<p>Each day we are being swamped with commercial messages from companies, this makes us select which messages we take in. We can screen off marketing from companies, but how do we react when friends are trying to sell us products? The purpose of this study is to examine, if and if so, friendship relations and business activities influence each other within a network marketing company and also to illuminate these effects. The study shows that network companies do not only offer economic opportunities and consumption of products, but also social fellowship.</p> / <p>Att vi människor överöses av kommersiella budskap från företag innebär att vi tvingas selektera vilka budskap vi uppfattar. Företags marknadsföring kan vi avskärma oss ifrån, men hur reagerar vi då vänner vill sälja produkter till oss? Syftet med studien är att undersöka om och i sådana fall hur vänskapsrelationer och affärsverksamheter påverkar varandra inom ett nätverksföretag, samt belysa dessa effekter. För att besvara syftet har kvalitativa intervjuer genomförts med återförsäljare inom ett av de största nätverksföretagen i Sverige. Studien visar att när återförsäljare integrerar vänskap och affärsverksamhet uppnås både positiva och negativa effekter. Avslutningsvis presenteras att nätverksföretagande inte endast erbjuder ekonomiska möjligheter och konsumtion av produkter utan även social gemenskap.</p>

Two studies were conducted to examine the interpersonal world of the depressive. It was hypothesized that depressed subjects would not like nondepressed targets as much as would nondepressed subjects. In addition, it was hypothesized that depressed subjects would feel worse after speaking with nondepressed targets. Finally it was hypothesized that perceived similarity would mediate these effects by covarying with mood and liking measures. To assess these hypotheses, study one had depressed and nondepressed college students speak with one another in either depressed-depressed, nondepressed-depressed, or nondepressed-nondepressed pairs. Measures of liking for the person with whom they conversed, of perceived similarity toward the person with whom they conversed, and of the subject's mood were then taken. Although the results were mixed, it was found that depressed subjects felt worse after speaking to depressed targets, though there were no differences in liking or perceived similarity between the groups. Perceived similarity did covary with most of the liking measures for the depressed and nondepressed subjects. Study two examined whether depressives had best friends who were themselves more depressed than best friends who were nondepressives. It was hypothesized that the best friends of depressives would be more depressed. Furthermore, it was expected that the best friends would also be perceived as more depressed by the subjects. These hypotheses were confirmed when depressives brought their best friends in for a study and the level of depression for these best friends was measured. In addition, the depressed subjects reported feeling worse after speaking with their friends when compared to how the nondepressed subjects reported feeling after speaking with their best friends.

In this thesis I compare Pierre Leroux, a French utopian socialist (1797 – 1871), with Feodor Dostoevsky, the well-known Orthodox Russian novelist (1821 – 1881). I argue that both authors reacted against what they considered to be the dissolution of the social order, brought about by the increasing nineteenth-century bourgeois individualism. On the other hand, they reacted as well against the opposite phenomenon, the idea of a universal socialist state, which was, in fact, according to them, the outcome of bourgeois individualism. My purpose is to bring close and to compare Leroux’s republican socialism with Dostoevsky’s Christian socialism, and to explore to what extent the two authors give similar answers to a common problem. In order to better explain their thought, I divide my thesis into three chapters. The first analyzes and compares Leroux’s and Dostoevsky’s critiques of individualism. If Leroux reaches the conclusion that the ultimate expression of individualism is Malthusianism, Dostoevsky argues that individualism ends in nihilism. The second chapter analyzes the type of socialism against which Leroux and Dostoevsky reacted, as well as the critiques of the two authors. I argue here that Saint-Simonian socialism – the main object of Leroux’s critique – and the socialism of the Grand Inquisitor – a Dostoevskyan character – are the expression of a certain utopian thought which considers the requirement for freedom incompatible with the requirement for unity. In the last chapter, I analyze the ideas of community of Leroux and of Dostoevsky, which are centered on philia, in the case of the former, and on agape, in the case of the latter. Philia and respectively agape are the expression of organic social relations, through which the two requirements, of freedom and unity, are made compatible, and which create unity in multiplicity. Their ideas of community appear as active utopias, grounded on the life of relation in a spontaneous, organic community.

