<p>Stroke är en vanlig sjukdom som årligen drabbar 30 000 personer i Sverige. Personer som insjuknar i stroke kan drabbas av fysiska och psykiska funktionsnedsättningar. Konsekvenserna av stroke drabbar även de närstående som många gånger tar på sig vårdgivarrollen till den anhöriga. Närståendevårdare till en anhörig som har insjuknat i stroke får bära ett tungt vårdansvar. Syftet med detta vetenskapliga arbete var därför att belysa närståendevårdares upplevelser av att vårda en anhörig som har insjuknat i stroke. Arbetet utfördes som en litteraturstudie där 16 vetenskapliga artiklar granskades. I resultatet framkom två teman, <em>Att vårda är betungande</em> och <em>Att</em> <em>vårda är att anpassa sig</em>. Resultatet visade att närståendevårdarna upplevde en tung börda, ensamhet och frustration. Närståendevårdarna upplevde att det var jobbigt och tidskrävande att anpassa sin vardag till den anhöriga. Det framkom att närståendevårdarna saknade stöd, information och utbildning från hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal för att kunna hantera den nya livssituationen. Sjuksköterskan, liksom all hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal, bör uppmärksamma närståendevårdares situation. Önskvärt är mer omvårdnadsforskning på närståendevårdares copingstrategier, och hur, var och när sjuksköterskan ska ge närståendevårdare stöd, information och utbildning.</p> / <p>Stroke is a common disease that annually affects 30 000 people in Sweden. Stroke survivors may suffer physical and psychological disabilities. The impact of stroke also affects the next of kin´s of the stroke survivor who often become an informal caregiver. Informal caregivers of a relative stroke survivor may experience a heavy caring responsibility. The purpose of this scientific study was therefore to illuminate informal caregivers experiences of caring for a relative who has suffered a stroke. The study was conducted as a literature review in which 16 scientific articles were reviewed. In the result two themes were found, <em>To care is burdened</em> and <em>To care is to adapt</em>. The result showed that informal caregivers experienced heavy burden, loneliness and frustration. Informal caregivers felt that it was difficult and time consuming to adjust their daily lives to the relative. It was found that informal caregivers did not get enough support, information and education from health- professionals which they would have needed to learn how to cope with their new life situation. Nurses, and all health professionals, should pay attention to the situation of the informal caregivers. Continued nursing research on informal caregivers copingstrategies, and, how, were and when the nurse will give informal caregivers support, information and education is desirable.</p>

<p>Since the Beijing Conference on women in 1995 ‘gender-mainstreaming’ has been the new buzz word within the international development regime. Gender equality is increasingly believed to be a major determinant for socioeconomic development in the Global South. However, the development agenda and the gender strategies for the Global South are still outlined and determined by development professionals at head quarters of the development business in the in the Global North. Heavy critique has been launched against the prevailing international development paradigm, not only for being increasingly centralised and categorised as business, which distances global policy from the lived realities in the Global South, but also for obscuring unequal power relations between men and women behind the political correctness of gender.</p><p>This study explores how gender and gender power relations are perceived and approached in practical development work in India. Through the example of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA, my ambition is to give an example of how gender bias and social inequality can be targeted through practical socioeconomic development work in a way that is both context sensitive and sprung from the Global South. SEWA is a women’s organisation, as well as a trade union and a cooperative movement. Aiming at improving employment and social and economic security for the female workers in the informal sectors, SEWA has organised its 800 000 members and social security services into cooperatives to bring about a process of social transformation with women at the centre.</p><p>My empirical findings show that SEWA approaches gender bias in concrete and particular forms. As gender discrimination and poverty are interconnected, dealing with low-income households’ basic socioeconomic needs will also restructure gender power relations. With a large member-base and with ties to NGOs, corporations and governmental bodies, regionally, nationally and internationally, SEWA has become a powerful actor for social development, even at times when they face heavy resistance due to their feminist principles and commitment to the poor and socially marginalised.</p>

