The right kind of democracy – an ideology analysis of school literatures description of the term democracy. Writers: Fredrik Hedlund & Mattias Ahlqvist Democracy is today a word and a concept that in many ways is taken for granted and almost never is reflected on. The concept democracy is also considered as an essential issue in the swedish school system, both regarding the way the education should be managed and also as a part of the students democratic schooling – all according to the comprehensive document Läroplanen för de frivilliga skolformerna (Lpf94). The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how swedish literature in political and social science talks about and looks upon democracy – what do the books say it means? The materials we have chosen for this report are the books Zigma and Forum. As metod we are using a textual ideology analysis in which we have created three dimensions – meaning/associations, criticism of democracy, and demos/citizenship. The dimensions are designed to fit our critical point of wiew regarding how democracy is looked upon in school literature today. Our results have shown that both books gives the same meaning and significance to the word, that no one of the books lifts forth any serious criticism of democracy and that no one of the books is trying to discuss nor question the word demos/citizenship. Key words: democracy, criticism, demos/citizenship, rights and obligations.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a comparative study of Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka¡¦s theories on citizenship. By comparing their different perspectives on conception of person and political equality, I demonstrate that due to their differing views on the significance of culture, they, as a result, have divergent theories of citizenship. Looking from a liberal multiculturalist perspective, Kymlicka defends the centrality of personal autonomy and sees cultures as important references that allow persons to choose their respective ideal ways of life. Walzer, on the other hand, faults liberalism for its hyper-individualist assumptions and misunderstanding of the significance of culture to human agency. Walzer insists that culture is not a resource/object for humans to appropriate but a constitutive part of human self-understanding that cannot be disregarded in human actions. These two distinct ideals of citizenship, I maintain, can therefore be seen as a continuation of the liberal-communitarian debate in the 1980s.

This thesis is to study the relationship among transformational leadership, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior within team levels and cross-levels. The analysis demonstrated in this thesis is based on 305 questionnaires collected from 63 leaders and 242 questionnaires from team members. The conclusions are listed as following. 1. The relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment (1) Transformational leadership positively impacts organizational commitment. (2) If the team members feel the inspiration from leaders, it will positively impact team members¡¦ value commitment; if they feel leaders¡¦ Idealized Influence, they will be positively impacted in retention commitment. (3) Transformational leadership is not the key factor of influencing team members¡¦ organizational commitment. 2. The relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (1) If the leaders enhance their transformational leadership, it will be helpful of strengthening team members¡¦ OCB in the aspects of identification with the company, interpersonal harmony, civic virtue, conscientiousness and altruism. (2) In cross level, transformational leadership does effect the correlation to interpersonal harmony.

Abstract Carlsson, Lena (2006). ). Medborgarskap som demokratins praktiska uttryck i skolan. Diskursiva konstruktioner av gymnasieelever som medborgare. Citizenship as the practical expression of democracy at school. Discursive constructions of upper secondary pupils as citizens. School and education have a specific status owing to their task to educate young citizens and further their development. It is thus possible to regard schools as a type of public sphere, where individual and private matters are transcended. According to the curriculum for the secondary school system, the professional school staff´s task is two-fold insofar as they should mediate both knowledge and democracy. In this doctoral thesis the focus is placed on how and by what means education can contribute to young members of society finding their place and coping with their roles as citizens in a democratic society. The overall aim of this thesis is to present a deeper interpretation of the meanings and consequences of teachers´ speech concerning upper secondary pupils as citizens. More specifically, the aim is to empirically problematise and theoretically reconstruct pedagogical discourses on citizenship as practical expressions of demoracy in the context of education. Two central terms, which are thus highlighted are democracy and citizenship. Both Durkheim and Dewey provide significant theoretical points of departure, which are drawn upon in this thesis. Bourdieu contributes with perspectives on the ideological role, which institutions of education play in legitimising already existing societal orders. Foucault poses questions about power and knowledge. Habermas’ emphasis is placed on the discursive rationality expressed in verbal communication, which serves as an overall perspective for this thesis. Thus, in terms of methodology language constitutes the most central tool. Analyses are made in three stages. Reforms and policy are supposed to have been created within a central discursive framework and are therefore examined by way of analytical perusal of a) post-war education policy texts and b) current national policy documents concerning the Business and Administration Programme in upper secondary education. The third stage involves analysis of c) eight conversations from the professional school staff’s discursive practice by applying critical discourse analysis as a methodological tool. Four separate discourses have evolved, each pointing to different perspectives on human beings, knowledge and society: a discursive perception which is directed towards traditional values, a second perception which has communication and democracy as its superior ideal, and yet another discourse is directed towards trade and industry while, finally, one more discourse which is mainly characterised by a protective attitude towards pupils. Finally, how these contradictory as well as concordant discourses dictate the conditions and frameworks for the sort of citizenship which is constructed and constituted in the pedagogical practice is discussed, and thus how school as a public sphere may be understood in a more profound way. Key words: democracy, citizenship, critical discourse analysis, discursive constructions, reforms, policy, communication.