This essay explores how masculinity is portrayed in The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford) and Women in Love (D.H Lawrence), and how Victorian and Edwardian masculinity ideals impact the friendships between the characters John Dowell and Edward Ashburnham and Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich. The novels portray how hegemonic masculinity in Edwardian Britain changed from one type of masculinity, based on physical dominance, to include another, which drew on expert knowledge, capitalism and rationalism. In the texts, these masculinities are buttressed by the comparison to a male Other. In The Good Soldier, Edward Ashburnham stands for the ideals connected to dominance through his roles as landlord and soldier, and he is depicted as the “manlier” character in comparison to John Dowell. The same kind of coupling is found in Women in Love, where Gerald Crich represents both older ideals of dominance and newer ideals of expertise and rationality and Rupert Birkin is the relational opposite. Both Rupert Birkin and John Dowell are categorized as “not man” in the texts in order to emphasize that Edward Ashburnham and Gerald Crich are the “real” men. However, when the “manlier” characters have died both John Dowell and Rupert Birkin perpetuate masculine ideals, either by emulating hegemonic ideals or by redefining them. Furthermore, the Victorian and Edwardian conceptions of masculinity and male friendship inhibit the characters from forming emotionally close friendships. In both texts, emotional intimacy is portrayed as precarious and a more impersonal from of friendship that entails loyalty to a group or cause, camaraderie, is preferred.

The aim of the dissertation is to understand the playing of computer games based on its own conditions, and questions are asked such as what is the meaning constructed around playing and themselves as players, what is the social construction of playing and how can playing computer games be understood from the perspective of youth culture? A basic interest in the thesis is to contribute to the understanding of Bildung in an informal context outside the institutions, activities and genres that traditionally stand for Bildung. The empirical investigation that forms the basis of this thesis i in the form of presence at various LANs and interviews with players. The research perspective includes a hermeneutic point of departure and playing computer games is interpreted and understood from three perspectives: playing computer games as a meaning of Bildung (play and mimesis), as social meaning (friendship and community) and as cultural (style). The results demonstrates that playing computer games is something the player does to relax, to have fun and it makes the time that passes meaningful. For dedicated players, playing computer games is a longing for community. To be a member of a community provides the opportunity to become someone in relation to the others. To participate in the community of players is a way to achieve understanding about how one is expected to behave in a larger community, that is to say society. The players are not much interested in clothes and fashion. Alcohol and other drugs are disapproved. Not stealing from others in the LAN, helping each other and sharing both knowledge and material things are also ways of expressing style. Playing computergames is Bildung and the experiences and insights wich playing can provide should have a place in a vision regarding Bildung in our time. The teachers and the school should make use of the free-time experiences that young people take with them to school.

The structure of social networks, and people's position within these networks, are important predictors of many individual and group-level outcomes. One type of social networks that is regularly studied are the mutually interdependent relations of friends. This thesis focusses on friendship networks between adolescents in the context of schools. Arguably the most important and consistently found regularities in adolescent friendship networks are i) the tendency of friendships to be mutual, called reciprocity; ii) their tendency to cluster in groups, known as transitivity; and iii) the tendency of friendships to be present between those that are similar to one another, called homophily. Various social theories originating in different disciplines have theoretically proposed and empirically found micro-mechanisms that explain the regular occurrence of these substructures in friendship networks. This thesis introduces a framework of how the relation between these different networks tendencies can be understood. I propose that each of the three network evolution mechanisms can be connected to a type of social situation in which friends interact to form and maintain their friendships. Social situations that are dyadic and only involve two persons are connected to reciprocal friendships. Group-based social situations, on the other hand, are related to transitivity and homophily, where the groups are either defined socially or through common characteristics. Starting from this proposition, I suggest that when two adolescents share one forum for interaction with one another, i.e. they regularly meet within one of the social situations, meeting in additional other situations does not increase the likelihood of a friendship tie existing as much as could be expected from the sum of the effect of meeting in either situation. Consequently, I expect a negative interaction between the different network mechanisms. After a series of empirical analyses that support the outlined reasoning, I use the developed perspective to investigate how the micro-mechanisms contribute differentially to the creation of newly formed friendships and to the maintenance of already existing friendships. Finally, I show how a situational understanding of friendship can be used to differentiate which friendships are most important for social influence and for peer pressure.

