Entrepreneurship and the Swedish start-up community have been on an upswing in recent years. There are more incubators and accelerators for growing businesses than ever before. With a growing start-up community there is usually risk capital and finance solutions behind these companies. The climate for risk capital and other financial solutions for ventures to fund their businesses is heavily skewed towards male entrepreneurs, i.e., companies founded by men tend to receive the lion share of the capital invested, which leaves women-led ventures underinvested. The experiences female entrepreneurs have in acquiring financial capital and the effects these encounters have on their entrepreneurial endeavours is something this study aims to investigate. Studies have been made on investor behaviour towards female entrepreneurs. These studies argue that the behaviours from investors are different in nature depending on the gender of the entrepreneur, and that this can be a possible explanation for why the risk capital allocation is skewed. In order to research this in further detail, a qualitative research study was developed where Swedish female entrepreneurs were interviewed. The entrepreneurs in the study were asked to explain in a general way their experiences dealing with investors, if they have ever experienced discriminatory behaviour from investors, and if this had any effects on their entrepreneurial ambitions. The majority of entrepreneurs in the study had not succumbed to discriminatory behaviour from investors. There was, however, a perception that female investors understood the entrepreneurs' businesses in a more prominent way than male investors. The entrepreneurs that had experienced discrimination during the investor meetings all consequently made sure to be accompanied by male partners in a chaperon manner, in order to validate their presence in the investor meeting room.

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine the activity at the library and preschool at Kristineberg (a part of the town of Borås) and its underlying approach. How do the activities agree with the ideological attitudes of the 1970s? To answer these questions I have carried out a case study based on qualitative interviews. The theoretical background includes ideas of the library, the community center and the cultural activity at the library. From this a theoretical synthesis containing two anti-poles is made using Skot-Hansen’s presentation of attitudes to culture: The humanistic and the sociological attitude. The empirical material has been structured by means of a content analysis, using keywords and arguments associated with each side of the theoretical synthesis. My conclusion is that the activities at the library and the preschool of Kristineberg show a great similarity with the sociological attitude of the 1970s. In discussions about the branch library, the preschool and the community center you can find ideas about creating a meeting place in the local area with the function of integrating people and stimulating their creativity. This is found in the attitude of the informants as well as in the activity at Kristineberg. In spite of this there are also humanistic elements but only to some extent.

Literary debates about canon occur regularly. In the summer of 2006 such a debate took place in Sweden. The aim of this Master thesis is to examine the debate to identify the different discourses and what they reveal about ideas concerning the role of literature in society. The empirical material used for the analysis consists of 46 debate articles from three important newspapers. The combined theory and method applied is the discourse analysis described in Ernesto Laclau’s & Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory. The discourse theory is combined with Pierre Bourdieu’s theories about power, habitas, taste, field and capital. In this thesis the authors of the articles are looked upon as belonging to the cultural elite. They have positions in the literary field that, in relation to other positions, give them symbolic capital. In the theories of Bourdieu culture and education play a dominant role in the reproduction of differences between social classes and are an important arena for symbolic violence. Relating to research it is in this thesis argued that the canon in the school literary curriculum plays the same role. This is also related to questions of power and the post-modern situation. Four discourses are identified in the analysis: The global discourse, the national discourse, the self-Bildung discourse and the teaching discourse. The discourses are in the analyses connected to cultural views and illustrated in a theoretical model. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This master’s thesis attends to a debate in the Swedish daily press concerning the public library which arose after the Swedish Moderate Party’s publication of their cultural political document Kulturen 2.0. This document contains a number of standpoints, of which three directly concern the public library: charges on book loans, libraries on contract and politically balanced purchase policy. In all, 28 articles are examined by means of an idea and ideological analysis. The purpose is to find out what is behind the conflicts surrounding attitudes about the public library's mission and activity in an era of needs for change. On the basis of Douglas Raber’s account of three ideological strategies - social, conservative and populist - that constitutes the theoretical framework, the ideologies behind the ideas that stand out in the debate are to be identified. Four main conclusions are deduced from twelve preliminary inferences: (A) the combination of the social and the conservative strategy by the critics in the debate; (B) the conflict between critics' position according to (A) and populist strategy by advocates of the Moderate Party’s suggestions; (C) and (D) treats intrinsic dilemmas in the Moderate Party’s idea systems, there social respectively conservative strategy stands against populist strategy. Dilemmas concern either inconsistencies between different levels or on a metaphysical level with their fundamental principles contradicting each other. Factors influencing the results are constituted of various contents ascribed to certain central concepts such as education, access and democracy. This associates the statement ”the public library as the cornerstone of democracy” with alternate meanings. / Uppsatsnivå: D