This thesis aimed to describe how the ideological dividing line concerning the welfare state has changed between the two largest governmental parties in Sweden, the Social Democrats and the Moderaterna, during 1990 to 2010. The scientist Mark Blyth points out that ideas are important instruments for structural and institutional change by identifying ideas as weapons, blueprints and cognitive locks, which were being used in the theoretical framework. The empirical data was made by a qualitative analysis of the parliamentary speeches and debates from both parties held every year. The results shows that the budgetary law passed in 1997 became a new institutional blueprint, which changed the political conditions for the Social Democrats. Furthermore, the results point to a change in the Moderaterna’s rhetoric concerning the welfare state to a more pragmatic view.

The purpose of this study is to describe the Swedish Centre Party’s defense policy between the years 1912-2015. and try to outline potential ideological changes in their politics during the same period. An ideology analysis is employed for the purpose. The analysis is carried out by a method based on ideological ideal types, to which the Swedish Centre Party’s defense policy through history are compared to. The ideological ideal types ”liberalism” and ”realism” are aiming to describe the international defense policy, whilst the ideal types ”doves” and ”hawks” are aiming to describe the national defense policy. The use of ideal types, as it is done in this study, is to be seen as a way to bridge the gap between everyday policies and more abstract ideology. The result of this study shows that not only has an ideological change taken place in the Swedish Centre Party’s defense policy during the course of history; three major changes are identified and described. The study also shows that the Swedish Centre Party has made an ideological travel from being isolationistic pacifists pre-World War I to approaching a more liberal hawk-influenced defense policy in the 21th Century.

Reaching shared understanding during court hearings is a prerequisite to ensure a fair trial and maintaining legal certainty. Every month between 2,000 and 3,000 court hearings in Sweden make use of interpreters. Interpreter-mediated conversations involve an extra discourse compared to monolingual conversations which increases the risk of misunderstandings. Using methodology of conversation analysis the study explores how bilingualism is expressed during interpreter-mediated court hearings, at which occasions the Spanish-speaking laymen switch to Swedish and what function the codeswitching fulfills. The study identifies patterns in codeswitching and categorizes them into six different types. Furthermore the ideology of monolingualism in court is challenged and the advantages and disadvantages of codeswitching is discussed. The analysis concludes that even though certain types of codeswitching lead to delays in the conversation, the interaction is mostly favored by the Spanish-speaking party understanding some Swedish. Court proceedings would benefit from being more permissive toward bilingualism and the types of codeswitching that favor intersubjectivity.

Social sustainability is often regarded as a solution to social problems in general. In this study, on the contrary, social sustainability is conceived as a socially constructed concept and the result of a certain way of looking at the world, the human being and the ideal society. The study centers around Kinda municipality in the southern region of Östergötland and a few of its elder inhabitants. What meaning and substance social sustainability is contained with as well as the effects that are produced by these conceptualizations is explored and analyzed. Also, the study examines the encounter between political policy’s and judgments on the one hand and the experiences and preferences held by the municipality’s elder inhabitants on the other.

This thesis examines how employability and the employable as a discursive subject was constructed through a Swedish labor market policy measure called “datortek”. The datortek was a form of combined computer lab and activity center that was set up in collaboration between local governance and the National market labour board. People who were registered as unemployed could be sent to the local datortek to learn how to use a computer. In this way, they would be made employable in the new, knowledge based society and Sweden would be well on its way to become a leading nation in the field of IT-technology and expertise. At least, that was the idea. In the 1990’s there was a shift in Swedish, as well as european, labour policy discourse. The politically defined problem of “unemployment” changed towards being an issue of the individual’s ability to make oneself “employable”. On a large extent, employability depends on certain individual properties, such as “flexibility”, “entrepreneurship” and being “active”. Earlier research have mainly focused on employability as a policy concept. In this view, employability is seen as something that is enforced through public policy onto the workers. This study is taking a somewhat different approach. Here, employability will be seen as a concept that takes form in a process of negotiation and articulation. A process that takes place in the interpersonal meeting, in the intercept between man and machine, in formal documents as well as through the design of the datortek itself. Thus, the datortek can serve as a study object that allow us to investigate how employability was articulated. It is this articulation, the process of becoming-employable through the datortek, which is at the heart of this study. The thesis shows that the datortek functioned as a simulated work place where the participants were made to stage and perform “teamwork” and learn “social competence”. The computer was given the role of an instrument for bringing out certain feelings amongst the participants. This emotive discipline can be understood as a way to achieve “emotional competence”. The thesis also shows a different way on how a concept such as employability can be studied. By looking into the very practical aspects of the datortek, the abstract idea of employability is made comprehensible. This gives us, not only deepened knowledge of the notion of modern labor, but also a better understanding of how ideology is (re)produced.

Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.

Over the last few years, the debate on what a secularized state is, and should be have been increasing in both spread and aggression. One of the many topics triggering this debate is the question if call to prayer should be allowed or not. The Islamic call to prayer is a phenomenon that awakes strong emotions and reactions in western society, and it has been well debated in media. The aim of this thesis is thus to investigate this debate and what ideological standpoints the arguments are based upon. sing the theories of Jürgen Habermas and José Casanova, on the theories of secularization, the debate on the permission of call to prayer in Växjö have been analysed. To give a fair representation of the debate, articles from four different, well established Swedish newspapers have been used.    It has been found that one of the most frequently used arguments against a permission is the fear that the allowance of one call to prayer a day will lead to more extreme, and eventually radical, Islamic elements in the Swedish society.  The study shows that the view of what a secularized state is, is diverse but can generally be divided into two categories, the view that proclaims positive or negative freedom of religion.  Among the arguments against the permission, most part are solely emotional, whereas the arguments supporting the permission often are more rational.     The conclusion is that main part of the arguments is based on liberal and democratic values but how they are interpreted varies. On the side supporting the permission, the arguments are based on equality, the importance of the freedom of speech and the belief that multicultural is enriching. On the opposite side, the arguments are based on the conservation of the Swedish heritage, the Christian faith and effective integration. Many arguments against a permission are problematic since they are constructed on an emotional basis. In a secular state, this type of questions should be handled rational, based on the law of freedom of religion.

This thesis’s main purpose is to understand the recent debate in Sweden concerning the vaccine passport that was caused due to the recent spread of the corona virus. The focus is on what a variety of arguments and positions from different public political debaters have taken in a number of issues regarding vaccine passports. If they have been ideologically consistent regarding their previous ideologic positions in other debates in Sweden. First the thesis describes the three main ideologies used (liberalism, socialism and conservatism) and outlines their main positions. By doing so, the thesis can later compare what Swedish opinion leaders have argued in regards to the vaccine passport and therefore find out if they are relatable to their main ideology.  This has been made possible by the implementation of the design of an Ide whose purpose is to investigate and try to understand why different sides of this debate think about how they think about vaccine passports along with if it seems consistent.. The result points to that it can indeed be found ideological inconsistencies in some varieties. For example, if opinion leaders affiliated with the liberal ideology finding the vaccine passports useful might seem to clash with the main positions of the liberal ideology.

Social media has changed how we the communicate, especially in the political sphere and in time of crisis. This thesis will explore this change by studying comment sections on Facebook during the spread of the disease covid-19, with the aim to understand how ideologies are spread and to who. The material used are comments on posts with links to news regarding the Swedish government’s handling of the spread of the virus published on SVT Nyheter´s Facebook page. The purpose is to answer what points, grounds and operations of discussion is to be found in the material and whom does the communication target? To do so the thesis uses a theoretical and methodological framework of Edwin Black´s the second persona and Maria Wolrath Söderberg´s topoi as meaning makers as well as her topoi analysis. The conclusion of the analysis of the material is that ideological influence and convincing is used in social media during the time of a crisis with two specific targets: to legitimize the values with and for like-minded and to convince undecided about the correct values by expressing their own and by diminishing others.

This essay sets out to examine my own practical knowledge as a socioculturally inspired preschool teacher conditioned by a capitalist ideology. Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology,as something reproduced by daily human actions, is used and the focus rests on language, or rather language use, especially in relation to the ‘autistic child’ as met in the preschool context. The analysis is supported by two specific traditions of thought: ordinary language philosophy – represented foremostly by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond – and Marxist psychoanalysis, as particularly developed by Slavoj Žižek. The overall conclusion is that the preschool’s practical treatment of the autistic child can be read as a reaction to both ideological resistance and ideological disclosure. The autistic child is interpreted as representing a certain kind of imagination which is considered a threat in the capitalist/sociocultural preschool discourse. A discourse whose conditional criteria the essay also more thoroughly aims to uncover, using said traditions of thought.