Uppsatsen fokuserar på Livrustkammarens utställning Maktspel (13/3 2014 - 5/1 2015) och handlar om historiebruk i populärkulturen. Med utgångspunkt i den svenska renässansen görs kopplingar till Englands elisabetanska tid samt den fiktiva kontinenten Westeros i HBO:s tv-serie Game of Thrones. Intentionen från museet är att besökaren ska ifrågasätta historiebrukets olika användningsområden och samtidigt belysa historiens dramatiska inslag. Jag har intresserat mig för de parallella maktspelen som sker i utställningsrummet utöver de berättelser som Livrustkammaren presenterar. Uppsatsen syftar till att lyfta fram museer och utställningars iscensättningskaraktär och min ambition är studera den interna ordningen i iscensättningen.   Uppsatsen är uppdelad i fyra tematiska huvudkapitel. Utställningens makt, Klädedräktens makt, Museets makt och sist men inte minst Uttryckets makt. Vardera kapitel behandlar makt ur olika perspektiv, både ur museets intentioner, museiverksamhetens utveckling, kläders kommunikativa egenskaper och uttrycksmedels inverkan på besökarna. Detta gör jag med hjälp av deltagande fältarbete och med föreställningsanalys. Modevetenskap och museivetenskap fördjupar förståelsen för den specifika utställningens komplement. Tillsammans kompletterar kapitlen varandra och skapar en fördjupad helhet av utställningen. Uppsatsen diskuterar hur ett museum och deras utställningsverksamhet är iscensatt kunskap. I mitt avslutande kapitel Livrustkammaren har bytt kostym kommenterar jag den utvecklingen som jag noterat på Livrustkammaren samt vilket symboliskt roll Maktspel har i den utvecklingen. De fyra rummen som utställningen består av symboliserar i mitt slutresultat hur makten inom museiväsendet succesivt förflyttats från museets kunskap till att inkludera besökarna och tolkningar. / The thesis focus on the exhibition Power Games presented at the Royal Armoury in Stockholm during 14th of March 2014 until 5th of January 2015. It involves the practice of history in popular culture. The exhibition incorporates stories of Swedish Renaissance with the English Elizabethan period along with Shekhar Kapur's films about Elizabeth I as well as the dramatic fictional continent of Westeros in HBO's TV series Game of Thrones. The intention of Power games is for the visitor to question the usage of history as well as emphasizing dramatic elements within history. I´ve taken an interest in the different power plays within the exhibition. The thesis discusses museums and exhibitions ways of staging knowledge. My intention is to investigate the elements of this staging.   The thesis is divided into four main thematic chapters: The power of exhibition, The power of costume, The power of museums and The power of expression. The aim with this thesis is to take a closer look at these specific contexts from a different angle and combine them by applying fashion studies, fieldwork and performance analysis. In my final chapter The changed costume of the Royal Armoury I comment on the accentuated development and the symbolic role that Power games have in this progress. The four rooms of the exhibition represent a new way of staging within museums. The power has gradually shifted from only involving objects and knowledge of the museum to including a narrative of visitors and different interpretations of history. The Royal Armoury has challenged old conventions of museum and started to question their power position.

This study investigates the existence of an ethnic separation in different settings of leisure activities. I examine the relationship between race, gender, socioeconomic status, and education with respect to the usage of popular cultural activities and high cultural activities to demonstrate the racial disparity occurring in both. A literature review pertaining to the usage of outdoor recreation, as in camping and hiking evidences the influence of racism on the disparity in Non-white participation. In contrast to out-door leisure activities, literature evidences the influence of class instead of race for the disparity in indoor leisure activities. Using the 1993 General Social Survey (GSS), I am able to arrive at the conclusion that the type of leisure chosen by an ethnic group relates much less to the educational level, economic status or the place of residence as it does to the perception of the socially constructed settings.

Adapting the concept of the ”popular cultural memory” and its necessary “context knowledge” established by Karin Kukkonen, this bachelor thesis seeks to examine how this memory is “at work” and expresses itself in contemporary fiction, by doing an intertextual reading of the swedish author Amanda Svensson's debut Hey Dolly. Within the intertextual structures of Hey Dolly the reader encounters allusions and references that address almost everything from contemporary popular culture to established authors in the swedish canon, mainly as means for the characters to help them express their emotions and thoughts, by “choosing” from already available content of popular culture to use and modify. The intertextuality alluding to the popular cultural memory does at the same time address the concept of the ideal reader throughout the novel. This ideal reader is addressed by the narrator as one of those “in the know”, as competent enough to see this “popular cultural memory” at work in the novel by “getting” these intertextual allusions and references. Thus any (real) reader has to be equipped with the same expertise of popular culture as the narrator in order to fully understand this intertextuality. The intertextual practices of Hey Dolly should be understood as traits used by the author to express and implicate her/his awareness of the texts “surroundings”, traits indeed found even in the name of Hey Dolly's main protagonist, symptomatically influenced from contemporary, western American commercial culture. Given the premiss where this intertextual framework relies on a heavily contemporary influenced popular cultural context, it potentially would run the risk of not being understood, should future popular culture contexts operate under different premisses. In this regard the high cultural canon memory would have to be regarded as being more stable and “reliable” than the popular cultural memory, as the norms for the canon are more fixed and rarely negotiated.  Arguing that this intertextual reading of Hey Dolly is of an immense value and significant for understanding how the Zeitgeist operates and should be approached, this thesis is still based on the premiss where the intertextual reading of Hey Dolly has largely been nonexistent when looking at how Hey Dolly has been received. Instead in the swedish media we find a consistent dominance of how its reception has been read from almost exclusively a gendered point of view, where Hey Dolly is seen and regarded as the forthcoming of a new representation of the girl/woman ideal. The intertextual reading of Hey Dolly would instead be regarded as “secondary” at best, where the story by itself is self sufficient, even if the reader lacks the necessary context knowledge of how this ”popular cultural memory” is at work in the text.