<p>Financial services to the poor are seen as a principal way to achieve goals of poverty reduction and job creation. This study explores the dynamic of microcredit clients with informal sector characteristics.</p><p>These characteristics include number of employees, registration status, having a permanent address, being based at home, being based in an open space, operating from a temporary place, and government support of businesses. In recent years, the informal sector on the West Bank has grown to become a major source of job creation for poor Palestinians. Using data collected by the author, this study finds that a majority of the responding microcredit clients are in the informal sector and some of them use microcredit to create a job for themselves because they had no alternative. There is some interest directed towards formal registration from lenders and borrowers, while general progress, in terms of formalization, is found to be fairly insignificant. Finally, we do not find that microcredit increases the probability of less informal sector characteristics acknowledged by microcredit clients. Therefore, while other factors may explain lack of formalization, microcredit is found not to provide enough stimulus on its own to lead questionnaire respondents away from the informal sector.</p>

The purpose of this study was to understand online users’ behavior, preferences and perceptions in a museum’s online environment in order to design systems that support users' needs. The setting of my study was the New York Museum of Modern Art's online learning program. The study participants were undergraduate and graduate art education students enrolled in a large university in the Southeast. Several issues concerning web design emerged from the study, including the following categories: the navigational structure, content design, search engines, and the museum’s educational mission. This study used a case study methodology, which allowed me to gain direct access to participants’ behavior, preferences, and perceptions as they navigated through the museum online website.

<p>This thesis explores the shifting cultural identities of young Owambo migrants living in Babilon, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Windhoek, Namibia. Through an investigation of their social, cultural and economic lives, I show how these young people invoke their Owambo-ness, but how they also transcend their ethnic identifications through engaging in an emerging Namibian youth culture, which cuts across rural-urban, ethnic, and socio-economic divides. I argue that young migrants from Ovamboland, who intend to escape their poverty stricken rural homes and arrive on packed busses, bringing with them few possessions and great expectations, constantly shift and resituate their cultural identities while trying to make a living in the city. These young people are eager to engage fully in a better life and hope to find employment in the urban economy. For many, however, this remains just that &ndash / hope. In their daily lives, the young migrants replicate, reproduce and represent rural Owambo within the urban space. Using the examples of &lsquo / traditional&rsquo / food and small-scale urban agriculture, I explore how their ideas of Owambo-ness are imagined, enforced and lived in Babilon. I argue that although migrants identify themselves in many ways with their rural homes, and retain rural values and practices to a large extent, this does not mean that they would remain &ldquo / tribesmen&rdquo / , as earlier, how classic studies in Southern African urban anthropology argued (Mayer 1961 / Wilson and Mafeje 1963). They also appropriate &ldquo / ideologies&rdquo / and practices of the emerging Namibian youth culture, especially popular local music and cell phones. My study thus shows that the migrants develop multiple, fluid identities (with reference to Bank 2002) / they identify concurrently with the urban and the rural and develop a synthesis of both. The thesis is based on ethnographic research, which was conducted between February and May 2008. During the fieldwork, I engaged daily in informal discussions with many residents of Babilon, and carried out life history interviews, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews with key research participants.</p>

