generated spectacular revenues. In Sweden the industry has received attention from different actors like universities, government bodies and media. There are today educations that are focused on game development and there are programs which allocates grants towards game companies. The rapid development in the computers technology has had a great impact on the game industry, which is dependent on hardware development to create games.</p><p>The first computer games were made for some of the very first computers in the 1940´s and 1950´s. In the 1970´s a market for games was created when arcade machines and somewhat later home consoles were introduced. The industry has grown and includes today some of the largest companies in the world.</p><p>The Swedish industry follows the international pattern but developed a bit later and the first Swedish game companies were founded in the late 1980´s. The industry has expanded, especially between 1998 and 2002. In 2005 the number of people employed in the industry had increased to over 600. During the period under study the industry seems to have had a constant problem with making a profit. Especially in 2002 and 2003 the industry has had economic problems and some of the lager companies were bankrupt.</p>

<p>This licentiate thesis, with the English title Automobility towards Regional Equality? Studies of the geographical and socioeconomic diffusion of the private automobility in Sweden 1950-2000, has the overall aim to investigate the interaction between the private automobility and the Swedish socio-economical development in general. Firstly, the diffusion of private car ownership in Sweden is mapped both geographically and economically at the national level covering all citizens above the age of 18. Secondly, a comparison with the Norwegian diffusion pattern shows how automobility has interacted with two partly different national contexts. This aim will be dealt with in two articles.</p><p>Since the diffusion of private cars in Sweden has not yet been examined in a long run and national perspective covering all individuals, the first article, Driving from the Centre to the Periphery? The Diffusion of Private Cars in Sweden 1950-2000 with focus on 1960-1975, investigates how the diffusion of private cars followed the over all socio-economic and geographical changes from 1960 to 1975; did changes in car ownership per capita primarily follow changes in incomes or changes in population density (urbanisation)? Swedish traffic and regional policies in the 1960s aimed at making the car an instrument for national integration and regional equality, and make it available throughout the country. In the article the effect of that policy is tested. The analysis is based on Swedish census material that includes all car owners for the years 1960, 1970 and 1975. Our conclusion is that income levels were more important than other explanations to the diffusion of private cars in Sweden between 1960 and 1975.</p><p>Since Norwegian private car density has lagged behind the Swedish and did not reach the same national levels until the late 1980s, despite the same GDP per capita levels, the second article, Two Sides of the same Coin? Private Car Ownership in Sweden and Norway since 1950, compares car diffusion in Norway and Sweden in both historical time and model time in order to find specific explanations for the national and regional patterns of car diffusion. Can both the time lag and the diffusion process be explained with national differences in income, institutions, infrastructure, and population settlements? Or have regional differences in income and population density affected the outcome? Our conclusion is that car diffusion in Norway and Sweden displays two sides of same coin; the national levels converged, but the process did not follow the same regional pattern. Regional differences in income and population density have in general been a significant explanation for car density in Sweden but not in Norway.</p><p>Thus, the licentiate thesis shows how private car ownership in Sweden from the 1950s has interacted with increasing regional equality, especially concerning geographical diffusion.</p>

<p>This licentiate thesis investigates the decision-making process behind the regulation of winter shipping along the coast of the northern part of Sweden, the Norrland region, in the period 1940-1975. The licentiate thesis examines two aspects of this decision-making process. First, how the regulations in the field of winter shipping were designed in the period. Second, this work examines the underlying factors behind this regulatory outcome on the premise that the regulatory design in the field was the result of an interaction between the regulating actors in the government and their political and economic institutional context.</p><p>As for the first issue, it is demonstrated that the period 1940-1975 was characterised by a regulatory ambition to expand winter shipping along the coast of Norrland. This meant that the government made substantial investments in ice-breakers during the period, which gradually expanded the shipping season until the target of year-round shipping even to the northernmost ports was established in the first part of the 1970s. Accordingly, those dues for ice-breaker services proposed by several committees that investigated the issue were never introduced. Instead, government-led ice-breaking has served to compensate Norrland as a peripheral region for its relatively high transport costs.</p><p>Regarding the second issue, it is showed that the decision-making process was influenced by developments at different policy levels of the government hierarchy. In the period 1940-1964, when a public authority within the maritime sector emerged and was consolidated, developments at the maritime sector level affected the decision-making process to a large extent. In turn, the period after 1964 witnessed a change in government policy towards the Norrland region as a more interventionist regional and industrial policy than earlier was implemented. This meant that the decision-making process to a larger extent was influenced by factors originating from a macro policy level.</p><p>During the decision-making process, actors at both the maritime sector level and the macro level emphasized the importance of government-regulated winter shipping for the regional industrialization of the Norrland region in terms that reflected the aims and interests of their policy levels. In this respect, actors in the maritime sector pointed to the role of winter shipping as a trade policy instrument while actors who represented the interests of regional development policy and industrial policy considered the expansion of winter shipping as crucial in achieving the general ambition to create a geographically egalitarian welfare state, characterised by high levels of growth and low unemployment.</p>

<p>The Juntas Vecinales of El Alto portray a telling picture of the current process of societal change inBolivia. Formed to attend the collective needs of indigenous migrants striving to settle down on theoutskirts of the capital, the Juntas Vecinales have grown as an intrinsic part of El Alto becomingsignificant socio-political actors and part of the indigenous social movements propelling the processof change in Bolivia. Their traditional function of supervising public policy by pressuring serviceproviders to attend their demands is commonly known as the practice of social control. A functionthat was institutionalized in the nineties with neoliberal inspired citizenship reforms ofdecentralization. The dynamic relation between the informal and formal branches of social controlis particularly evident in El Alto as the Federation of Juntas Vecinales and the legal supervisinginstitution called the Vigilance Committee hold each branch. This paper presents a case study on theformal and informal actions and activities that define the current role of the Juntas Vecinales inrelevance to their history and to the political and social context of Bolivia today. My main findingpresents an unanimous rejection of the formal branch of social control and the predominance oftraditional methods of pressure actions as the only means of attending grassroots demands.</p> / MFS uppsats

No description available.

