When the women´s suffrage movement began in the last decades of the nineteenth century it was the beginning of the emancipation. In England Jewish women were both active in the suffrage movement – even as suffragettes - and formed the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage. And after World War I, when many European women gained their rights to vote, the English-Jewish women started a Women´s International Zionist Organization; WIZO. In Germany and Czechoslovakia too. But not in Sweden. Why? Jewesses in Stockholm are hard to discover among the Swedish women´s suffrage movement and they waited until the early 1930´s before organizing in a Jewish Women´s club; Judiska Kvinnoklubben (JKK) and a couple of years later in WIZO. My hypothesis is that Jewish women were made invisible in both the suffrage movement and the Jewish community. The subordination of women in Jewish community and their exclusion from religious leadership in congregational life was reflected by the patriarchal structures in Jewish community - as well in Swedish society - and patriarchal theology. It constructed the identity of Jewish women as primarily wives and mothers with the special mitzva of charity, instead of having leadership positions. But the women´s suffrage challenged that. The aim of this study is to analyze in what way Jewish women in Stockholm were involved in the Swedish suffrage movement and what importance it had for their future organizing (1931-1936). To achieve this, I use a method of content analysis with a gender perspective and a theory of social constructionism with an intersectional perspective. The result shows that there is a connection between the two female leader figures (in JKK and WIZO) and the suffrage movement. And by examining the context of how JKK and WIZO were established the analysis shows that Jewish women in Stockholm were inspired by how the suffrage movement was organized, when they began their own Jewish organizing.

Some things do not disappear. Violence is one of them. We are predisposed to think of several forms of violence – especially its collective manifestations – as profoundly destructive activities that ideally should be abolished altogether through laws and rules. However, laws and rules are also often thought to require violence to operate meaningfully. The more destructive the violence one tends to see, the tougher (and more violent) measures one tends to require. What one defines as “violence” is often thought to require some kind of counterforce, which also could be said to constitute “violence”. Indeed, at a deep level, law, order, and violence are often thought to be somehow related, creating a so-called double-bind that informs such important notions as authority and legitimate uses of force. The thesis argues that a contingent but powerful version of this figure of thought, a version which for the purposes of the thesis is named “productive violence”, can be traced back to one of the perhaps most important treatises in political philosophy, namely Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. It is then argued that “productive violence” still resonates with us today, both within academia and politics. In short, “productive violence” has a close relationship to a particular account of law which both takes violence to be foundational and purports to present an antidote to its excesses or otherwise undesirable manifestations. The thesis shows how this figure of thought can be said to be relevant and how it also can be said to be contagious. It does so by illustrating how “productive violence” can be found in various texts by various thinkers. By assembling a collection of texts in more recent political philosophy to trace the development of this figure of thought, the thesis closely reads four thinkers – Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben – whose texts, in both explicit and implicit ways, refer to each other and produce and reproduce this figure of thought. It is then shown how “productive violence” seemingly has had and continues to have a strong hold in contemporary academia and politics. The thesis uses an extreme but illustrative example, namely the political question of military intervention in civil war. By using this example, and by reading studies of international relations, the thesis shows how “productive violence” can be said to have a strong hold on political imagination. Lastly, the thesis suggests that although it is important to not let go of the notion that violence might be important to understand practices of law and politics, future research on violence, especially critical inquiries of political violence, should be aware of how presuppositions of its productive character in relation to order might perpetuate the very predicament that its criticism wants to escape.

This is an exploration of concepts and identities of Sami people in northern Sweden regarding conflicts on mining. The Sami have a history of feeling that others are encroaching on them and ignoring them and their wishes, the latest being the mining companies. There is also the issue of who gets to be considered as Sami and how the Sami identity is characterised. There are different positions among the Sami, some are enthusiastic and some are opposed. The view of the traditional land can be understood as a sacred connection with nature that is not understood by the majority society. Connecting with the land is vital as the link between the generations. Sweden has been ranked as one of the world’s most attractive places for mining investments in recent years and it is seen as one of today’s biggest challenges for the survival of the Sami culture. The majority society’s and the mining industry’s view on sustainability includes opening of mines, to be able to extract minerals to use in wind parks and electric cars where the Sami are seen as standing in the way. A discourse in Sweden is that all of the north is a vast space, with fewer and fewer inhabitants. With many who are moving to the bigger cities in the south, this is also seen as a way to create jobs for a hopeful future in the towns up north. The Sami faces a misunderstanding majority society where their history is not recognised and the strengthening of indigenous peoples’ rights in recent years have only lead to symbolic gestures for the Sami. This thesis has been made through spending time with these groups as well as trying to be a sensitive researcher who will contribute to the interest and understanding of those written about.

It is not uncommon to place universal human rights and Sharia against each other and assumethey are inherently different. However, this essay explores the alignment of Sharia anduniversal human rights, with a focus on Saudi Arabia and Iran which are governed by Sharia.A literature review is utilized when examining the theories and thoughts of scholars AbdullahiAhmed An-Na'im and Asma Barlas. These theories are then placed on the context of Sharia inSaudi Arabia and Iran, and the alignment and misalignment with universal human rights willbe examined.The theoretical framework of the essay is based on universalism and open universalism thathave worked as tools in understanding human rights as a universal foundation. The findingsindicate that the compatibility of Sharia with universal human rights standards is heavilydependent on how Sharia is interpreted. To better extract human rights out of Sharia, areinterpretation of Sharia is necessary. This reinterpretation would allow for the reevaluationof the Qur’anic scriptures that are consistent with the values and demands of the present age.This is not to say that Sharia needs to be bended and chipped away at to fit in with modernhuman rights standards, rather Sharia needs to be reinterpreted as the traditionalinterpretations are heavily influenced by the patriarchal social structures of the seventhcentury.

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This thesis aims to articulate and defend a version of a 'relational moral theory.' Many philosophers have argued that the non-instrumental value of certain relationships, such as friendship and parenthood, can explain at least some of our moral obligations. A relational moral theory extends this thought by arguing that all, or most, of our moral judgements can be explained by the non-instrumental value of one or more interpersonal relationships. The plausibility of such views depend on the possibility of identifying a relationship that all moral agents share a 'moral relationship'. While the idea of such a relationship has featured in ethical writings as early as the Stoics, few attempts have been made to develop a rigorous and precise understanding of this relationship. This thesis therefore aims to articulate and defend a plausible understanding of the moral relationship, and then to use it as a basis for outlining the structure of a genuinely relational moral theory. It will argue that the moral relationship is best understood as a broad and inclusive relationship shared by all who are vulnerable to a distinct kind of 'second-order evil.' It will then argue that the value of this relationship can provide the basis for a relational form of a contractualist moral theory based on the work of T.M. Scanlon. Understanding the nature of the moral relationship, and the role it plays in such theories, will then be seen as a means of unifying, clarifying, and responding to a number of influential objections against such theories, including objections concerning its capacity to accommodate intuitions concerning cases of aggregation and our obligations to future persons.

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