During spring 2012, an elementary and middle school, Östermalmsskolan, located in Stockholm, was accused of having religious elements intertwined in the existing school education. The school had during the spring term of 2012 started a collaboration with a company named Skolyoga. The purpose of this collaboration was that an educated yoga teacher practiced yoga with the students. The yoga practice was motivated as a way for the children to become relaxed and train their focus. The yoga practices were in the eyes of Östermalmsskolan, along with the yoga-teacher and the company Skolyoga, not religious. However, the one who reported Östermalmsskolan to the Swedish school inspection claimed that the yoga practices indeed were of religious nature. The report on Östermalmsskolan, was a very debated dispute in media during 2012 and the discourse displayed the two counterparties’ arguments in articles as well as in TV. The discourse in these media source also offered the reader two different adaptations off yoga: one religious and one non-religious. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the discourse in chosen media material from 2012 that described the dispute and report on Östermalmsskolan and the Skolyoga company, with the aim to show what kind of arguments were presented regarding this specific yoga practice as a religious or nonreligious. This essay also seeks to display how these arguments regarding Skolyoga as religious or non-religious relate to Ninian Smarts seven dimensions of religion. The results show that by relating the argumentations shown in the media discourse, regarding Skolyoga as religious or non-religious, to Smarts religious theory, several different adaptations of yoga are to be found. The result of the analysis is that the practice of yoga by Skolyoga at Östermalmsskolan 2012, which was described in the discourse, was non-denominational. The result also shows that the perception of yoga as religious, which is too found in the discourse, is made with a valid point. Yoga is a word and practice that can be full of religious aspects and training, but it can also be stripped of its religious aspects completely. The dispute regarding Skolyoga at Östermalmsskolan 2012 is in large a matter of opinion on what one estimates as religious or non-religious.

This thesis aims to examine which views of the human being that are manifested in the Swedish and Dutch legislation on prostitution. The theoretical framework consists of the humanist, the christian and the naturalistic views of the human being in combination with the concepts of autonomy and human dignity. The question is which views of the human being are manifested in the Swedish and Dutch legislation on prostitution? According to this thesis all three views of the human being can be traced in the legislations. The humanist view of the human being is most clearly manifested, in both the Swedish and Dutch legislation on prostitution, however their views are from different angles. Whereas the view of the Swedish legislation is that the autonomy and human dignity of the seller is violated in prostitution, the Dutch legislation on the other hand sees autonomy as the seller’s right to choose prostitution. In Dutch legislation both seller and buyer are seen as autonomous beings with ability to reason, and prostitution is seen as a trade transaction. In Swedish legislation the seller is seen as vulnerable and exposed and the buyer is seen as a criminal, and both seller and buyer are in need of change and help, in different ways.

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Religious traditions are something that all of us have learnt about in school, even if we do not have a personal connection to a specific religion. Studies have shown that there is a discrepancy between what we learn about religious traditions and religiosity in school, and how religious people practice their faith in everyday life. How the religious tradition plays a part of an individual’s identity is not something that school textbooks specifically explains. For example, the course material does not mention how geographical context affects a person’s religiosity, even though the course curriculum, that is being studied in this thesis clearly states that you have to give examples of how different aspects of someone’s identity affect their religious identity.    This thesis discusses how Lived Religion can be included in course material as well as in the teaching of religious education in school in order to give a more accurate and more democratic picture of religiosity. Lived religion is a perspective that capture how individuals express their religious tradition and how religiosity could look like in different contexts. To use Lived religion as a complement in education could also help the pupils to achieve what the objectives in the curriculum asks for. Nevertheless, even if Lived religion is a helpful compliment to the traditional way of teaching the topic of religion, this thesis also shows that is it important to be aware of how this new perspective is used. If the perspective of Lived religion is not used correctly in classroom or how you explain someone’s religious identity, it could have greater negative consequences than its positive gain.   The title of this thesis aims to points towards how Lived religion can communicate a more complete picture of what religiosity is. The thesis argues that it is problematic to omit e.g. religious tradition or geographical context from an individual’s identity. That is also one of the main points of Lived religion, which is that religious identity is the religion lived out in the day-to-day life.

This thesis is a study within the international master program “Religion in Peace and Conflict” at the department of theology at Uppsala University. The study should be seen as a microstudy over the role gastronomy plays as a tool for peace and resistance in the Holy Land. Jerusalem represent Israel and Tabye and Bethlehem represent Palestine in the study. The method used is the so-called abductive method or reasoning, where I am the one who is observing and analysing data from an ethnographical standpoint. The study is interdisciplinary in the way that cookbooks, interviews, personal observations and photographs are used as primary sources.  The theory “The gastronomic man” are the theoretical framework. The theory deals with the factors that are of importance for the choices humans make when it comes to food and beverage. The results of the study indicates that gastronomy is present at least on two levels in society in the Holy Land, on a high political level manifested via diplomatic gastronomy and on a more personal level where the informants works with gastronomy both as a tool for peace, and for the Palestinians also a way to overcome the effects of the occupation. The results also indicates that education within the culinary arts are of great importance in order to understand other groups’ cuisines than one’s own. The cuisines that falls back on heritage, culture and nations. It is suggested that gastronomy can take the part of religion itself for its practitioners since themselves constructs what is sacred.

