Asymmetric Conflicts from 1989 - 2001 in quantitative analysis Abstract Following paper discuses two significant concepts in the area of asymmetric warfare. Both are dealing with the phenomenon of weak actors winning in armed conflicts. Ivan Arreguín-Toft is discussing the role of strategic asymmetry and concludes that the strategy actors choose is directly influencing the result of the conflict. Andrew Mack is dealing with the interest asymmetry, saying that strong actors tend to lose because their interest to win is usually weaker than that of their small opponents. In the same time strong actors are politically more vulnerable based on the level of democracy. Both theories are tested by quantitative analysis of all asymmetric conflicts that took place between 1989 and 2000. Values related to strategies, results, strength of the actors, interest and level of democracy are assigned to all conflicts based on information provided in conflict and other databases.

This project is based on the studies we made of Eskilstuna's countryside. Engines and mechanics are a recurring interest among the population in Eskilstuna. At the same time, petrol prices are becoming more expensive and the transition to electric power is starting to pick up speed, which is positive in many ways. Working with machines and vehicles is a part of the culture in the countryside. Today, however, this phenomenon is not seen as frequently as before. This is partly because today's cars and tools look different. Frankly, today's mechanics look different and use completely different tools. You do not need forearms that look like logs, or a plethora of different keys and tools, nor do you need to have that extreme habit of mechanics. Today it is also about computer skills and being technically savvy. We have an extremely high level of technology in our things. Computerisation has struck with full force. For better or worse. Our things have become safer and friendlier to our surroundings, but also more complicated. About a 15-minute drive west of Eskilstuna along road 230 is what in the 1960s was a farmhouse but which has been transformed into what today looks like a dump site for  scrap. A group of innovative car enthusiasts from Eskilstuna's countryside see here an opportunity to create a modern workshop to be able to build, repair and maintain electric cars and tools. At the same time, the building also contributes with premises that will support the local population in their everyday lives. The idea is that the building will function as an accelerator to handle the challenges that the transition to electric power entails with a focus on re-use and community, which will also be reflected in the building's simple but flexible structure. / Det här projektet är baserat på de analyser vi gjort av Eskilstunas landsbygd. Motorer och mekanik är ett återkommande intresse bland befolkningen i Eskilstuna. Samtidigt blir bensinpriserna dyrare och övergången till eldrivet börjar ta fart vilket på många sätt är positivt. Att meka med maskiner och fordon är en del av kulturen på landsbygden. Idag så ser man dock inte detta fenomen lika frekvent som förr. Det handlar dels om att dagens bilar och verktyg ser annorlunda ut. Vill man hårdra det så ser dagens mekaniker annorlunda ut och använder sig av helt andra verktyg. Det behövs inte underarmar som ser ut som stockar, eller en uppsjö av olika nycklar och verktyg och man behöver heller inte ha den där extrema vanan av mekanik. Idag handlar det också om datavana och att vara tekniskt insatt. Vi har extremt mycket teknik i våra saker.  Datoriseringen har slagit med full kraft. På gott och ont. Våra saker har blivit säkrare och vänligare mot vår omgivning, men även mer komplicerade. Ungefär 15 minuters bilresa väster om Eskilstuna längs med väg 230 ligger vad som på 60-talet var en bondgård men som förvandlats till vad som idag liknar en dump-plats för gammalt skrot.   En grupp nytänkande bil-entusiaster från Eskilstunas landsbygd ser här en möjlighet till att skapa en modern verkstad för att kunna bygga, reparera och underhålla elektriska bilar och verktyg. Samtidigt bidrar också byggnaden med lokaler som ska stödja lokalbefolkningen i sin vardag.   Tanken är att byggnaden ska fungera som en accelerator för att hantera dem utmaningar som övergången till el-drivet för med sig med fokus på återbruk och gemenskap vilket också ska speglas i byggnadens simpla men flexibla struktur.

This thesis addresses critical conceptions of Scottish literary development in the twentieth-century which inscribe realism as both the authenticating tradition and necessary telos of modern Scottish writing. To this end I identify and explore a Scottish ‘counter-tradition’ of modern uncanny fiction. Drawing critical attention to techniques of modal disruption in the works of a number of post-1970s Scottish writers gives cause to reconsider that realist teleology while positing a range of other continuities and tensions across modern Scottish literary history. The thesis initially defines the critical context for the project, considering how realism has come to be regarded as a medium of national literary representation. I go on to explore techniques of modal disruption and uncanny in texts by five Scottish writers, contesting ways in which habitual recourse to the realist tradition has obscured important aspects of their work. Chapter One investigates Ali Smith’s reimagining of ‘the uncanny guest’. While this trope has been employed by earlier Scottish writers, Smith redesigns it as part of a wider interrogation of the hyperreal twenty-first-century. Chapter Two considers two texts by James Robertson, each of which, I argue, invokes uncanny techniques familiar to readers of James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson in a way intended specifically to suggest concepts of national continuity and literary inheritance. Chapter Three argues that James Kelman’s political stance necessitates modal disruption as a means of relating intimate individual experience. Re-envisaging Kelman as a writer of the uncanny makes his central assimilation into the teleology of Scottish realism untenable, complicating the way his work has been positioned in the Scottish canon. Chapter Four analyses A.L. Kennedy’s So I Am Glad, delineating a similarity in the processes of repetition which result in both uncanny effects and the phenomenon of tradition, leading to Kennedy’s identification of an uncanny dimension in the concept of national tradition itself. Chapter Five considers the work of Alan Warner, in which the uncanny appears as an unsettling sense of significance embedded within the banal everyday, reflecting an existentialism which reaches beyond the national. In this way, I argue that habitual recourse to an inscribed realist tradition tends to obscure the range, complexity and instability of the realist techniques employed by the writers at issue, demonstrating how national continuities can be productively accommodated within wider, pluralistic analytical approaches.