This qualitative thesis analyses the development of Marxian thought on riots and revolution in the works of Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Due to the structural limitations of this essay, the research has been limited to a comparison between Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and a selection of Žižek and Badiou’s works. Furthermore, the scope of the essay focuses on two material events; the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte and the England riots of 2011. The comparison was concretised through the usage of Ludvig Beckman’s model for idea analysis and the method of ideal types. This study demonstrated how the modern theorists remain loyal to Marx’s basic analysis of society and concepts such as alienation and exploitation. However, the deterministic and eschatological aspects of Marx’s philosophy have been abandoned for a less ineluctable history, and resonate more towards the Hegelian notion of an open history. This study has also elucidated and cemented the vital importance of the material circumstances in a historical materialist study; moreover, it has revealed the necessity for the modern theorists to reinvent and radicalise a number of Marx’s original concepts for the modern world. Žižek and Badiou also contest Marx’s insistence on the requisite nature of violent revolution, and promote the politics of subtraction as an alternative.

In December of 2002, an organization called Clonaid released the news that the first human clone had been born. This company is the offspring of an emerging religious movement, the Raelian movement. Whether the story is true or not, the emergence and growth of this movement suggest that people are looking beyond major world religions, creating a religious outlook (which is a hybrid of dominant religions) with the tenets of extraterrestrial intelligent design, human consciousness, and scientific and technological development. It is a new spin on science as religion, with components of science fiction.<p>To better understand the significance of this movement in contemporary North American culture, the following research is based upon a narrative analysis of the accounts of five members of the movement. The thesis will elaborate on such topics as the sociology of religion, science, biotechnology, social movements and cults, science fiction, and the role of stories in shaping meaning of our place and relationships in the world. The reason for this study is to ascertain characteristics of those participating in the movement: who is joining, why they are joining, and what they are getting out of it. The research uses narrative analysis to focus on the stories of individual members, to provide the best view of the movement, from the inside-out. What emerges is an elaborate depiction of the significance of the Raelian movement in the world through individual members interpretations.

Abstract When the Swedish Centre Party, Centerpartiet, just before Christmas 2012 released a draft for new program of ideas a powerful "winter storm" broke out. Ideas that Centerpartiet would abolish compulsory schooling and the right to inheritance and allow polygamy are just a few of the things that cause alarm. It's not the first time during the last years the Centre Party is associated with neo-liberal elements in their party’s ideology. In 2007 Erik Ullenhag criticized Centerpartiet for their new neo-liberalism was a danger to the alliance. The aim of this study is to investigate whether it is possible to see a change in Centerpartiets ideology and how deep it is. From an idea analytical approach based on ideal types, created for social liberalism, neoliberalism and ecohumanism, the party programs from 2001 and 2013 are studied. The eight components studied are: the view on human nature, most important unit in society, the vision of freedom, methods of social change, political governance, society's economic organization, the vision of prosperity and utopia - the good society. In examining the causes of the potential changes a secondary analysis, where existing material was used, has been implemented. The result shows that there has been a change in ideology in Centerpartiet between 2001 and 2013. The probable causes for this are the bad result in the general election 2010 and the election of a new leadership for the party in 2013. Keywords: Swedish Centre Party, analysis of ideas, ideologies, ideal types, change,

In December of 2002, an organization called Clonaid released the news that the first human clone had been born. This company is the offspring of an emerging religious movement, the Raelian movement. Whether the story is true or not, the emergence and growth of this movement suggest that people are looking beyond major world religions, creating a religious outlook (which is a hybrid of dominant religions) with the tenets of extraterrestrial intelligent design, human consciousness, and scientific and technological development. It is a new spin on science as religion, with components of science fiction.<p>To better understand the significance of this movement in contemporary North American culture, the following research is based upon a narrative analysis of the accounts of five members of the movement. The thesis will elaborate on such topics as the sociology of religion, science, biotechnology, social movements and cults, science fiction, and the role of stories in shaping meaning of our place and relationships in the world. The reason for this study is to ascertain characteristics of those participating in the movement: who is joining, why they are joining, and what they are getting out of it. The research uses narrative analysis to focus on the stories of individual members, to provide the best view of the movement, from the inside-out. What emerges is an elaborate depiction of the significance of the Raelian movement in the world through individual members interpretations.

Previous research has shown that teaching material reproduces ideology; and according to the professor in History of Ideas, Sven-Eric Lied man, ideology can be read out in all sorts of texts. This is in contrast with the Swedish curriculum, which claims that the teaching should be objective and comprehensive. The aim with this study is to investigate if there is any reproduction of ideology in social science textbooks. With this background I have examined four social science textbooks, by using qualitative research methodology and ideology analysis.  Results showed that all four textbooks are reproducing ideology. In the analysis I have been using the methodological framework, ideal types and for this purpose three ideologies; Liberalism, Revisionism and Conservatism were defined. The interpretation of the results was that the dominating reproductions in the textbooks exhibited liberalism and revisionism, but some conservative reproductions could be found in the schoolbooks as well. Many of the reproductions were read out latent in the books. The authors were also using evaluative written language and a lot of watchwords.  The results correspond with the majority of previous research. / <p>2017-01-20</p>