This thesis is an attempt to address issues of housingtransformation in informal settlements. Transformation ofhouses is seen to be associated with modernisation forceswhereby people adapt their houses to suit their needs anddesires. On one hand the desire to own a“modernhouse”may lead to deterioration of spatial qualities, onthe other hand fulfilment of the desire may contribute to themodernisation of urban settlements. The informal settlement ofHanna Nassif was chosen as a case study to illustrate theprocess of housing transformations in informal settlement.Knowledge on the transformation processes serves as animportant tool to address issues of spatial qualities, housingmodernisation, actors in the processes of transformation anduse of space. The results show that there is a wide range oftransformation activities that have been taking place in termsof extensions and alterations. The desire to modernise theirhouses impels developers to use modern building materials. Insome instances houses constructed with traditional buildingmaterials are replaced with industrially produced materials.Through transformation processes new house types emerge. Thestudy identifies problems as well as positive aspectsassociated with the whole process of housing transformation.The positive aspects are those of increased indoor space,increase of rooms for renting and in other cases separation offunctions. The problems emerging from this process include:decrease of outdoor space, increase of housing density,blockage of ventilation and light in the transformedhouses. The study concludes that housing transformation being oneway in which lowincome earners strive to get access to housingdeserves government support, particularly in the absence ofalternative housing supply. It is further observed that todatemany urban dwellers have managed to secure housing as a directresult of house extensions effected by house owners. The houseextensions are being carried out outside the established formalplanning regulations. It is in the light of these developmentsthat there is a cause for government intervention to guidehousing development processes in informal settlements.Professionals like planners and architects should also assume arole for quality and sustainability to prevail. The study alsosuggests specific problem areas for further investigation. <b>Key words:</b>Tanzania, housing transformation, informalsettlements, modernisation, spatial qualities and housetypes.

The general aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse patterns of informal care and support for carers in Sweden. One specific aim is to study patterns of informal care from a broad population perspective in terms of types of care and types of carer. A typology of four different care categories based on what carers do revealed that women were much more likely than men to be involved at the ‘heavy end’ of caring, i.e. providing personal care in combination with a variety of other caring tasks. Men were more likely than women to provide some kind of practical help (Study I). Another aim is to investigate which support services are received by which types of informal caregiver. Relatively few informal caregivers in any care category were found to be receiving any kind of support from municipalities or voluntary organizations, for example training or financial assistance (Study II). The same study also examines which kinds of help care recipients receive in addition to that provided by informal carers. It appears that people in receipt of personal care from an informal caregiver quite often also receive help from the public care system, in this case mostly municipal services. However, the majority of those receiving personal, informal care did not receive any help from the public care system or from voluntary organizations or for-profit agencies (Study II). The empirical material in studies I and II comprises survey data from telephone interviews with a random sample of residents in the County of Stockholm aged between 18 and 84. In a number of countries there is a growing interest among social scientists and social policymakers in examining the types of support services that might be needed by people who provide informal care for older people and others. A further aim of the present dissertation is therefore to describe and analyse the carer support that is provided by municipalities and voluntary organizations in Sweden. The dissertation examines whether this support is aimed directly or indirectly at caregivers and discusses whether the Swedish government’s special financial investment in help for carers actually led to any changes in the support provided by municipalities and voluntary organisations. The main types of carer support offered by the municipalities were payment for care-giving, relief services and day care. The chief forms of carer support provided by the voluntary organizations were support groups, training groups, and a number of services aimed primarily at the elderly care recipients (Study III). Patterns of change in municipal carer support could be discerned fairly soon. The Swedish government’s special allocation to municipalities and voluntary organisations appears to have led to an increase in the number of municipalities providing direct support for carers, such as training, information material and professional caregiver consultants. On the other hand, only minor changes could be discerned in the pattern of carer support services provided by the voluntary organizations. This demonstrates stability and the relatively low impact that policy initiatives seem to have on voluntary organizations as providers (Study IV). In studies III and IV the empirical material consists of survey data from mail questionnaires sent to municipalities and voluntary organizations in the County of Stockholm. In the fields of social planning and social work there appears to be a need to clarify the aims of support services for informal carers. Should the support be direct or indirect? Should it be used to supplement or substitute caregivers? In this process of reappraisal it will be important to take the needs of both caregivers and care recipients into account when developing existing and new forms of support. How informal caregivers and care recipients interact with the care system as a whole is undeniably a fertile field for further research.

