As the name suggests and according to the developers’ intention, Social Networking Sites (SNS) are designed as tools for users to make friends and express themselves. However, the usage of SNS apparently goes beyond these aspects with more plurality and possibilities unforeseen by their conceivers. Much evidence shows that communicating about the environment and nature on social networking sites is a prominent phenomenon. However, few researchers have shed light on the individual use of SNS for environmental communication. Individuals in both China and Sweden generate, seek, disseminate and discuss environmental news and information on SNS. This exploratory study employs qualitative methods to examine this practice and compares the differences and similarities between Chinese and Swedish individuals in terms of environmental communication. Focusing on motivation and engagement, the study explains and describes why and how individuals in these two countries are engaged in environmental communication. The study also examines the social and political implications of this phenomenon by discussing the relationship among new technology, communication and social changes.

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The purpose of this work is to investigate how 4-5 year olds perceptions of materials and material properties can be developed through an educational activity. The study is based on two interviews with eight children in that age category. The interviews were conducted before and after an activity where the children were first introduced to the subject by the tale of The three little pigs (Harris, 2009) and then given the opportunity to explore various materials related to the book. The kids got to experiment and explore how water affected materials and to compare different materials properties. The children were also attracted to build and create the material that was offered during the activity. The results of the survey show that children through practical exploration and surveying of the material increased their perceptions of concepts, properties and use of the materials in question. The children explored the materials with their minds and with the body in interaction with their peers and participating adult. The children were inspired by the book and each other in their creative work. Through dialogue and communication during the activity, similarities and differences were compared and the children developed their conceptual understanding.

The aim of this thesis is to interpretate the stories The Living, son of the Vigilant, The Bird and Salaman and Absal, written by one of the greatest scholars of medieval Islamic East, Ibn Sina (980-1037). Unlike his philosophical and medical writings these stories have a different character and create a coherent narrative cycle. Based on their themes, narrative methods and symbolism they should be in my opinion called initiation stories. The main aim of this dissertation is thus to verify this hypothesis by means of the hermeneutic interpretation. These stories, read as a coherent cycle, show typical features of initiation genre: the hero can't find his way, his existential condition makes him desperate, he is consumed by strong desire for reaching a higher ontological degree, meets an initiator, goes through initiation rites of passage, crosses the border between the uninitiated and initiated space, reaches the final initiation through symbolic death. The interpretation of each of Ibn Sina's three writings reveals an inner coherence of the stories: The Living, son of the Vigilant focuses on the motive of an initiator-guide and the description of the stages on the initiation way leading upwards, The Bird tells in an emotional way about the state preceding the initiation and then concentrates on...

The primary goal of this study is to observe how the meaning of nostalgia is negotiated and remediated in Li Ziqi’s short videos, and understand the construction and expression of pastoral images in the video, by examining its social modality of the audiencing site and the compositional and social modalities of the image site through a Critical Visual Approach(CVA). Except for CVA, Remix as a thinking tool helps to frame data selection, mixed methods and theories throughout. To be specific, the aim of this study is to examine Li Ziqi’s communication of nostalgia online via short videos, showcases how the pastoral characteristics are evoked in the videos and the relationship between nostalgia of pastoral life and short videos. Moreover, it is of interest to think about what nostalgia communication on short videos say about society. When it comes to the two sites, firstly, an ethnographic method of thick descriptions is used to study media text and selected comments on the audiencing site. Secondly, on the image site, compositional analysis on selected visual materials is used to examine its compositions and then signs and meanings embedded in them are analyzed through semiotic analysis and interpreted by thick descriptions. As for theories, nostalgia and media, the logic of social acceleration, remediation and new media, and simulacra and simulation are applied to facilitate discussion.

