Hymns can and have functioned as powerful strategic tools to change social and religious landscapes, and to inform and transform people’s notions about ‘doing church’. A few words about Ephrem the Syrian, which emphasised liturgical singing and accentuated the force of truth, the power of persuasion and socio-religious transformation was the starting point and connecting thread, which formed the backbone of this dissertation throughout—a research project that was also guided by some principles of new historicism to view Ephrem as a textual construct, living in a particular context and dealing with specific religious issues in a particular way. His trump card was the female choirs he founded, which became a distinct feature of orthodox Syrian Christianity. Through their singing performances, he ‘silenced’ the unorthodox voices of—especially Bardaisan—and created a community of believers where each person had a part to fulfil, where women and men would become ‘two harps’, ‘singing one praise’. / M. Th. (New Testament)

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The objective of this study is to put forward informed C4D recommendations to help organizations like UNICEF combat the situation for Syrian refugee children and youths in Lebanon, who through displacement and resettling into the complex Lebanese socio-political landscape may be at risk of becoming a lost generation. This paper focuses on the prevention and elimination of actions such as bullying, sexual harassment, gender-based violence, and early marriage.Conceptual framework: the communication theoretical framework considers Bourdieu’s habitus model as well as the uses and gratification model. Concepts conducive to social cohesion include citizenship, communitas and cosmopolitanism.Methodology: data were gathered through a variety of primary and secondary sources. The former includes semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts and analysis of UNICEF’s external communication practices. The latter comprises the collection, assessment, comparison and summarizing of various reports about Lebanese media.Findings: Lebanon has a pluralistic media landscape, though it appears fragmented, reflecting its socio-political sectarian situation. The media in Lebanon is criticized for lack of public service. The arts scene seems to fill a void in terms of examining the collective memory in respect of not only the civil war (1975-1990) but also of social issues arising as a result of globalization and modernity. Syrians in Lebanon consume Lebanese media as much as media from their own country. Interpersonal communication channels appear to be the preferred mode of communication among both the host and the refugee communities, although among the youth social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook are commonplace. Among the traditional media channels, television appears to be popular. The representation of Syrian refugees in Lebanese media is varied, with about one fourth of the published material portraying Syrians as a security issue.Results: a series of C4D recommendations that use sports and the arts as an overarching theme.

This thesis explores the pressing need for reform within the United Nations Security Council, a key organization in global governance, in the form of a case study. The main purpose of the research is to understand how its reform could enhance its legitimacy while attending to the possible opposition from the USA, China, and Russia. It encompasses historical information, from the League of Nations to the reform proposals throughout history, culminating in the present debates, as well as useful theoretical approaches for the analysis. Through the Syrian Civil War, it describes the Council struggle to handle contemporary geopolitical issues. The insights of the Intergovernmental Negotiations Framework and the Elements Paper are crucial to research the current reform debates, and other literature from scholars, International Organizations and media are also employed. The analysis investigates the research question and hypothesis, and the conclusion helps summarize the findings. The thesis serves as a call for a better articulated Security Council that can better confront the complexities of our multipolar world with effectivity and effectiveness.

This thesis explores the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the Common European Asylum System. It evaluates the extent to which the European Union was able to implement a common asylum system, identifies discrepancies between different European countries, primarily Germany and Hungary, and briefly examines the roots of these differences. To this end, the structure of the international refugee protection regime and the German and Hungarian asylum systems are analyzed. Furthermore, the thesis explores how the governments of the two countries perceive the rights of refugees and how their views have affected their handling of the crisis. The case studies of Germany and Hungary have revealed that the treatment of Syrian refugees varies enormously within the EU. Hence, the implementation of the Common European Asylum System has not been achieved, which can be attributed to the deficiencies within the system and the growing ideological rifts within the EU.

<p>This dissertation focuses on the life of Frances MacGregor Ingram, a progressive reformer in Louisville, Kentucky. It follows Ingram’s career in social work at the Neighborhood House settlement and the Progressive reform movements in which she held leadership positions from 1905 to 1939. This project concentrates on Ingram’s involvement in reform movements pertaining to tenement housing, garbage collection management, dance hall regulation, juvenile delinquency, mental hygiene institutions, probation, wholesome recreation, child welfare, child labor, women’s working conditions, unemployment, and Great Depression relief.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Most Progressive Era scholarship concentrates on northern cities and reformers, such as Jane Addams at Hull House. But much of the literature overlooks southern contributions to the settlement house movement and progressive reform as a whole. This dissertation serves three purposes. First it helps fill the gap in scholarship on southern progressivism. Reformers in the urban South were not limited to charity work and prohibition. They engaged in complex and dynamic social reforms. Incredibly diverse in scope, Kentucky’s reform history should be understood in the context of southern society and politics, which impacted which progressive reforms were successful and which were not.</p> <p> </p> <p>Second, it builds on other women’s reform scholars by expanding previous conceptions of the Progressive Era to include the 1930s. By doing so, it provides a better understanding of women’s reform activism. Third, this dissertation provides a more balanced approach by emphasizing the alliances Ingram formed with immigrant communities. With a few exceptions, settlement literature primarily focuses on the movement leaders. Unlike some settlements, Neighborhood House Americanization programs via clubs, recreation, and citizenship classes were negotiated between the settlement and its neighbors. Through the lens of Ingram’s urban reform experience in Kentucky, this dissertation uses gender, class, race, ethnicity, and region to unpack the complicated relationships between reformers like Ingram, working-class immigrants, and male political officials. </p>