<p>I have conducted a survey of the economic sanctions on Iraq 1990-2003 and focused on how the sanctions were implemented and how economic sanctions work in practice. In particular, I have researched the objectives the United Nations had for implementing economic punishment on Iraq, how they came into use and the outcome of it in brief.</p><p>As for the million-dollar question: Were the economic sanctions on Iraq efficient and did they “work”? My opinion stands clear that economic sanctions can work in the future. The sanction policy faced major problems in Iraq, but it also disarmed the Iraqi dictator and gave more autonomous power for the Kurds in the north. They did not “work” as the world community had expected, but no one knows what the outcome would have been if the United Nations had not reacted with such determination as they did in this matter. It is easy to be wise after the event, and it is my personal wish that economic sanctions can be used in the future, as an alternative to open war, but with a lower cost in terms of civilian lives.</p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to an increased understanding of the underlying conditions for the development of a domestic market for consumer goods by studying how the distribution of goods between the town and the countryside in the county of Hälsingland, Sweden, was organized during the first half of the 19th century. The thesis has analyzed the different kinds of persons involved in the distribution of goods, their functions and mutual relations. In order to examine how the trade was organized on the individual level, a case study of one Hudiksvall merchant’s trading business has been done. This has made possible an analysis of how the two-way trade carried on by the majority of the merchants in the region was organized. In broad outline, this trade involved the merchants purchasing linen goods in the countryside for further selling in Stockholm and other markets on the one hand, and on the other purchasing different kinds of consumer goods in these markets to sell in the countryside of Hälsingland.</p><p>The conclusion drawn from this study is that the conditions for distributing goods really were in a phase of change, where the possibilities of carrying out trade gradually increased, which meant that different kinds of trade and different kinds of traders operated side by side.</p><p>Furthermore, the trade was in many aspects less hierarchic and more horizontally organized than has been suggested by previous research. The individual merchant’s business depended on other traders, where the individuals involved in different ways played a very concrete role in the success of each merchant’s business. This means that the relationship between different traders was characterized by both competition and co-operation. Sometimes merchants engaged other merchants as middlemen on remote markets; on other occasions they took the middleman’s role in relation to other merchants. </p>

<p>This paper is about the new methods and metrics used in industry and business today striving for better revenues and larger market shares. It investigates the relations between the old fordistic and tayloristic way of manufacturing and compares it to the models used in industry today for being competitive, seeking to please customers and becoming more flexible. More specific the paper is about if Six Sigma and lean production are the key for succeeding these days. SKF:s factory in Gothenburg and other companies will make an example for how these methods are used in practice.</p><p>The aim is to try to answer if these systems with inherited tools and methods are the right way to get the flexibility that is needed for being able to deliver the right goods to customers and market. For a company to be flexible decisions must be made fast and needed changes must be able to be done easy and without too large costs and investments. Both in Six Sigma and lean production the total staff in a company is involved with quality matters and continuous improvements. This brings an atmosphere and a certain way to work that makes it possible to reach high defined goals and move towards a common vision. Flexibility can be reached in both production and in developing new products when a company has an atmosphere that makes it possible for all personnel to talk the same language and strive for the same thing. Six Sigma and lean production have the possibility to achieve a higher level of flexibility, that is, when being applied in right places in the right way.</p>

Many Swedish children grew up in foster homes at the turn of the twentieth century. Contemporary medical professionals described foster care as an economic business: a foster child industry. The aim of this study is to analyze whether fostering could be seen as a market, which circumstances that gave rise to such market, and what happened to fostering in Stockholm when foster care was regulated in 1890–1925. Generation, gender and class are key concepts for this analysis. The study deals with approximately 400 children and 800 potential foster homes that were in contact with the Out-placement Bureau in Stockholm, run by the city’s Poor Relief Committee. Sources from the bureau is combined with material from Stockholm’s historical database. The thesis addresses questions on how and why children became foster children, what motivated people to be foster parents, how foster parents were selected and how the foster stay turned out from the child’s perspective. The placement of children could be done in various ways at this time in history. Previous research has mainly focused on state and philanthropic institutions which arranged formal foster homes. Individual persons who arranged informal foster homes for their children, have been less visible. It is concluded from this study that many children already lived in foster homes when the poor relief authorities got involved. It is argued that informal fostering was a form of child care used by single working class mothers. A reciprocal system, where children were placed within their mothers’ social network, was common. The Poor Relief was used to uphold this reciprocal system. This system limited the supply of children in need for fostering with strangers. At the same time there was a great demand for non-familiar foster children amongst potential foster parents outside Stockholm. Economic and demographic factors as well as norms, values and morals constituted and regulated the foster child market.