This paper addresses the expectation that immigrants will assimilate into the culture of their new country, why that expectation may be legitimate and how the modern state may act upon it. The central contention made is that because a national culture provides meaning and structure to the lives of members, and because that culture must be both traditional and institutionalized by the state to fulfill that purpose, if the state’s institutions, processes and procedures through their association with the national culture create an assimilative pressure on immigrants, this is morally permissible. However, the modern state is restricted from actively pursuing assimilation in the private sphere because of its commitment to individual liberty. Implications of this argument for the nature of citizenship and public policy are also discussed.

In the following C-Level Thesis, the geographically isolated consumer society that has evolved in the developed world is examined through discourse analysis. This research frames the issue of material consumption in a historical context and then interrogates the modern task of sustainability. Through review and analysis of current discourse in the sociopolitical field of sustainable consumption, this paper critically analyzes the development of modern consumer culture. The concept of ecological citizenship is presented and inspected as an effective strategy for the realization of sustainability and is viewed as a unifier of the many conflicting discourses on sustainable consumption. The dominant institutional discourse of ecological modernization is presented through a review of UK policy documents, and the opinions as well as alternative solutions touted by critics is noted. This paper finds that ideal of ecological citizenship has not yet been reached, but positive steps have been taken to achieve the goal of sustainability through curbing consumptive habits. In this presentation of sustainable consumption discourse it is important to recognize that there may be no absolute answer or right way to live on this planet, but rather, many ways which can, together, bring about a sustainable society.

The concept of citizenship was created in Greece about 600 BC, and has for most of the time been treated as a philosophical concept, or as a concept of political science. In spite of the fact that sociologists have taken an interest in the concept in the second half of the 20th century there is hardly any empirical research to substantiate how the common man perceives and defines the concept. Disabled people to a great extent perceive themselves as belonging to a forgotten sector of society in that they experience administrative barriers, shortcomings in the way individuals and institutions behave towards them, institutional discrimination, being socially dead, etc. —The aim of this study has been to explore how citizenship is perceived and defined by disabled people in Great Britain and Sweden, focusing on the perception of rights and obligations, and how these rights and obligations have been made available to them by society. —The study was carried out as a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with disabled people defined as activists in a disability context (in Great Britain 19 informants, in Sweden 21 informants). The study was carried out in cooperation with the Wigforss Institute, Halmstad University, Sweden, and the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds, Great Britain. —The main conclusion of the study it that disabled people are knowledgeable on the concept of citizenship, on rights and responsibilities. They also have a strong sense of wanting to fulfill the responsibilities that are inherent in being a member of society, but that, through the lack of inclusion, institutional discrimination, and the rights that they have been denied, they are also denied the right fullfilling these responsibilities.

<p>From 1852 to 1910 Congress labored to find the right instruments to eliminate polygamy among the Mormons and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggled to retain its claim as the most American of institutions. What these struggles reveal about the shifting role of religion in the developing definition of American citizenship is at the heart of this dissertation. By looking at developing ideas about citizenship in this particular frame, the social and political history of exclusion and inclusion comes into focus and exposes the role religion played in determining who could lay claim to citizenship and who could not, who tried and failed, who succeeded, and why. In the end, the coercive measures of the state and their own desire to join the body politic drove the Saints to unquestionably abandon the practice of polygamy, a central tenet of their faith, so that they could be accepted as American citizens. </p><p>The battle over polygamy and the rights of polygamists was not limited to the floor of the U.S. Congress or the Supreme Court, although those sources are carefully examined here. Debates over polygamy and Mormons' right to be Americans also took place in sermons, novels, newspapers, and popular periodicals. Official actions of the state and popular discourses simultaneously defined citizenship and influenced how Mormons understood their own citizenship. This dissertation is a history of the discourse generated by Mormons and their antagonists, laws passed by Congress, and court cases fought to defend or deny the civil, political and social rights of Latter-day Saints.</p> / Dissertation

On October 21st , 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that immigration officials “can no longer assess potential immigrants to be ‘medically inadmissible’ to Canada solely on the basis of a person’s disability” and their likelihood to make “excessive demands on Canadian social services” (Chadha 2005, 1). In this thesis I will explore this ruling using a methodological approach that engages practices of: self-reflexivity; tracing historical and political genealogies; and case study analysis. What I am interested in thinking about is how this moment gestures to the necessity of conceptualizing the nation, nationalism, and citizenship as highly medicalized terrains. Through an engagement with transnational and black feminist theorizing, anticolonial studies, and disability studies, I will suggest that “medical inadmissibility” is one of many regulatory mechanisms that work to fashion the Canadian nation-state as white, healthy, fit, and productive.

This study explores which concept of citizenship is typically promoted in ESL programs available to adult immigrants in Canada: citizenship as status, citizenship as identity, citizenship as a set of civic virtues or citizenship as agency. Is there a difference between the stated purpose of ESL programs, the integration and active participation of immigrants in Canadian society through language development, and the actual citizenship learning that occurs in these programs? What influences this? The study traces the historical link between citizenship education and ESL in Canada, and draws on existing research to reveal how citizenship concepts are presented in ESL classrooms. These findings are then matched with data from my textbook analysis, classroom observations and student interviews obtained from two advanced ESL courses offered by COSTI, as an indication of the citizenship learning and the citizenship concepts most likely to be promoted in ESL programs for adult immigrants across Canada.