The discussion about Husserl's intersubjectivity theory is well established, the discussion about the same from Heidegger is not as extensive. Above all, there is little discussion about Heidegger as a critic of Husserl's intersubjectivity theory. Thus, the present paper describes Husserl's and Heidegger’s intersubjectivity theories in order to be able to account for Heidegger's criticism of Husserl's theory. The paper shows that Husserl bases his theory on empathy, while Heidegger bases it on the care of the equipment world, the They, everyday existence and the public. Heidegger criticizes Husserl for assuming the subject with an inner authentic core on which social and cultural life is incorporated. According to Heidegger, the most primary condition for humans is that we live in a shared world with other people.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att igenom det resultat som kommit fram efter sex individuella intervjuer med tre kristna och tre icke-kristna som förlorat sin tro få fram om kristendomen besitter patriarkala strukturer. Syftet är också att ta reda på att om kristendomen i sådana fall gör det, vad det då kan finnas för underliggande anledning(ar) till att kvinnor söker sig till religion och män söker sig ifrån religion som den tidigare forskningen visar. Intervjuerna berör ämnen såsom patriarkat, patriarkala strukturer, intervjuobjektens egna syn på kristendomen och huruvida det finns en koppling mellan kristendomen och patriarkala strukturer. Intervjuobjekten får även svara med sina egna teorier till varför kvinnor söker sig till religion och män gör tvärtom. Den metod som använts för denna uppsats är att de intervjuobjekt som deltagit har haft den erfarenhet som krävts för att kunna delta, dvs att antingen ha en kristen tro eller att ha tappat en kristen tro. Resultatet av denna uppsats är mångfaldig och eftersom denna uppsats är småskalig har det ej kunnat uteslutits att ett annat och/eller ett mer konkret resultat kunnat varit möjligt om den varit bredare eller med fler intervjuobjekt. Slutsatsen blir därför att utifrån de intervjuade, tidigare forskning och nuvarande relevant media finns det tecken på att kristendomen, likt samhället i stort, fortfarande har patriarkala strukturer.

The aim of the following study is to examine the portrayal of Islam in Swedish textbooks for upper secondary education, as well as to compare how the textbooks present Islam with how they present Christianity. The textbooks used in this study have been examined using a qualitative content analysis. The result of the study suggests that the textbooks’ presentation of Islam has, based on previous research on the same subject, become better, although it is still not completely unproblematic. Even though modern textbooks try – and are relatively successful – to avoid stereotypical and over-generalised portrayals of Islam and Muslims, descriptions and formulations that are highly charged are still present. The study also shows that the textbooks rarely examine Islam through the lens of source criticism. In their respective chapters on Christianity, the textbooks examine Christianity using source criticism. This, however, does not occur in the chapters on Islam. / Syftet med följande studie är att undersöka presentationen av islam i svenska läroböcker avsedda för gymnasieutbildning, samt att jämföra hur läroböckerna presenterar islam med hur de presenterar kristendom. Läromedlen som använts i denna studie har undersökts utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet av undersökningen tyder på att läromedlens presentation av islam har, utifrån tidigare forskning av samma ämne, blivit bättre. Trots detta är det fortfarande inte helt oproblematiskt. Även om moderna läroböcker försöker – och gör det relativt bra – att undvika stereotypa och övergeneraliserande framställningar av islam och muslimer förekommer ändå beskrivningar och formuleringar som är ytterst värdeladdade. Undersökningen visar även att läromedlen sällan granskar islam källkritiskt. I sina respektive kapitel om kristendom granskar läroböckerna kristendomen källkritiskt. Detta förekommer emellertid inte i kapitlen om islam.

In this thesis, I scrutinise and interpret Jürgen Habermas’s claim that justification of moral norms necessitates cognitivism. I do this by analysing the general idea behind his discourse theory of morality and then his metaethics. From there, I examine the non-cognitivist theory called prescriptivism as set out by Richard Hare to see if his account of moral reasoning is able to counter Habermas’s claims and thereafter, I examine some criticism against his concept of communicative action. I also engage with the discussion on how to define cognitivism: that is, whether the line should be drawn between moral realism on the cognitivist side, and constructivism on the other, or if cognitivism can include constructivist theories too. I propose that it should, provided that it allows moral statements to be truth-apt and express a mental state like that of belief. Following this definition, I argue that Habermas can be labelled a cognitivist and finally, I conclude that Habermas's argument does not hold under scrutiny.