<p>The purpose of this essay was to examine municipal guidelines regarding the administration of the social assistance, collected from 18 municipalities in the Stockholm-area to achieve a greater understanding on how they were constructed in respect to the legislation and how the language mediated their contents. The legal aspects of the social assistance was studied through a jurisprudential method in which the legislative history, texts of laws and case laws were examined. The empirical aspect of this essay was studied through a hermeneutical method and analyzed through theories of social constructionism and legal pluralism. The results from the jurisprudential study were also used to understand how the municipal guidelines were constructed in relation to the law. The results of this essay corresponded well with previous studies in this field where considerable divergences in the approval of social assistance have been established. The guidelines allow a local adjustment of the social work stated in the Social service act, on the basis of local priorities and conditions. Our findings showed that the guidelines related to the law in varying degrees, to some extent depending on the stringency of the language used in them. We found expressions that were sometimes vague, normative and restrictive regarding the approval of social assistance. The results were discussed in respect to rule of law and the legal content of the guidelines.</p>

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.</p><p>The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like. Time also work in favour of competence as experience is developed over time. The results lead to the conclusion that both the motive for and the aim of competence development is the creation of a meaningful and manageable reality.</p> / <p>Undersökningens syfte är att studera hur anställda i kunskapsföretag utvecklar kompetens för att klara det dagliga arbetet Fokus ligger på den informella kompetensutvecklingen. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna innefattar teorier om lärande och kompetensutveckling, organisationsförändring och utvärdering samt professionell reflektion. I undersökningen används narrativ analys och intervjuer vilket baseras på uppfattningen att kunskap om verkligheten bara kan nås genom språk och kommunikation.</p><p>De huvudsakliga resultaten visar att kompetens utvecklas genom erfarenhet, social interaktion, kommunikation och dialog med medarbetare och kunder. De postmoderna uppfattningarna om den snabba (tekniska) utvecklingen och kravet på att vara uppdaterad påverkar starkt informanternas syn på arbetslivet, liksom känslan av att inte ha tillräckligt med tid för all den kompetensutveckling som önskas. Men tiden arbetar också för kompetensen eftersom erfarenhet är något som utvecklas över tid. Resultaten leder fram till slutsatsen att både drivkrafterna till och målet för kompetensutveckling är att skapa en begriplig och hanterbar verklighet.</p>

"The American Dream" is an expression familiar to all Americans and the realization of the American Dream is tied closely to homeownership (Clinton, 1995). The recent financial crisis, with the housing and financial markets at levels not seen since the Great Depression, has resulted in widespread unemployment, continually dropping home prices, escalating home foreclosures, and tightened lending standards. Significant changes in the home buying behavior of Americans since the start of the crisis are clear but it is not clear if overall perceptions of homeownership have become more negative in the wake of this catastrophe (Joint Center for Housing Studies [JCHS], 2011). Might the marriage of homeownership and the American Dream be a thing of the past? The echo-boomer generation (defined as those born after 1980) comprises the largest group of Americans ever to reach their twenties���peak household formation years. They will play a critical role in the face of American housing in the years to come (JCHS, 2011). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether homeownership remains a goal for members of the echo-boomer generation. The population of interest for this study was college students in the United States who are members of the echo-boomer generation. A chain-referral sampling technique resulted in a non-random sample of 256 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 21. Participants were predominantly white non-Hispanic, single females who rented their residences. Most were undergraduate students representing 35 majors. An on-line questionnaire was used that included both closed and open-ended questions grouped around four primary research questions. (1) Do members of this population view homeownership as a safe investment? Simply put, yes. When asked directly, most participants responded "very safe" or "somewhat safe." Stepwise logistic regression was used to explore the predictor variables for this response. Predictor variables with p<.05 included participants��� expectation of the future direction of housing prices and of the economy, their preferred housing tenure, and whether homeownership was part of their own definition of the American Dream. (2) What is the preferred housing tenure form amongst members of this population? A large majority of participants indicated that they preferred homeownership to renting. Logistic regression analysis suggested strong association between preferred housing tenure and whether the participants viewed homeownership as a safe investment, as well as their belief about which housing tenure form made the most sense for them, and the adequacy of their income. (3) Is Homeownership in the Future Plans of College Student Echo-Boomers? The answer to this question was an emphatic yes. Ninety-three percent of current renters claim future plans to own their homes and 58% of current owners say that they will never rent. Logistic regression (p<.05) found that respondents' current tenure form and tenure preference, as well as their belief in the safety of investment in homeownership were predictors of future housing tenure intentions. (4) Do members of this population view homeownership as part of the "American Dream?" When asked explicitly whether owning a home is part of their own personal American Dream, a large majority of of respondents said yes. Logistic regression analysis found that predictors of this view (p<.05) included expectations of rent prices, age, preferred tenure form, and whether participants saw homeownership as a safe investment. This study was grounded in a social constructionist theoretical framework. Among the social constructions of housing is a deep-seated preference for homeownership as the ideal tenure form. Everyday discourse serves to accentuate the positive aspects of homeownership along with the negative aspects of renting (Gurney,1999). In spite of a deep financial crisis and the heightened role of housing in it, homeownership seems to continue as the preferred housing tenure form among the echo-boom generation. Importantly, homeownership as the embodiment of the American Dream seems to have been unaffected by the crisis. / Graduation date: 2012

