<p>My aim in this essay is to analyze how the female body is represented in Swedish working class literature. I have compared four different novels all of which contain a female bathing scene: the opening chapter of Moa Martinsons Kvinnor och äppelträd (1933) , the opening chapter of Ivar Lo-Johanssons Bara en mor (1939) and a scene each in Glasfåglarna (1996) and Mosippan (1998), both written by Elsie Johansson. The bathing scenes suggest three key issues: modernisation, urbanisation and above all women´s sexual politics. Though there were several issues facing the feminist movement in Sweden in the 1930, the question of a woman’s right to her body was one that united the movement, regardless of class.</p>

My aim in this essay is to analyze how the female body is represented in Swedish working class literature. I have compared four different novels all of which contain a female bathing scene: the opening chapter of Moa Martinsons Kvinnor och äppelträd (1933) , the opening chapter of Ivar Lo-Johanssons Bara en mor (1939) and a scene each in Glasfåglarna (1996) and Mosippan (1998), both written by Elsie Johansson. The bathing scenes suggest three key issues: modernisation, urbanisation and above all women´s sexual politics. Though there were several issues facing the feminist movement in Sweden in the 1930, the question of a woman’s right to her body was one that united the movement, regardless of class.

This thesis is a study of spatial practice and literary depictions of homes in novels by Elsie Johansson, Kerstin Thorvall and Kristina Sandberg. The theoretical perspective is based on Henri Lefebvre´s view on social space, and on the concept of spatial practice. Research questions are: What homes are depicted? How does spatial practice function in the texts? How does the depictedspatial practice relate to norms and ideals? The novels, published 1993-2014, depict an interesting period in Swedish history (cirka 1920-1970) when politics and society at large was deeply involved in reshaping the homes and lives of Swedish citizens. The aim was to turn the citizens into new, healthy and rational parts of the new and rational society. Housewives where put in a position where the new rational housekeeping clashed with the standards and practices of earlier generations. Class is found to be a crucial factor in performing and experiencing domesticity in the studied novels. Housewive characters in the Thorvall and Sandberg novels, raised in working class families, struggle in adapting the spatial practice of home in their new middle class environments.Part of the thesis is a discussion on domesticity seen as an adaptive pracitce – catering to the needs of husbands and children. The novels show this, but also depict housework being used as a way to escape unpleasant conversations or forget ones unpleasant feelings. Another task with complex connotations and uses is cleaning. Cleaning in these novels have a strong connection to positive feelings like pleasure and pride, but also to negative feelings of shame and a loss of control. Acting normal to achieve a state of normality within the home and family is a common strategy for the housewives. The material is found to support Lefebvres idea on the importance of spatial practice - sense of home, for the studied housewife characters, is found to be more dependent on spatialpractice than on the home itself.

I denna uppsats avhandlas alternativ till det sociokulturella perspektivet inom lärande och språkutveckling om hur förståelse konstitueras. Denna syn på språket grundar sig i Ludwig Wittgensteins teorier om till exempel språkspel som utvecklat en språktradition som kallas fenomenografi. Det fenomenografiska perspektivet ta i beaktande den föregående lärandeprocessen i medvetandet om hur konceptualisering av förståelse konstitueras. Detta är vad som inom filosofin kallas intentionalitet. Språket kan inte förstås utifrån en förutbestämd vokabuläranvändning eller logiska ideal. Inlärning borde istället förstås utav hur språket används i en kontext i en konkret användning. Förståelse blir därför något som inte går att utforska utifrån sociala relationer eller ideala lösningar.

This thesis focuses on a transformational but disregarded period in New Zealand’s twentieth century history, the era from the arrival of the Marines in 1942 to the arrival of Rock Around the Clock in 1956. It examines one of the chief agents in this metamorphosis: the impact of American culture. During this era the crucial conduits of that culture were movies, music and comics. The aims of my thesis are threefold: to explore how New Zealanders responded to this cultural trinity, determine the key features of their reactions and assess their significance. The perceived modernity and alterity of Hollywood movies, musical genres such as swing, and the content and presentation of American comics and ‘pulps’, became the sources of heated debate during the midcentury. Many New Zealanders admired what they perceived as the exuberance, variety and style of such American media. They also applauded the willingness of the cultural triptych to appropriate visual, textual and musical forms and styles without respect for the traditional classifications of cultural merit. Such perceived standards were based on the privileged judgements of cultural arbiters drawn from members of New Zealand’s educational and civic elites. Key figures within these elites insisted that American culture was ‘low’, inferior and commodified, threatening the dominance of a sacrosanct, traditional ‘high’culture. Many of them also maintained that these American cultural imports endangered both the traditionally British nature of our cultural heritage, and New Zealand’s distinctively ‘British’ identity. Many of these complaints enfolded deeper objections to American movies, music and literary forms exemplified by comics and pulps. Significant intellectual and civic figures portrayed these cultural modes as pernicious and malignant, because they were allegedly the product of malignant African-American, Jewish and capitalist sources, which threatened to poison the cultural and social values of New Zealanders, especially the young. In order to justify such attitudes, these influential cultural guardians portrayed the general public as an essentially immature, susceptible, unthinking and puritanical mass. Accordingly, this public, supposedly ignorant of the dangers posed by American culture, required the intervention and protection of members of this elite. Responses to these potent expressions of American culture provide focal points which both illuminate and reflect wider social, political and ideological controversies within midcentury New Zealand. Not only were these reactions part of a process of comprehension and negotiation of new aesthetic styles and media modes. They also represent an arena of public and intellectual contention whose significance has been neglected or under-valued. New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the new cinematic, literary and musical elements of American culture occurred within a rich and revealing socio-political and ideological context. When we comment on that culture we reveal significant features of our own national and cultural selves.