There are some human beings who live their lives at the extremes of the human condition because of some gross intellectual, cognitive, neurological, or developmental impairment to their human nature. The evidence from practices of care and concern towards such people – the profoundly impaired – suggests that they are acknowledged and respected as moral peers within the human community. Such pre-reflective intuitions and commonplace practices lend credence to the anthropological claim that the profoundly impaired are recognisably persons. Yet what might an argument in support of this intuition look like? How is it that the profoundly impaired are recognisably persons among fellow persons? This thesis is a theological response to that question. The presupposition underpinning the question is that there is something at stake for the humanity of the profoundly impaired in their being the particularly conditioned human beings that they are. There are, however, those who do not allow for the personhood of the profoundly impaired precisely because of the impaired condition in which they live their lives, and there are others who do uphold the personhood of the profoundly impaired precisely by sidelining their impairment. Peter Singer is representative of the first position. Christian theology can and should make an effective response to Singer’s challenge. An emerging field in Christian theology seeks to do so by proposing a distinct theology of disability that re-imagines Christian anthropology. The aim is to secure the humanity of the disabled without the condition of their humanity becoming an obstacle to their moral status within the community of persons. Key to this re-imagining is the adoption of a paradigm of inclusion towards the disabled. However, a critique will be offered of those theological re-imagined Christian anthropologies that centre on a paradigm of inclusion, and on a commitment to separating out the condition of the profoundly impaired from the question of their humanity. The Dutch Protestant theologian Hans Reinders proposes one such re-imagined anthropology in his recent major work, Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics. His claim is that the humanity of the profoundly disabled cannot be secured by the traditionally held Christian doctrine of the imago Dei because that doctrine treats personhood as something intrinsic to human beings, thereby making it inaccessible to the profoundly disabled who do not have the personalising capacities of reason and will. Instead, he proposes ‘being chosen as a friend’ by God as the only way in which the humanity of the profoundly disabled can be secured, thereby rejecting an immanent reading of the imago Dei in favour of a transcending conception of friendship. This thesis will argue that Reinders’ anthropological project fails because his transcendent concept cannot do for the humanity of the profoundly disabled what it sets out to do. Consequently, a return will be made to that tradition of Christian anthropology centred on the imago Dei to see what may be retrieved from it, such that the condition under which the profoundly impaired live their lives is central to them being recognisably the persons that they are. This is a proposition which says that the personal presence of the profoundly impaired among other persons is not to be denied to them (contra Singer), nor only extended to them as a means of belonging (contra a paradigm of inclusion), nor simply eschewed of them so that they may thereby be included by other means (contra Reinders). In placing the doctrine of the imago Dei at the heart of the creaturely life of human beings, the Catholic Church has made this doctrine the structural centre of any theological account of the personhood of the profoundly impaired. It will be the positive task of this thesis to uncover the theological import of this Catholic anthropological imagination. The two authors most significantly engaged with in undertaking this task will be C S Lewis and Josef Pieper.

This thesis demonstrates how children challenge the boundaries adults place on them, out of concern for their safety, through child-specific cultural practises. The thesis argues that these boundaries emerge from contemporary changes in the perception of risk to children and have driven the systematic limitation of spaces that children are allowed to experience on their own. Based on data collected among elementary school-age children during twelve months of fieldwork (2008-2009), across multiple sites in the city of Vancouver, Canada, I argue that children creatively adapt to spatial and social limits imposed on them through play, consumption and exchange. Moreover, the research demonstrates that through gathering social knowledge and experimenting with self-presentation and systems of social order, children create a sophisticated peer culture. This incorporates social differentiations and hierarchies that differ from those of adult society however, are interdependent with it. My work thus challenges the position of children as objects and ‘anecdotes’ in anthropology: considered ‘works in progress’ and lacking full status as persons in society. Rather, I argue that they should be treated as competent social actors in their own right with their own social meanings and cultural practises.

During the whole life people tend to make new relations with other people. Some relationships, based on their character, are closer than others; therefore we call them close relationships. Friendship, which is described in this thesis, is a type of the close relationship. In the theoretic part, the emphasis is put on the description of close, later friendly relationships and on the overview of their development in human's life. Special attention is paid to the adolescence and emerging adulthood and their specifics in the area of friendly relationships. The particular changes in friendly relations at these developmental stages are the subject of the study. The empirical part includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of the differences in friendship in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Based on the study of scientific resources and prior research, characteristics of friendship, respectively of the researched category, were provided. The sample involved 146 respondents between the age 15 to 30. Only small changes in friendship's character in the area of common activities, trust and frequency of contact were discovered. Key words: Adolescence, emerging adulthood, friendship, close relationship.

Title: Fulfilling the principles of fair play tennis with players from age categories under 12 and 14 Objectives: The goal was to implement and evaluate the interview focused on compliance with the principles of fair play among tennis players in the age categories under 12 and 14. The research was based on the findings of randomly selected match participants made in the context of competition mixed tennis teams to provide insight into the present situation of fair play in these age categories, to identify problematic issues and provide recommendations for practice. Methods: The research method was a structured interview containing questions enclosed or semi-enclosed. Results: The object of the research were players of tennis in ages under 12 and under 14 born in 2003 - 2005, respectively 2001 - 2002. The results of the two-month research showed that the most serious transgressions, which are contrary to the principles of fair play, include break of game rules and inappropriate behavior. Failure to shake hand with an opponent and expressions of superiority over weaker opponents occurred to a lesser extent. Apart from view of one player under 12 allowing the use of doping substances in certain circumstances none mentioned that the use of these means is generally approved. Tennis environment and...