<p><font size="3"> <p>This qualitative study aims to use some of Frantz Fanon&rsquo / s critical insights to explore how individuals within the Health Sciences Faculty at the UCT experienced change and perceived the transformation process instituted by University management and the change taking place in the wider society. Frantz Fanon, a critical theorist born in a Martinique, university-educated in France and later employed in Algeria, wrote extensively on how the colonial condition affects the psychology of individuals, thus inter-linking psychology and politics. This study selected six individuals who had experienced the institutional context before and during the process of transformation. Data was collected by way of unstructured interview schedules. A Fanonian psychoanalytic-inspired discourse analysis was employed to analyse the data. The data showed that broader discourses influences the way people talk about phenomena. Our past still plays a role in the way we construct current realities.</p> </font></p>

Purpose: The purpose with this study is to analyze if the Swedish authorities and media had different ways of discussing the new influenza, in connection with the pandemic classification June 11, 2009. This is the first time an influenza has been classified as a pandemic since the Hongkong-influenza in1968. Methodology: The method used for the study is discourse analysis, aqualitative method that gives the opportunity to study not only what is said, but how things are said. In this thesis, the aim is to study how the image ofthe new influenza is transmitted via the texts. The texts have been analysed based on:- General and underlying themes- Words and concepts used- Persons/sources quoted or referred to- Historical connections/historical backgroundTheoretical perspectives: The study is based on theories about socialconstructionism and discourse analysis. Conclusions: the conclusions drawn from the study show that the media textsare more dramatic and sensational when it comes to describing the newinfluenza. The Swedish authorities have a more fact-based and calming tone towards the public. Within the analyzed material, it is possible to seedifferences between the discourses, also when describing the same themes. Within some themes, resemblances have been identified between the mediadiscourse and the authorithy discourse.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication. The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like. Time also work in favour of competence as experience is developed over time. The results lead to the conclusion that both the motive for and the aim of competence development is the creation of a meaningful and manageable reality. / Undersökningens syfte är att studera hur anställda i kunskapsföretag utvecklar kompetens för att klara det dagliga arbetet Fokus ligger på den informella kompetensutvecklingen. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna innefattar teorier om lärande och kompetensutveckling, organisationsförändring och utvärdering samt professionell reflektion. I undersökningen används narrativ analys och intervjuer vilket baseras på uppfattningen att kunskap om verkligheten bara kan nås genom språk och kommunikation. De huvudsakliga resultaten visar att kompetens utvecklas genom erfarenhet, social interaktion, kommunikation och dialog med medarbetare och kunder. De postmoderna uppfattningarna om den snabba (tekniska) utvecklingen och kravet på att vara uppdaterad påverkar starkt informanternas syn på arbetslivet, liksom känslan av att inte ha tillräckligt med tid för all den kompetensutveckling som önskas. Men tiden arbetar också för kompetensen eftersom erfarenhet är något som utvecklas över tid. Resultaten leder fram till slutsatsen att både drivkrafterna till och målet för kompetensutveckling är att skapa en begriplig och hanterbar verklighet.

The purpose of this essay was to examine municipal guidelines regarding the administration of the social assistance, collected from 18 municipalities in the Stockholm-area to achieve a greater understanding on how they were constructed in respect to the legislation and how the language mediated their contents. The legal aspects of the social assistance was studied through a jurisprudential method in which the legislative history, texts of laws and case laws were examined. The empirical aspect of this essay was studied through a hermeneutical method and analyzed through theories of social constructionism and legal pluralism. The results from the jurisprudential study were also used to understand how the municipal guidelines were constructed in relation to the law. The results of this essay corresponded well with previous studies in this field where considerable divergences in the approval of social assistance have been established. The guidelines allow a local adjustment of the social work stated in the Social service act, on the basis of local priorities and conditions. Our findings showed that the guidelines related to the law in varying degrees, to some extent depending on the stringency of the language used in them. We found expressions that were sometimes vague, normative and restrictive regarding the approval of social assistance. The results were discussed in respect to rule of law and the legal content of the guidelines.

