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The essay examines the expression ”bildung” (”bildning” in Swedish) in relation to book circles. The essay argues that the definition of bildung is not constant. The essay puts the expression in different historical contexts. With empirical evidence, the meaning of the expression can be investigated. A survey has been conducted in the form of four qualitative interviews. The public libraries' goal of promoting interest in bildung can be examined by analyzing the reasoning of the informants. The purpose of the essay is to examine the circle participants' perception of literary bildung and the librarians' goals for literary bildung. The purpose is also to compare the librarians' goals with the circle participants' perception of bildung. A model extracted from Judith Langer's theories is used as the analytical method. The results show that literary bildung is something the participants experienced in that the circle helped them understand others and make things more human. It is also argued that the circle provides tools for them to define and redefine themselves and others. They have not experienced to the same extent that the circle helps them find themselves or that it challenges them intellectually.

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Vad är bildning och vem är egentligen bildad var frågorna som inspirerade till denna studie. Bildningsdiskursen har en lång tradition bakom sig vilket inneburit en mångtydighet i begreppets betydelse. Debatterna har gått upp och ner och än idag finns konflikter som sätter prägel på kultur, utbildning och samhällsdebatten. Frågor som uppdagats är vad bildning innebär och till vilken samhällsnytta den har i en modern tid. Den digitaliserade närvaron med dess makt i meningsproduktion ligger till grund för att undersöka hur bildningsdiskursen ser ut i media. Syftet med studien var att identifiera bildningsdiskursen i två av Sveriges största dagstidningar vilket resulterade i att 17st artiklar ur Aftonbladet och DN valdes ut. Artiklarna har analyserats med hjälp av Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys där diskursordning, makt, hegemoni och identitet varit studiens teoretiska utgångspunkter. Resultatet visar att bildning således är en kulturell diskurs, en klassdiskurs, en politisk diskurs och en identitetsdiskurs.

In the autumn of 1886 the editor in chief of the Swedish social democratic newspaper Social-Demokraten August Palm resigns and Hjalmar Branting takes over as editor in chief. This will lead toa shift how the newspaper writes about culture and general education (bildning in Swedish, after theGerman term Bildung which lacks an English equivalent). August Palm’s resignation and the shift inthe content of the newspaper is in many ways the culmination of an internal struggle within the earlysocial democratic labour movement where one side claims that culture and general education shouldbe made available to all, including workers, and that doing so will lead to the eventual transformationof society. The other side claims that the working class should indeed be granted access to culture andgeneral education, but first an economic transformation must occur. The dispute is over causality, thetwo sides in the conflict have different opinions as to whether the economic transformation of societywill happen before or after culture and general education is made available to the working masses. Inthis study I have shown how these two positions were not as clearly defined or as clearly opposed toeach other as they have sometimes been portrayed in earlier research. As I have shown, there was infact agreement on the basic goal that culture and general education ought to be something thateveryone can enjoy despite there being differing opinions as to how society might get there.

Denna uppsats handlar om folkbildningens särart, vad som gör folkbildning unik, vad som definierar folkbildning som begrepp och koncept. Syftet med studien är att söka efter variation kring vad folkbildning kan uppfattas vara, att göra explicit en annars tyst och oreflekterad kunskap. Uppfattningar hos verksamhetsledare på regional nivå inom studieförbunden i ett regionalt avgränsat område låg som fokus för studien. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna har hämtats från en tolkningstradition och undersökningen har en fenomenografisk ansats. Studien har genomförts genom en kvalitativ intervjustudie av semistrukturerad karaktär. Analysresultaten har genererat fyra kategorier, identitet, form, resultat och process som begreppsnivåer för folkbildningens innebörd. Slutsatsen är att folkbildning delvis definieras av personer utifrån ideologisk bakgrund, utifrån aktuell kontext genom uttryck knutna till analysens fyra kategorier.

