Dramatic changes in the environmental patterns represent a threat to human beings and life on this planet. However, due to differences in the social roles and rights between women and men, a gender perspective is essential to understand how these changes in the environment are affecting individuals in their societies. Even though gender is appointed as a relevant factor when reflecting on the relationship human beings and nature, women’s knowledge, perspectives and needs are being overlooked by the Environmental Education research and theory. This research aims at investigating the relevance of a gender perspective in Environmental Education programs in societies where women are the main responsible for the household and childcare. To this end, the activities of two environmental NGOs – one from India and one from Brazil – have been investigated through the case study methodology. As per the methods applied, semi-structure interviews have been carried out with 10 women from both countries. Through gender lenses the formal and informal forces that influence social roles and power dynamics in the referred societies are analyzed. The empirical findings demonstrate that in both Indian and Brazilian societies women are still the main house and children caretakers. Such role implies the responsibility of deciding about energy and water consumption, waste management and other domestic expenditures. Empirical results suggest that when a woman is environmental-aware she has the potential to make more sustainable choices and thus educate other members of the family. However, being the main responsible for the private sphere can deprive women from playing a major role in the public level where key decision about the environment are taken. The present study represents a key contribution to the Environmental Education theory and research as it addresses the poorly explored field of Environmental Education and Gender issues.

Att förstå och förklara krig och vad som avgör krig kan bidra till en stats krigföringsförmåga. En liten stat som exempelvis Sverige, vilken antas inte ha ambition att angripa annan stat, löper risken att tvingas utkämpa krig som underlägsen en starkare motståndare. Detta kommer då troligen att ske på eget territorium mot motståndare som skapat de förutsättningar denne bedömer ska räcka till seger. Då två parter har olika förutsättningar att föra striden, exempelvis i styrka, skapas asymmetri mellan de båda.   Denna uppsats söker bidra till kunskap om hur resultat i asymmetriska krig kan förklaras. Det faktum att den på förhand avgjort starkare parten inte uppnår sina målsättningar med kriget i ens hälften av fallen i modern tid är en gåta. Svaret på denna gåta söks genom att pröva och jämföra två teorier, vilka var för sig påstår sig förklara varför ett asymmetriskt krig kan sluta med seger för den svagare parten. Teorierna prövas genom en komparativ litteraturstudie av två asymmetriska krig, Ryssland - Tjetjenien 1994-1996 och 1999-2009.   Resultatet visar att båda de teorier som prövas är relevanta men att ingen av dem enskilt kan erbjuda en fullständig förklaring av resultatet i dessa krig. Den visar också på ett antal ytterligare faktorer som ej kan bortses från då man söker förklara resultatet i ett asymmetriskt krig.

Erfarenheter i Försvarsmakten påvisar att glapp föreligger, mellan vad som skulle kunna definieras som Försvarsmaktens koncept för att säkerställa internationellt insatta förbands stridsvärde avseende kunskaper och färdigheter och stödet förbanden själva upplever sig behöva, inför och under genomförande av internationell insats.   Studien utgår från forskning och teoribildningar om lärande och minne, beskriver och analyserar utifrån dessa Försvarsmaktens ”koncept” för att säkerställa soldaters kompetens under tiden de genomför internationell tjänst. Den jämför Försvarsmaktens agerande med Försvarsmaktens pedagogiska grundsyn och ett, med stöd av teoribildningarna, konstruerat idealkoncept.    Studien påvisar att Försvarsmakten inte ger förband som tjänstgör utomlands tillräckliga förutsättningar för att kunna vidmakthålla uppövad förmåga. Det framgår att man med relativt små medel kan förbättra möjligheterna att vidmakthålla kunskaper och färdigheter i insatsområdet.

