Forskning visar att Sverige är ett av de mest individualistiska länderna i världen, där ensamhet och social isolering ökar i samhället. Ensamheten beskrivs som ett själsligt lidande och ökar risken för fysiska konsekvenser som suicid. Suicid beskrivs inte i samma utsträckning i tidningsmedia som andra ämnen eftersom det är tabubelagt, trots att vi förlorar fyra individer i suicid per dag, vilket motsvarar en var sjätte timme.  Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera hur suicid framställs i tidningsmedia med fokus på spänningen mellan samhälleliga och individuella förklaringar. Frågeställningarna uppsatsen ämnat att besvara är följande ”Hur begripliggörs suicid i tidningsmedia?” och ”Hur kan dessa beskrivningar förstås med hjälp av Baumans teori om det individualiserade samhället?” Studien ämnar ta form av en foucaultinspirerad diskursanalys för att studera hur diskursen om suicid konstrueras i tidningsmedia. Metodvalet togs för att producera underlag för att analysera hur tidningsmedia förmedlar och formar samhällets förståelse av suicid och spänningen mellan hur diskursen pendlar från att vara ett individansvar till ett ansvar på samhällelig nivå. Det utvalda tidningsmedierna som studien hämtat sitt empiriska material ifrån är Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet, där hämtades 22 tidningsartiklar för att analyseras. Det teoretiska ramverket består utav Zygmynt Baumans teori om det individualiserade samhället, den tillämpades för att skapa en förståelse hur samhällets strukturer påverkar och förstärker det individualiserade ansvarstagandet samt för att belysa komplexiteten. Resultatet utifrån denna uppsats pekar på att diskursen om suicid är komplex och suicidframställningen visar på flertalet olika perspektiv inom diskursen. Mest framstående i tidningsmedia är den ekonomiska faktorn och ensamheten som beskrivs florera i samhället. En slutsats i studien är att det individualistiska samhället präglas av en åtgärdsfixerad kultur men att ansvar läggs allt oftare på individen på grund av det bristfälliga stödet samhället erbjuder. / Science suggest that Sweden is one of the most individualistic countries in the world, where loneliness and social isolation increases in society. Loneliness is described to be a suffering of the soul and increases the risk for physical consequences such as suicide. Suicide is not described in the same extent in newspaper media as other subjects because it is taboo, even though we lose four individuals every day to suicide, which corresponds to one every six hours. The purpose of this essay is to study how suicide is portrayed in newspaper media with focus on the tension between societal and individual explanations. The questions this essay aims to answer is following” How to make suicide comprehensible in newspaper media?” and” How can these descriptions be understood by using Bauman’s theory about individualized societies?” The essay means to take form of a foucaultinspired discourse analysis to study how the suicide discourse is constructed in newspaper media. The choice of method was taken to produce a basis to analyze how newspaper media conveys and shapes societies understanding of suicide and the tension between the discourse varies from being an individual responsibility and a responsibility on a societal level. The chosen newspaper media that the study has collected it´s empirical material from is Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, where 22 newspaper articles was retrieved. The result from this essay points out that the suicide discourse is complex, and the description of suicide shows multiple perspectives within the discourse. Most prominent in the newspaper media is the economic factor and loneliness is the described to flourish in society. One conclusion of the essay is experienced to be that the individualistic society we live in, where a strong action fixated culture flourishes, the responsibility is often placed on the individual due to the inadequate support society offer.

The fact that Jack London's novels seem to fall into two classes--those which he wrote for money and those which he wrote to deliver a social message--has led to this study of his life and novels. It is the aim of this thesis to show that his life was one of conflict between individualism and socialism and that this conflict is reflected to a varying degree in his novels.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between early career indecision and individualistic and collectivistic cultural value orientations amongst new entrants to the workplace. The INDCOL (Triandis, 1995) was used to gather information on the vertical and horizontal scales of the individualism and collectivism of respondents, while the Career Decision Scale (CDS) (Osipow, 1987) was used to gather information on the levels of career certainty and career indecision. A sample of convenience of N=115 new entrants to the workplace in a typical South African governmental organisation was used. The results indicated that there is no relationship between individualistic and collectivistic cultural value orientations and career indecision and that biographical variables have no relationship with early career indecision. However, it was found that the biographical variables of race and gender may have a significant impact on the cultural value orientations of individuals in the South African work context. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. A. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between early career indecision and individualistic and collectivistic cultural value orientations amongst new entrants to the workplace. The INDCOL (Triandis, 1995) was used to gather information on the vertical and horizontal scales of the individualism and collectivism of respondents, while the Career Decision Scale (CDS) (Osipow, 1987) was used to gather information on the levels of career certainty and career indecision. A sample of convenience of N=115 new entrants to the workplace in a typical South African governmental organisation was used. The results indicated that there is no relationship between individualistic and collectivistic cultural value orientations and career indecision and that biographical variables have no relationship with early career indecision. However, it was found that the biographical variables of race and gender may have a significant impact on the cultural value orientations of individuals in the South African work context. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. A. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The jurist Carl Schmitt’s views on the total state and race need further clarification as long as the English language edition of his Concept of the Political presents an apologist commentary. The questions are to which degree Schmitt’s works written during the Weimar Republic are tainted with totalitarian and racist ideas and whether Schmitt gave up fundamental principles during Nationalist Socialism. This thesis examines writings by Schmitt between 1913 and 1940 to reconstruct a coherent anti-individualistic legal viewpoint and its arguments. The first part finds that Schmitt undermines the individual rights of the Weimar Constitution. The second part discusses Schmitt’s role as a theorist of totalitarianism. The third part considers Schmitt’s anti-Semitism as underlying motivation for his political theory and analyzes his racism in light of his anti-individualism. Schmitt frequently argues by invoking necessity of history and by justifying some political action as necessary. These arguments should be rejected.