The news media are powerful purveyors of culture in North America. Crime news reporting particularly is an influential means by which the news media define the boundaries of deviant and non-deviant behaviour. For the purposes of the present research, I examined the ways that the print news media constructed cases of male-perpetrated Intimate Partner Homicide (IPH) in Alberta. Using a social constructionist theoretical orientation grounded in an Ethnographic Content Analysis methodology, I examined 381 newspaper articles that discussed four separate incidents of male-perpetrated IPH. Approaching these data from the perspective of media reciprocity and a social constructionism epistemology, I considered the various ways that the print media presented these cases for their audience, but also the various ways that the audiences expectations and the general zeitgeist of the culture may have affected this presentation. Much of the dominant discourse in the cases I studied was consistent with previous research examining IPH presentations in the news media, namely that the media present victims and perpetrators in stereotyped ways according to their gender and ethnicity. However, I also examined some less prominent themes, including those that were pro-feminist, ambivalent, fictionalized, and constructed for the purpose of audience titillation and voyeurism. Additionally, owing to the qualitative nature of the methodology, I was able to examine discussions that subverted the stereotypical representation of victims and perpetrators in the news media and examine how these presentations could affect audience understanding of the phenomenon of IPH. Overall, the present project led to a discussion of how the media construct various facets of psychology and feminism and how these facets are in turn constructed by society in a reciprocal process whereby the media influence culture and culture correspondingly affects the media.

When society is viewed in a social constructive manner, the social worker is as affected as the general population by the media and the image it portrays. A prejudice or bias social worker will not be as effective in his work as his intentions are. The purpose of this thesis was to discover if there are any visible cultural differences in the usage and description of the concept of psychopathy or a psychopath himself in the media, more specifically, daily newspapers. There are three American newspapers and three Swedish newspapers examined in this study. The study is based on a quantiative content analysis of articles published between 1st of January 2008 and 1st of July 2012. The collected data is categorized where the articles can fall under one or more of five available categories. Even though no clear results occurred, some interesting indications are visible between American newspapers and Swedish newspapers, but more so between different American newspapers. Psychopaths, people with an Antisocial Personality Disorder, are most frequently mentioned as criminals or maniacs/madmen in both countries with a modestly higher percentage for the United States of America. / När samhället blir sett ur ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv, blir socialarbetaren lika påverkad som den övriga populationen av den bild som media förmedlar och framställer. En fördomsfull eller partisk socialarbetare kommer inte att uppnå den effektivitet i sin profession som syftet med yrket innebär. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka eller upptäcka om det finns några synliga kulturella skillnader i bruket och beskrivningen av psykopati som begrepp eller psykopaten som person i media, mer specifikt dagstidningar. I den här studien ingår tre amerikanska dagstidningar och tre svenska dagstidningar. Studien är baserad på en kvantitativ innehållsanalys av artiklar publicerade mellan 1:a januari 2008 och 1:a juli 2012. Den insamlade data är kategoriserad där varje artikel kan falla under en eller flera av fem förekommande kategorier. Även om det inte går att utläsa några tydliga resultat, föreligger indikationer som kan vara av intresse mellan amerikanska dagstidningar och svenska dagstidningar, men dessa är tydligare mellan de olika amerikanska dagstidningarna. Psykopater, människor som har en antisocial personlighetsstörning, beskrivs mestadels som kriminella eller galningar/dårar i båda ländernas dagstidningar med en viss högre procentuell representation vad gäller USA.

<p>Recent research has indicated a significant increase in the crystal methamphetamine abuse in the Western Cape. The study aimed to provide an understanding of the interaction of the social and historical contexts in relation to the life experiences and perceptions of a young person residing in the Cape Flats. Primarily the study aimed to explore the factors that influenced the participant to use crystal methamphetamine. It adopted a social constructionist epistemological perspective and employed Bronfenbrenner&rsquo / s ecological systems theory as the theoretical framework. The subsystems of the ecological systems theory include the individual who is influenced by the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem and the chronosystem. This was a qualitative research study that&nbsp / employed an intensive case study. Data was obtained through series intensive semi-structured interviews that were approximately 40 - 70 minutes in duration. The participant is a coloured female, aged 28 years from a high-risk community in the Cape Flats. Prior to the interview process, relevant permission was obtained from the participant, which allowed the interviews to be conducted and recorded. The data was then analysed using a narrative analysis. The themes that emerged from the research findings include: childhood trauma / sexual abuse during childhood / social milieu and norms / adolescent delinquency / the cycle of abuse / understanding crystal methamphetamine use and the consequences of crystal methamphetamine use. Findings with regard to the individual factors included psychological well-being, depression and negative affectivity, feelings of hopelessness, suicidal ideations, loneliness, past abuse of legal substances, adolescence, delinquency and childhood sexual abuse. The influential factors that emerged within the microsystem were lack of family support, dysfunctional family dynamics, childhood abandonment, uninvolved parents, several custodial parents, childhood disequilibrium, parental modelling and family drug use. Further findings within the microsystem included peer influence viz. direct persuasion of drug use, peer exposure of drugs, experimentation, delinquent behaviour, gang-related involvement and peer group acceptance. The mesosystemic findings included, lack of emotional support or attachments, social support, lack of structure as well as relocating to numerous schools and homes. Findings located in the exosystem were the availability and accessibility of drugs in all the communities in which the participant lived. Findings in the macrosystem included the social environment of the individual, including the social norms of the community and the home setting as well as the norm of violence, crime and gangsterism. The information and knowledge accumulated would optimistically contribute to addressing the paucity of qualitative literature and present knowledge to&nbsp / improve intervention and prevention strategies.</p>