Föreliggande studie har som syfte att studera hur rektorer i sin roll som pedagogiska ledare resonerar och förstår skolans syfte och mål med utgångspunkt i kunskap, bildning och demokrati. Studiens grundläggande antaganden vilar i Habermas system- och livsvärlds-perspektiv som menar att samhället bör förstås utifrån ett dubbelt perspektiv: system vilken är kontext för målorienterat handlande och livsvärlden vilken är kontext för kommunikativt handlande. Studien är en intervjustudie där fem rektorer från fyra olika grundskolor deltagit. Resultatet visar att rektorerna efterfråga en skola som präglas av en livsvärlds kontext där förståelseorienterade och kommunikativa handlingar står i centrum. De ger uttryck för att skolan bör utvecklas till att mer formas utifrån en upplevelse och erfarenhetsbaserad under-visning och inte en undervisning som formas utifrån läroböcker och en på förhand given kunskap. Studiens resultat påvisar dock att skola och utbildning idag formas och styrs inom systemperspektivets sfär där mål- och framgångsorienterade handlingar står i centrum. Det visas tydligt i resultatet att systemet koloniserar livsvärlden inom skola och utbildning.

The aim of this Master´s thesis is to examine the debate in Swedish library press concerning outsourcing of public libraries. The two magazines studied are BBL (Biblioteksbladet) and bis (bibliotek i samhälle). The period of time covered by the selected articles is 2005 to 2011. Although there are still quite few cases of tendering arrangements in Sweden, the question has been raised in the last years by the decision of the Municipality of Nacka (Stockholm) to outsource their public libraries. Another important factor for bringing the question into focus has been the general elections of 2006, which brought an alliance of right-wing parties to power.      In this thesis the arguments of the participants are documented and analyzed. The premises of the arguments are also analyzed. The premises are equivalent to the ambiguous and mutually connected concepts of democracy, culture, freedom and power. The results show that the debate is determined by what I call “the conventional concept of public libraries”. According to this concept, the role of a public library is to promote democracy. Democracy, then, is defined in a social liberal way. It is this view of the role of public libraries that is being defended by the opponents of tendering arrangements. Even the arguments of the advocates of outsourcing must be understood in light of  liberal democratic tradition. However, the advocates represent the neoliberal view of democracy, which makes them define the concepts of freedom and power in a different way compared to their antagonists. Inspired by the theory of meaning proposed by Michael Dummett, I show that there are strong reasons for stating that the debate is won by the opponents of outsourcing. The word “public library” can only be used for a very specific kind of institution, provided that it is still meaningful. Furthermore, using the theory of power elaborated by the North American political and social theorist Steven Lukes, I also show that the arguments of the participants in the debate essentially are to be understood in light of the power that the participants claim is being exercised over the users by the two opposite ways of managing public libraries. Last of all, the debate can be seen as an expression of a secular liberal democratic discussion concerning the relation between the state, the market and the civil society.

This essay examines ideas about knowledge and cultivation (a word used in Sweden to describe integration of knowledge in personality and judgement) in two socialist periodicals during the 1980’s and early 90’s. KRUT, translated Critical Education Review, was founded in 1977. Inspired by John Dewey’s educational philosophy they argued that activity is the key for pupils’ learning. Four years later Äpplet, in Sweden meaning “the apple”, entered the debate estimating school to go back to basics: to let teachers teach and pupils listen.     My theoretical and methodological framework is discourse analysis. Language is viewed as an ever-changing structure where presence is determined by absence. Knowledge is certain, as Äpplet argue, in contrary to relative, as KRUT argue. These opposite perspectives follow historical patterns that can be used as support for different interpretations of socialism. Äpplet’s writers describe knowledge in what you may call a traditional manner, as a quantity alone, meaning the politicians’ task is to spread it to the working class, no differently from how they have always done to the upper classes.    But this notion of knowledge is at the time challenged by the increasingly accepted understanding of it as personal. KRUT followed a socialist movement that in educational reforms saw an opening towards an equal society. Their writers accordingly criticized the idea of objectivity to reproduce the bourgeois’ interests and world view. But absolute relativism combined with pragmatics lead to the paradox that knowledge is solely subjective and still is something (subjective). Writers in Äpplet and other socialists have accused the idea of relativity to be contra productive as it only diminishes the socialist cause.     As knowledge is viewed exclusively as a means in KRUT, there are no apparent differences between their definitions of knowledge and cultivation. The same inconsistency appears in Äpplet, but turned on its head, where knowledge and cultivation are both discussed as properties, which implicates that some are cultivated, whilst others are not. That these statements are only meaningful as antitheses mean they equaled each other out rather than challenging the political educational system. The debate arose in an environment where knowledge was politically marked as a question for macro-economics. It has been since.

<p>Högskolepedagogik, högskolepedagogisk utbildning, BHU</p>