Declining union density rates have been and continue to be an ongoing issue and worry around the world. In Sweden, union density remains high in comparison to other countries, although not an exception to the declining rates which have largely encompassed young workers. The objective of this study is to research two phenomena that have been identified as influences surrounding why young workers do not become unionised. The research questions are 1. Can individualistic attitudes be linked to the decline in union density among young workers, if so how? and 2. Can employer resistance towards trade unionism be linked to the decline in union density among young workers, if so how?.There are substantial amounts of quantitative research devoted to trying to understand the decline, which motivated writing a report with a qualitative approach. Focus was put on the thoughts and views of six young individuals who are all involved with three Swedish trade unions, HRF, Handels and Seko. The results of the study revealed that both individualistic attitudes and employer resistance can be linked to declining union density rates among youths. Individualistic attitudes were analysed alongside Allvin and Sverke’s theories on the ‘era of individualisation’, which includes declining preparedness to participate in collective movements, the belief in the efficacy of the self and autonomous attitudes towards institutions. Individualistic attitudes that were conferred in the interviews revolved around matters such as young workers not being able to identify themselves with trade unions and their officials. Employer resistance methods were discussed in line with, among others, Brulin’s theory on the work place as a political arena, where employers and trade unions battle for the loyalty of the employees. Resistance towards trade unions seem to appear in various forms and different methods are used in order to obstruct individuals from becoming or remaining unionised. This includes subtle threats and ostracism from managers and co-workers and unmotivated changes of rosters.

This thesis is an ethnographic investigation into the ‘bringing about’ of the Danish welfare citizen as observed through everyday values and practices in the Danish folkeskole. The thesis takes as its starting point the notion of dannelse, which is the ’holistic formation of social human beings who can manage their own lives, who know how to behave properly in society, and how to fit in with each other’ (Jenkins 2011:187) and hygge (cosiness), as the primary frameworks through which Danishness can be understood. While trying to unravel what these values/practices are and how they were expressed and inculcated in the everyday lived reality at the Danish folkeskole, I observed the importance of several other key concepts, including lighed (equality as expressed through sameness), and medborgerskab (co-­‐citizenship). This thesis will attempt to understand the importance of these concepts in relation to wider Danish society, and as defining features on the ‘citizenship-­‐journey’ that the Danish folkeskole in this thesis represents. I will argue that the Danish folkeskole to some degree exemplifies a ‘playpen of democracy’ (Korsgaard 2008) as it exists as a liminal sphere, both in terms of providing a space in which students can practice ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ welfare citizens, but more crucially also as a space in-­‐between the public and the private sphere, a home-­‐ away-­‐from-­‐home. This is achieved through notions of hygge to provide the safe and bounded space that is necessary to secure a conducive learning environment in which students can obtain a shared ideological understanding of the world, and hence an equal starting point. Finally, my thesis will focus on the interaction between and value connotations of concepts such as diversity, difference, individuality, inequality and heterogeneity. I am principally interested in demonstrating how these exist in a dynamic relationship with concepts such as equality, similarity, homogeneity and a sense of ‘we/us’ as Danish, and subsequently as democratic welfare citizens.

This paper aims to measure the kinds of challenges faced by multicultural studentgroups and the influence of culture (individualism and collectivism) on student'sperception of importance on each of the challenges discovered. A 19-item questionnairewas completed by students (N = 234) from different faculties including natural andsocial sciences at Linnaeus University, students were from 47 countries. Challenges inmulticultural groups were measured using a Likert scale (from 1 to 5) that assessedmember participation, communication, group processes and group member compositionand analysed by exploratory factor analysis. To examine the differences in perception ofimportance of the challenges discovered between individualists and collectivists basedon Hofstede's culture framework, t-tests and Mann-Whitney test were conducted. Theresults suggested three main kinds of challenges: culture related challenges, genericgroup work challenges and membership resemblance. Membership resemblance was theonly kind of challenge that significantly differed between individualists and collectivists.Further discussions explaining the results and implementation of this study werepresented.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) with no cure (Hall, 2011). A variety of treatments exist to help with symptoms and one therapy is applied behavior analysis (ABA) (Virues-Ortega, 2010). ABA works by providing rewarding stimuli, specifically verbal praise, to encourage positive behavior. Most of the current research related to autism and ABA has been done in the US or other western countries (Hall, 2011), but studies show that verbal praise motivates people differently in different cultures (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002). One of these differences occurs between individualist and collectivist cultures. The current study will manipulate verbal praise administered in ABA therapy in two different countries, the United States, an individualist culture, and South Korea, a collectivist culture. There will be two types of ABA interventions: type A, with individualist-focused verbal praise and type B, with collectivist-focused verbal praise. Thirty children from each country will receive type A and 40 from each country will receive type B. The results would likely confirm the hypotheses which are: 1) that children with an individualist upbringing will have a greater improvement in symptoms with intervention type A than children with a collectivist upbringing, and 2) that children with a collectivist upbringing will have greater symptom improvement with intervention type B than children with an individualist upbringing. Further directions regarding the development of treatments for children with autism are discussed. This research will help to provide insight into the importance of considering culture when treating children with autism.