Stroke är en vanlig sjukdom som årligen drabbar 30 000 personer i Sverige. Personer som insjuknar i stroke kan drabbas av fysiska och psykiska funktionsnedsättningar. Konsekvenserna av stroke drabbar även de närstående som många gånger tar på sig vårdgivarrollen till den anhöriga. Närståendevårdare till en anhörig som har insjuknat i stroke får bära ett tungt vårdansvar. Syftet med detta vetenskapliga arbete var därför att belysa närståendevårdares upplevelser av att vårda en anhörig som har insjuknat i stroke. Arbetet utfördes som en litteraturstudie där 16 vetenskapliga artiklar granskades. I resultatet framkom två teman, Att vårda är betungande och Att vårda är att anpassa sig. Resultatet visade att närståendevårdarna upplevde en tung börda, ensamhet och frustration. Närståendevårdarna upplevde att det var jobbigt och tidskrävande att anpassa sin vardag till den anhöriga. Det framkom att närståendevårdarna saknade stöd, information och utbildning från hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal för att kunna hantera den nya livssituationen. Sjuksköterskan, liksom all hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal, bör uppmärksamma närståendevårdares situation. Önskvärt är mer omvårdnadsforskning på närståendevårdares copingstrategier, och hur, var och när sjuksköterskan ska ge närståendevårdare stöd, information och utbildning. / Stroke is a common disease that annually affects 30 000 people in Sweden. Stroke survivors may suffer physical and psychological disabilities. The impact of stroke also affects the next of kin´s of the stroke survivor who often become an informal caregiver. Informal caregivers of a relative stroke survivor may experience a heavy caring responsibility. The purpose of this scientific study was therefore to illuminate informal caregivers experiences of caring for a relative who has suffered a stroke. The study was conducted as a literature review in which 16 scientific articles were reviewed. In the result two themes were found, To care is burdened and To care is to adapt. The result showed that informal caregivers experienced heavy burden, loneliness and frustration. Informal caregivers felt that it was difficult and time consuming to adjust their daily lives to the relative. It was found that informal caregivers did not get enough support, information and education from health- professionals which they would have needed to learn how to cope with their new life situation. Nurses, and all health professionals, should pay attention to the situation of the informal caregivers. Continued nursing research on informal caregivers copingstrategies, and, how, were and when the nurse will give informal caregivers support, information and education is desirable.

Financial services to the poor are seen as a principal way to achieve goals of poverty reduction and job creation. This study explores the dynamic of microcredit clients with informal sector characteristics. These characteristics include number of employees, registration status, having a permanent address, being based at home, being based in an open space, operating from a temporary place, and government support of businesses. In recent years, the informal sector on the West Bank has grown to become a major source of job creation for poor Palestinians. Using data collected by the author, this study finds that a majority of the responding microcredit clients are in the informal sector and some of them use microcredit to create a job for themselves because they had no alternative. There is some interest directed towards formal registration from lenders and borrowers, while general progress, in terms of formalization, is found to be fairly insignificant. Finally, we do not find that microcredit increases the probability of less informal sector characteristics acknowledged by microcredit clients. Therefore, while other factors may explain lack of formalization, microcredit is found not to provide enough stimulus on its own to lead questionnaire respondents away from the informal sector.

With this study I wanted to capture the experience of support and increase the knowledge of what it means for women who are living with a husband who suffers from dementia. To do so I conducted four interviews and used an informal questionnaire. The result shows that there are four key words that can symbolize what the women experience as support: communica-tion, freedom, understanding and knowledge. The women’s experience of support range from meaningful and secure to not satisfying and complicated. Living with a husband who suffers from dementia has made their lives very different from before. But even if they sometimes are in a tough situation they want to take care of their husbands. Being able to go away a few hours or half a day once a week, can sometimes be enough and gives the women a sense of satisfaction. On the other hand it is not certain that the support offered is what the women need or that it is satisfactory for the husband. The link between the women’s experience of support and that of their husband is strong. And if the husband is not pleased nor will the wife be.