Antalet ensamkommande flyktingbarn som söker asyl i Sverige ökar för varje år. I samband med detta ställs allt högre krav på hur de ensamkommande flyktingbarnen bemöts och behandlas i enlighet med barnkonventionen, som Sverige skrivit under. Många ensamkommande flyktingbarn hamnar däribland på HVB-hem (hem för vård eller boende). På HVB-hemmen arbetar vårdpersonal som tar hand om flyktingbarnen. Syftet med studien är att försöka förstå, om- och hur personal som tar hand om ensamkommande flyktingbarn lever upp till barnkonventionen på kommunal nivå inom ett HVB hem och hur de förstår sitt arbete samt vilka dilemman som kan uppstå. Data baserade på semistrukturerade intervjuer med personalen analyseras med den interprativa fenomenologiska metoden. I studien undersöks personalens arbets- och förhållningssätt till barnkonventionen i relation till de ensamkommande flyktingbarnen på HVB-hemmet. Lipskys professionsteori om gräsrotsbyråkrater används för att förstå hur och på vilka sätt personalen på boendet påverkas i arbetet av politiska beslut som ska verkställas i praktiken. Resultatet av studien visar på att det finns vissa barriärer för vårdpersonalen. Dessa barriärer återfinns i form av resurser och bristfälliga handlingsutrymmen som gör att personalen på HVB-hemmet påverkas i arbets- och förhållningssättet gentemot barnkonventionen och de ensamkommande flyktingbarnen. Vidare kan makt och kontroll av högtuppsatta personer påverka arbetssättet eftersom det kan skapa begränsningar för vårdpersonalen. Detta överensstämmer med Lipskys professionsteori som förklarar hur socialarbetare styrs av politiska beslut och riktlinjer. Resultatet sammanför antagandet om att vårdpersonalen brottas med att förhålla sig till olika krav och samtidigt göra ett så bra jobb som möjligt. Att beakta barnkonventionen kan därför bli lidande och hamna i bakgrunden under arbetets gång.

The Broad Front for Peace, Democracy and Social Justice is a Colombian coalition party formed by an array of left-wing social and political movements. It is characterized by an agenda consisting of increased citizen participation and the promotion of the Colombian peace process. The fledgling party has announced its plans to partake in the local elections scheduled for late 2015, with the intent of accruing support in advance of the upcoming presidential ballot. However, similar wide-ranging leftist political projects have traditionally struggled to consolidate themselves on the Colombian political scene. Thus, in order to achieve the comprehensive political and social changes it advocates, the Broad Front has to focus on long-term persistence. This study proposes a theoretical framework measuring social movement-based parties’ potential for persistence. The framework consists of three variables. Firstly, parties concerned with persistence have to be able to offer a participative linkage that existing parties fail to provide. Secondly, they have to exercise this linkage by building bottom-up party structures and maintaining horizontal and democratic internal organization. Finally, they have to develop a leadership of an ideological/charismatic nature, favoring constituency representation over electoral competition. Simultaneous adoption of all three cascading variables is likely to improve the capacity of a new social movement-based party to persist long-term. According to the analysis, the coalition party satisfies all three conditions described by the variables in the framework for persistence. Therefore, the conclusion is that the Broad Front for Peace, Democracy and Social Justice has the potential to persist as a political project.

China has among the world’s fastest growing urban region and faced enormous environmental and social challenges that requires a forward thinking of urban planning, which integrates environmental sustainability and social equity into urban resilience. In China, national and provincial urban policies have long focused on economic and industrial developments, whereas social welfare was not account for urban planning until very recently. After decades of rapid socioeconomic development, China has now entered an urbanization stage at which social development becomes as urgent as economic and environmental transformation. Rural migrant as a lower social group is a product of China’s rigorous rural-urban household registration (Hukou) that has caused plenty of social tragedies. Although governmental authorities have vowed to elevate rural migrants’ social status, as a heterogeneous social group, rural migrants received very little research attention by far. To examine rural migrants’ demographic information and their social status, this research employs happiness as a theme to carry out a questionnaire survey. In total, 1,267 responses were collected at bus and train stations in Changsha, a second-tier city located in the middle of China. According to the survey, rural migrants’ happiness status is in close relation with some demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and education. In general, men are unhappier than women; the ethnic minorities are unhappier than the ethnic majority-Han; and the highly educated are unhappier than those with lower educational attainment. By performing a stepwise regression, statistics uncover that rural migrants’ happiness status in Changsha is positively associated with a stable income, a job with insurance and a well sustained family tie. Based on the study results, I propose three suggestions for social urban planning in China’s second-tier cities: (1) to set up a commercial district that embraces diverse ethnic groups, where the minor ethnic rural migrants can work and live with their own cultures. (2) To gather rural migrants by industry and establish labour unions that can represent for rural migrants’ interests. (3) To maintain the discriminated Hukou system, but define Hukou identity based on rural migrants’ taxation conditions.     Keywords: rural migrants, demographic characteristics, happiness factors, social urban planning