I denna uppsats undersöks de olika samhällen som skildras i De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar utifrån premissen att de är medieekologiska landskap som samverkar med, men även påverkar, de individer som lever i dem. Anyurus roman präglas genomgående av en ständig medial närvaro, vare sig det är böcker, tv-nyheter, mobiltelefoner eller videoskärmar, som romanens karaktärer tvingas förhålla sig till. Genom en analys av interaktionen mellan romanens karaktärer och de olika mediala gränssnitt som skildras, där såväl karaktärer som gränssnitt betraktas som medieekologiska komponenter, är förhoppningen att ett medieekologiskt perspektiv kan ge en mer nyanserad och fördjupad förståelse för hur dessa samhällen upprättas och sedermera fungerar. Analysen kommer således utgå från frågor som rör den funktion de mediala gränssnitten som skildras i De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar har, och hur de kan sägas samverka i etableringen av romanens medieekologier, och följaktligen vilken effekt de olika medieekologiska landskapen har på romanens karaktärer och deras förhållande till varandra och till samhället. Vidare kommer det tidsresemotiv som skildras i De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar analyseras ur ett medieekologiskt perspektiv, genom att undersöka just hur olika konstellationer av medieekologiska komponenter i romanens två tidslinjer leder till utvecklingen av alternativa samhällen.

Ibn Jumay''s (d. c. 594/1198) commentary on the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) occupies an important place in the history of medicine for it is the first Canon commentary written by a physician and thus stands at the start of a tradition extending over 500 years. In addition, it is a so-far neglected source for our understanding of mediaeval Islamic medicine. The present thesis analyses the commentary with the aims of (1) determining the methods by which the court physician composed his treatise and (2) understanding why Ibn Jumay' undertook to prepare a commentary on one of the most thorough medical compendia of the middle ages. Chapter One presents the biography of Ibn Jumay', reveals that his religion had little impact on his writings and surveys his library which played a pivotal role in the composition of the commentary. Chapter Two investigates Ibn Jumay''s methodology in the entire commentary; it reveals that with his philological and source-critical methods Ibn Jumay' wanted to establish an authoritative reading of the Canon and to demonstrate the high degree of his erudition. Chapter Three focuses on selected passages in the commentary in form of three case studies. Ibn Jumay''s comments on anatomy/dissection, assorted materia medica and headaches demonstrate the court physician’s reverence for ancient authorities and his quest to revive and refine their teachings. Chapter Four contextualises Ibn Jumay''s methods and agenda by comparing them to those of other relevant scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The thesis concludes by arguing that Ibn Jumay''s commentary was part of his revival of the art of medicine and his attempt to gain power in the medical tradition by attaching his name to one of the greatest scholars of his time — the ra'īs Ibn Sīnā.

I den här uppsatsen undersöks den intertextualitetsteori som framkommer i Kallifatides 2000-talslitteratur, och hur den kan användas för att läsa de autofiktiva inslagen i romanerna. Uppsatsen kommer fram till att Kallifatides ansluter sig till en poststrukturalistisk syn på intertextualitet, där intertextualitet inte så mycket handlar om direkta referenser i ett verk till ett annat, utan utgör en del i den poststrukturalistiska insikten att allt är konstruktion. Genom att människans syn på världen anses sakna essens och istället konstrueras genom språket kan text med denna syn endast referera till andra språkliga konstruktioner, det vill säga, annan text. Livet är något som ”levs mellan två citattecken”. Parallellt tycks dock Kallifatides intertextualitet inneha en mindre språkburen dimension som går tillbaka på en mer konkret historieskatt, och ett arv av kollektiva erfarenheter. Överlag ansluter sig Kallifatides trots allt till kända intertextualitetsteoretikers, såsom Kristeva och Barthes, syn att språket bär på en inneboende intertextualitet. I uppsatsen finner jag emellertid att Kallifatides skiljer sig från nämnda teoretiker i sin inställning till detta beroende. Där Kristeva och Barthes ser en förlorad individuell frihet och agens, ser Kallifatides en vunnen samhörighet och gemenskap. Insikten om synen på intertextualitet i Kallifatides litteratur används sedan i en läsning av de autofiktiva inslagen i verken. Där finner jag att man med en medvetenhet om nämnda intertextualitetsdiskussion kan läsa de autofiktiva inslagen som en sorts praktisk tillämpning av tankarna kring beroendet av myt och fiktion. Sammanblandandet av verken och det litterära arvet, med författarens liv, blir en exemplifiering av idén att livet levs inom redan uppdragna narrativa strukturer. Genom att blanda dåtid och nutid, fiktion och verklighet, exemplifierar Kallifatides att ”det är detaljerna som skiljer oss” från historien och myten, och ”ibland inte ens de”. Individen och författaren lever på så vis texter som redan är skrivna. Vidare menar jag i uppsatsen att de autofiktiva inslagen på detta vis upprättar en sorts ”oklar linje” mellan författare och verk och författare och myt, där synen på förhållandena mellan verk och litterärt arv, och författaren, inte ses uteslutande som enkelriktat kausala. Författarens relation till verket blir alltså inte likriktad: istället för att författaren allena formar verket, formar verket också författaren. Även om skrivandet visserligen anses sprunget ur erfarenhet, ger det på samma gång struktur och form till erfarenheten. Fiktionen är på så vis en del av konstruktionen av oss som individer. Relationen mellan författaren och myten är mer kausalt riktad, det är arvet som påverkar författaren. Den oklara linjen handlar här mer om en oklarhet kring var författarens liv börjar och var myten slutar. Sammantaget läses autofiktiva inslagen som en praktisk tillämpning av de teoretiska resonemangen. Funktionen blir att illustrera tidlösheten hos det litterära arvets narrativa strukturer, och att peka på författarens dubbelriktade förhållande till sin fiktion.

