Våld i när relationer debatteras flitigt i det offentliga rummet. Fokus ligger till största delen på mäns våld mot kvinnor. Män som brottsoffer i samband med våld i nära relationer förekommer endast sporadiskt i forskningsvärlden, och tillskrivs knappt legitim status som brottsoffer i samhället. Till följd av detta är det svårt att uppskatta i vilken omfattning män utsätts för våld. Syftet med den kritiska diskursanalysen var att belysa den normativa ordning som består av en bild av mannen som förövare och kvinnan som offer, samt att analysera hur diskurserna manlighet, kvinnlighet, offer och förövare används i ett konferensmaterial kring våld i nära relationer. Analysen visar att diskurserna utrycks på ett mycket traditionellt sätt och de traditionella könsrollerna förstärks i materialet, samt att män enbart förknippas med offerrollen om de befinner sig i en samkönad relation eller lider av en funktionsnedsättning. Detta kan bero på att befintliga ideologier som radikalfeminismens syn på patriarkatet, liksom föreställningen om offer och förövare, har en maktfunktion och är så förankrad i den diskursiva praktiken att det är svårt att få till en förändring av diskursordningen. / Violence within domestic relationships is much debated in the official space. Focus is mainly on men’s violence against women. Men as crime victims related to domestic violence are only sporadically mentioned in the research world and are hardly given legitimate status as crime victims within society. Due to this, it is difficult to appreciate to what extent men are exposed to violence. The objective of the critical discourse analysis was to highlight the norm that consists of a picture of the man as  perpetrator and the woman as victim and in addition to analyse how the discourses male, female, victim and perpetrator are used in a conference material regarding domestic violence. The analysis show that the discourses are expressed in a very traditional way and the traditional male/female roles are emphasized in the material. Additionally, it shows that men are only connected with the role of victim if they are in a same sex relationship or have special needs. This can be due to that existing ideologies, such as the radical feministic view of the patriarchy as well as the idea of victim and perpetrator, have a function of power and are so embedded in the discursive practice that it is difficult to change the discursive order.

Memory and nostalgia work in complex, paradoxical ways in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road, both haunting the main protagonists, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and the father, as well as bringing them to crucial realizations. These men give up the traditional hero role for the more meaningful and generative image of “carrying the fire,” which unites these two novels. Carrying the fire represents a memorial and nostalgic longing for home and family. Bell and the father attain this vision because of their obsession with the past, and because of their struggle with memory and nostalgia. Memory, for these characters, has both personal and collective dimensions. Nostalgia, likewise, has a dual function, following Svetlana Boym's definition of nostalgics as being capable of restorative and reflective longing for the past. Family, or Paul Ricœur’s theory of close relations, bridges the gap between the conflicts of memory and nostalgia, acting as the means by which they understand this vision of carrying the fire while also embodying it. Additionally, the duality of both memory and nostalgia drive Bell and the father to seek for a prophetic vision, for stability in the past to deal with the threats in the present, which appears in the narrative structures of each novel.

Single activities have long been places where single people can come to meet friends, build community or look for partners. The activities have relevance for studies of heterosexuality, intimacy, personal life and space. This dissertation discusses a conference, a cruise, an online site and an association for heterosexual singles in contemporary Sweden. It shows how these activities, analysed as organising people and spaces, offer participants different versions of intimacy, relationships, personal life and ultimately singledom itself.  The concept non-relationality is coined to describe how people understand and enact what it means to lack a certain kind of relationship. Multi-sited ethnographic observations are combined with interviews and a survey (n=416). The chosen methods allow insight into both the heterogeneous character of the contemporary single activity scene, as well as existing tendencies to form communities. The group whose single activities are examined is deemed fairly typical of the single population at large. Nevertheless, most conclusions centre on the specific set of activities described in the book and relate them to historical examples and theory. The single activities examined can be interpreted to enact different practices entailed in a relationship without necessarily demanding commitment to a whole relationship or a specific person. In that way, the activities accommodate the inflexible personal lives that some singles report having. This challenges strict boundaries between coupledom and singledom. Such transgressive or “hetero-doxical” potential in single activities is nevertheless circumscribed by organisers’ notion that the activities provide therapeutic community in a phase before singles take the step (back) into coupledom.