Nanoparticles are used more and more extensively in today's society, especially in the industry sector. Humans get exposed to nanoparticles daily but the effect is a topic that has not been fully explored yet and its effect on humans is still unknown.The purpose of this project was to investigate whether the size of nanoparticles is a factor that influences their effect on humans, mainly the effect on blood activation. In order to study this, nanopaticles of polystyrene with three different sizes (75, 120 and 260 nm) were selected and incubated in a human whole blood model, the Chandler loop. The samples from the Chandler loop experiments were analysed with three different ELISA's: C3a, terminal complement complex (TCC, sC5b-9) and thrombin-antithrombincomplexes (TAT).The results in this study indicate that the smallest nanoparticle has a higher potential for activating the coagulation system than the larger ones. The complement system did not seem to be significantly activated from the nanoparticles. More experiments needs to be done in order to get a better statistic value but just as it is the results look promising and there is a tendency for a higher activation of the coagulation system with the 75 nm nanoparticles.

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Can women`s rights be realized in a religiously conservative, non-liberal country such as Saudi Arabia? Viewed by many as THE leading Muslim nation in the Arab world, this oil rich kingdom is also well known to be friendly with the United States as well as other western countries. And also for creating and upholding some of the most conservative Sharia-based laws against its people, and especially against its women. Nevertheless, in the past few years women in Saudi Arabia have taken careful but courageous steps into public space, and an increasing number of Saudi women are now graduating and taking jobs abroad. How can women in Saudi Arabia strengthen their rights, and what are the most significant challenges they face in this process? How can the world community and especially western-liberal actors, states and organizations support this development instead of becoming an obstacle?All over the world women are faced with discriminatory power structures. A common contemporary view is that these power structures are at their strongest and most oppressive in Muslim countries and communities. Islam and Muslims are being demonized in the western part of the world. Violations against human rights and against women do take place in Muslim societies. Women in Saudi Arabia are in many ways being treated as lesser because of their gender. But is Islam really the main antagonist in this respect? I believe not. And I also believe it is important to challenge this much held view in order to make way for a fruitful discussion on how to empower women within the current normative frames of their societies and religion.Chandra Talpade Mohanty`s critique on “white” western-oriented feminism and Abdullahi Ahmed An Naʹim`s cross cultural perspectives on human rights and how to present these to the Muslim world in order for them to earn a permanent residence there along with Asifa Quraishi-Landes critical analysis of the way that western actors, states and organizations engage themselves in human rights violations taking place in Muslim societies will provide my theoretical background for this paper. Their perspectives will help design and present a more nuanced view on the possibilities and challenges facing the realization of women`s rights in a patriarchal society such as Saudi Arabia.Change is always possible. However, in order for a society to change its type if governance, its political power structure and its long held cultural and religious views and traditions it cannot simply be told by someone else that change is needed. Fundamental change of such vital factors has to happen from within the society itself. And the leading actors in this process will depend on its peoples support and the right kind of support from the outside world.

A common discussion within the international development cooperation discourse is that of ownership and dependency. A discussion which has become of great significance within the context of Myanmar as more and more international and foreign development agencies and organizations have been aloud into the country during the major structural reform process Myanmar is currently undergoing. When the state, as a public service provider, is not able to supply what is needed within the villages around Myanmar these international and foreign organizations and agencies become of great importance as they have access to the necessary funds to provide these services. The support to the villages is often distributed through the most deeply rooted and inclusive forum there are within these villages, namely community committees. This study investigates how the vertical relationship between the INGOs, their local partner NGOs and the community committees affect the role and possibly the legitimacy of the community committees. This is done through a case study of a village that is currently provided support through its two community committees by two INGOs and their local partner NGO. To understand the role and legitimacy interviews have been conducted with the legitimizing environment of the community committees as well as with the community committees and the local NGO themselves to try to identify the affects of the aid on the perceived role and legitimacy of the community committees. The study found that the relationship does have a significant affect on the role and legitimacy of the community committees. It seems that the relationship does, through a top-down approach, influence the community committees to monopolize the definition of development within their village. Due to this the community they are based within also considers the community committees legitimate.