The following study examines the construction of political identities in the cinematic adaptations of Suzanne Collins "The Hunger Games". This is done through the lense of a post-structuralist, discourse-oriented, theoretical framework. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe's and Ernesto Laclau's concept of hegemony as well as Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality (amongst others), I used the series main protagonist - Katniss Everdeen - as the focal point of my analysis. Situated in the intersection between class, gender and race, she is a pivotal subject in the hegemonic struggle of the films, having been labelled as a feminist icon. My aims were as follows: Firstly, I wished to establish the hegemonic structures of The Hunger Games. Secondly, I interpreted in what ways Katniss Everdeen related to these, and lastly, I sought to connect my findings to central concepts of school democracy - as I am to become an upper secondary teacher in social studies.       The analysis leaves one ambiguous as to whether Katniss is to be seen as a subversive or conformist figure. If we look at the narrative where she acts as the unifying "Mockingjay" in the struggle against "The Capitol", several subversive acts can be found - especially concerning class. However - the parallell narrative of the love-triangle, the one between Katniss, Peeta and Gale, distorts the picture. The revolutionary subversiveness of Gale is contrasted with the democratic conformity of Peeta. In the end, Katniss chooses the latter. This is to be seen against the horizon that most characters in disadvantaged positions die in their hegemonic resistance. Democracy is thus construed as the safe option, whereas heteronormativity and racism remain largely unchallenged. Regarding the reality of pupils - Katniss can be used to illustrate the limits and possibilities of the intersectional experience, and more so, to demonstrate the precariousness of diverging from the norm.

The main objective in this study is to examine the pupil’s possibility to affect the upper secondary schools in Stockholm, Sweden. I was once active in the pupil’s council and experienced some hardships, feeling a great dissatisfaction among teachers and principals against pupil’s suggestions and chances to affect their school environment. Thus I wanted to do a contemporary study of where schools in Stockholm stand today within this issue. This study is based on Robert A. Dahl’s theory about democracy, from which I have created my theoretical template, I interpreted Dahl’s theory and formed my own seven institutions from his original theory. With this construction I developed survey questions, which were designed to measure school democracy. I used a qualitative survey method, where I interviewed pupils who are active in the pupil’s council in five different schools today, one of the respondents is a civil servant for the Swedish pupils council centralorganization (Seco). Based on my interviews I have analyzed whether the contemporary upper secondary schools is or is not democratic. My conclusion, I see a wide variety of democratic institutions in Stockholm today, but when comparing the schools today with schools just six years ago, I can trace down huge differences. The pupil’s have learned to organize in a wider manner than six years ago, moreover the main problem doesn’t seem to be a lack of opportunities to influence the school today, the general attitude against the pupil’s council seem to have changed considerably amongst principals and teachers for the better. The main problem for the schools to actually be democratic in a wide manner seems to lie on the pupil’s, if pupil’s showed more interest the schools would be more democratic. Because schools today strive to be as democratic as possible and with organizations like Seco the pupil’s council will be democratic as well, the schools in the Swedish (Stockholm) contemporary society today is according to my study democratic.

The general question in this dissertation is whether the democracy of schools is carried out in a gender equal manner in Sweden’s gender segregated upper secondary school. Students’ experiences of school democracy are measured using the dimensions of influence, discussion and legal rights. Three different explanatory factors are considered: the significance of gender, gender context and the character of the school programmes for these experiences. The study is based on student responses to a poll conducted in the top form classes of Kronoberg County’s upper secondary schools during the school year 2008/2009. The results of a series of regression analyses show that neither gender, gender context or programme character alone had an affect on experiences of school democracy. However, the more males present in a teaching environment, the poorer the experiences of influence and discussion are when all of the three explanatory factors are controlled for. In addition, the school programmes having male-coded character content particularly stand out favourably regarding school democracy. The number of males is usually high in such programmes and therefore the negative effects of male representation cancel out the positive effects of programme affiliation unless an explicit division is made of both of these aspects. Thus, keeping gender context and programme character separate is very important with studies of school democracy, since significant effects otherwise remain hidden. The study demonstrates that school democracy is important for students. Those students who have good experiences of school democracy perceive the school environment as significantly better than those who have poor experiences of school democracy. Concerning secondary effects, it appears that experiences of school democracy have different implications for learning among female and male students. There is a negative relationship between male experiences of influence and their grades in Swedish and Maths, while female experiences of discussion seem to show a positive covariance with grades. There is no relationship found in the data between students’ daily experiences of school democracy and their thoughts on voting in the upcoming parliamentary election.