This thesis aims to analyze and interpret a number of central works – Vimpelstaden (1985), Som en gång varit äng (1988), Blomman och människobenet (2003), I en cylinder i vattnet av vattengråt (2005) and Vad hjälper det en människa om hon häller rent vatten över sig i alla sina dagar (2009) – by the Swedish poet Ann Jäderlund (1955-) in the context of phenomenology and affect theory. The analysis consists of three chapters and proceeds chronologically with technical scrutinies of separate phases of Jäderlund’s œuvre – from the aphasic-like treatment of established phraseologies in Vimpelstaden and frozen expressions of the botanical discourse in Som en gång varit äng, to the uncanny focus on perceptual patterns as such in her later works. Throughout these analyses the thesis observes a series of techniques with which the author presents us with a kind of sensory paradox, through a) creating language-based complex appearances, non-appropriable by means of the normal perceptual patterns of embodied perception, while still b) simulating, and thus implicitly emphasizing, these appearances as something already concretely looked at and felt. In short, to experience what cannot be experienced, to live the unlivable. Many of these technical observations made are pinned down analytically using concepts from the field of cognitive poetics, namely George Lakoff and Mark Johnsons findings of experiential image schemata underpinning spoken phraseologies and their influential theories on conceptual metaphors. The interpretative conclusion following these observations is that Jäderlund handles her writing aesthetically as a kind of sensory material in a very literal sense, a “being of sensation” in the terminology of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Not as means of experiential or intellectual representation, not as some sort of critical enterprise through mere language-gaming of free- floating signifiers – but as a material able to preserve and perform sensory processes immanent to its own material compilation, a tendency that earlier research fails to grasp or simply ignores altogether. Thus the affectivity immanent to the literary material – often being the starting point of studies in affect theory and cognitive poetics – is here proven to be a characteristic, thereby playing the role more of a conclusion than a field of inquiry. The aesthetics of interrogating the limits of sensory experience, introducing a sort of crisis to embodied perception through the experience of poetic language – and the experience of it as having a “metaphysical significance”, as French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau- Ponty puts it – is articulated in the thesis against the background of influential readings of modern art carried out by Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze.

Many of us believe that poetry, specifically activist and experimental poetry, is capable of intervening in our society, as though the right words will call people to action, give the voiceless a voice, and reorder the systems that perpetuate oppression, even if there are few examples of such instances. Nevertheless, my project looks at these very moments, when poetry alters the fabric of our real, to explore the ways these poetical interventions are, in effect, instances of what I have come to call “dissensual” poetry. Using Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus and the distribution of the sensible, my project investigates the ways in which dissensual poetry ruptures the distribution of the sensible—“our definite configurations of what is given as our real, as the object of our perceptions and the field of our interventions”—to look at the ways poetry actually does politics (Dissensus 156). I look at three different types of dissensual poetry: concrete poetry, sound poetry, and instapoetry. I argue that these poetic practices prompt a reordering of our society, of what is countable and unaccountable, and of how bodies, capacities, and systems operate. They allow for those whom Rancière calls the anonymous, and whom we might call the oppressed or marginalized, to become known. I argue that bpNichol’s, Judith Copithorne’s, and Steve McCaffery’s concrete poems; the Four Horsemen’s, Penn Kemp’s, and Christian Bök’s sound poems; and rupi kaur’s instapoems are examples of dissensual poetry.