<p>The aim of this essay is to clarify if there is an ideological difference within the political area of foreign policy of the United States. The question that will be answered is: Is the American foreign policy coloured by different ideologies, or has that area of politics become an arena without ideology differences?</p><p>In order to answer the question, the method used in this essay is idea analysis using ideal types as analytical instrument. The texts that are being analysed are the State of the Union Addresses of four American presidents. The presidents are Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton and each president give this speech once a year. The presidents are chosen due to the fact that their presidencies follow each other and are as recently in time as possible.</p><p>After analysing all of the speeches and considering the surrounding circumstances, like the Cold War, I came to the conclusion that there is no ideological difference within foreign policy of the United States of America. Some areas of foreign policy, however, show more or less connotations to either idealism or realism. Even tough ideology plays a part; there is no difference between the liberal party and the conservative party.</p>

The aim of this study is to investigate discipline in German and Swedishclassrooms and describe its cultural contexts. In countries with compulsory educa-tion, it must be assumed that not all students voluntarily attend classes. The man-datory presence of students combined with the ban on corporal punishment inschools means that classroom interaction has to be organized according to certainmanners and rules (Luhmann, 2002a:108a). These rules are understood here as dis-cipline meaning the organization and control of individuals and their actions overspace and time (Foucault, 1987/1975). This study assumes similarities in the funda-mental disciplinary mechanisms, although different contexts (here Germany andSweden) will create different concrete manifestations of the phenomenon. Since theobservation of cultural contexts is not as self-evident and direct as the observationof classroom interactions of teachers and students, the theoretical considerationshere include a detailed discussion of methodology for observing culture. Startingwith Alfred Schütz’ concept of ideal types and Niklas Luhmann’s theory on massmedia, it is argued that culture can be observed through the products of mass me-dia. The empirical data for this study consists of field studies in the form of obser -vations in German and Swedish classrooms as well as the examination of Germanand Swedish films and television series about teachers and students. The classroomobservations were used to create ideal typical descriptions of different implementa-tions of disciplinary procedure. Based on the analysis of teacher figures in variousGerman and Swedish films and television series, several “good” and “bad” teachertypes were initially identified. Combining the two results allowed conclusions tobe made about correlations between disciplinary order and whether a teacher isconsidered “good” or “bad”. This review of the various types of order is the basisfor the description of cultural contexts. The results of classroom observations andfilm studies and their discussion in relation to prior Swedish research, gives thepicture of a cultural context in which various forms of classroom order are avail-able, in which they are critically discussed and also can exist in parallel to each oth-er. On the other hand, the German context seems to allow only one form ofclassroom order, both in actual school operations as well as in the mass media rep -resentation and scientific reflection.

There is a lack of a feminist perspective within general theories of international relations, but also in those documents that represents the basis for foreign policy, and a feminist assessment of the same. Assessment-tools for foreign policy that constitute a feminist perspective are therefore very limited, and an explanatory factor for the lack of such tools may be that there are a various number of feminist perspectives that rest on different ontological grounds. The purpose of this thesis was to explore how it is possible to theoretically justify a framework for feminist assessment of foreign policy. Proceeding from this theoretical justification, construct a specific methodology including a framework for feminist assessment of foreign policy, and lastly to test the viability and usefulness of the proposed methodology by using the action plan, “Swedish Foreign Service action plan for feminist foreign policy 2015 - 2018 including focus areas for 2016” as an empirical case study. This study concludes that it is possible to theoretically justify the construction of such an assessment-tool in spite of variations within feminist theorizing. A methodology and a framework was developed and tested on Sweden’s action-plan for its feminist foreign policy. The methodology developed in this study made it possible to identify what type of feminism the action-plan represents, but also which areas that is left alone and should be dealt with.  It is also concluded that the plan consist of a type of rights-based feminism that focuses on the inclusion of woman in all areas of society, the particular vulnerability women represent concerning violence, sexual violence, domestic violence and that politics also must be concerned about issues regarding women’s private life and autonomy.

yes / The aim of this paper is to examine the notion of social mechanisms by comparison with the notions of evolutionary and physical mechanisms. It is argued that social mechanisms are based on trends, and not lawlike regularities, so that social mechanisms are different from mechanisms in the natural sciences. Taking as an example of social causation the abolition of the slave trade, the paper argues that social mechanisms should be incorporated in Weber’s wider notion of adequate causation in order to achieve their explanatory purpose.

Since the millennium shift the Swedish public administration has, in a successive and significant way, been moving towards an electronic government. By analyzing policy goals formulated by the Swedish government, this essay aims to describe e-government as an administration model and subsequently answer the question if e-government challenges the traditional Swedish public administration. Based on three different ideal types; The bureaucratic model, The user-oriented model and New Public Management, this essay also aims to relate the policy goals of e-government to the ideal types. The analysis shows that the Swedish e-government is based on ideas which can be related to all three ideal types. While the analysis is not able to unequivocally answer the question if e-government challenges the traditional Swedish public administration, it yet indicates that, reversibly, the traditional Swedish public administration challenges e-government.