In the town of Södertälje, a great number of ecclesiastical denominations are represented, a majority of which with roots in the Middle East. To a person attending several various Christian services at many different churches, the diversified ecclesiastical scene offers many similarities among the different denominations, as well as many differences between them. An obvious difference is the view of ministry. In the Church of Sweden women may be ordained, whereas this is not possible in the Chaldean-Catholic Church or the Syrian-Orthodox Church. This paper describes how some ordinary worshippers, members of the Chaldean-Catholic Church or the Syrian-Orthodox Church, look upon their own religious practices in view of the fact that they belong to minority denominations in a secularized society in which the Church of Sweden is the major church. This paper has a Theological as well as a Sociological perspective, since these two perspectives have a reciprocal effect on each other regarding the creating of identities of both informants and churches. An important aspect of this paper is the informants’ view of the relationship between priesthood and gender. It will be obvious that the informants’ opinions of who may be allowed to take Holy Orders depend more on the person’s eligibility than on gender, irrespective of traditions in their denominations. In spite of the fact that women are not ordained in either of the churches dealt with in this paper, the informants hold the view that this may change with time. Instead, they mean that this is one in a row of adaptations that should be carried out by their churches, in order for them to be able to continue to exist in Södertälje and to achieve an ongoing increase in numbers. However, the question of priesthood and gender is complicated, partly due to traditions in their home countries, but also since the bodies of men and women, respectively, are regarded differently in Orthodox theology, not least so in comparison with that of the Church of Sweden. In this paper the informants also express questions arisen from encounters between their respective home countries and Sweden. Primarily, those questions are about the possible effects that may occur when ecclesiastical traditions meet secular values. That affects the informants’ views of culture and nationality, as well as the meaning of being an individual in a group, profoundly marked by church traditions in a society as individualistic as Sweden. / I Södertälje finns ett stort antal kyrkliga samfund representerade, flertalet med rötter i Mellanöstern. Det kyrkliga landskapet medför att det för den kyrkobesökare som rör sig i flera olika kyrkorum, är lätt att upptäcka många likheter mellan de olika kyrkliga samfunden, men också flera skillnader. En påtaglig skillnad är synen på prästämbetet. I Svenska kyrkan kan kvinnor vara präster, medan detta inte är möjligt i Kaldeisk-katolska kyrkan eller i Syrisk-ortodoxa kyrkan.   Den här uppsatsen handlar om hur några vanliga gudstjänstdeltagare, medlemmar i Kaldeisk-katolska kyrkan eller Syrisk-ortodoxa kyrkan, ser på de egna kyrkotraditionerna och -praktikerna i ljuset av att vara minoritetskyrkor i ett sekulärt samhälle där Svenska kyrkan är majoritetskyrka. Uppsatsen har ett teologiskt såväl som ett samhällsorienterat perspektiv. Anledningen till det är att dessa två perspektiv har en ömsesidig påverkan på varandra beträffande informanternas - och kyrkornas - identitetsskapande. En viktig ansats i uppsatsen är vilken syn på relationen prästämbete och kön informanterna ger uttryck för. Uppsatsen visar att informanternas uppfattning om vem som kan vigas till präst är mer beroende av personlig lämplighet än av kön, oaktat att de kyrkotraditioner de tillhör säger något annat. Trots att kvinnor inte vigs till präster i någon av de kyrkor som uppsatsen belyser, menar informanterna att det på sikt inte alls skulle vara en omöjlighet. Det är istället en i raden av anpassningar som de menar att deras kyrkor bör göra, för att fortsätta att leva och verka i Södertälje och för att tillväxten av medlemmar ska vara god. Dock visar det sig att frågan om prästämbete och kön inte är okomplicerad. Det beror dels på traditioner från hemländerna, men också på att mannens och kvinnans kropp betraktas på olika sätt i ortodox teologi, inte minst jämfört med Svenska kyrkans teologi. I uppsatsen ger informanterna också uttryck för frågor som har väckts genom mötet mellan deras respektive hemländer och Sverige. Främst handlar detta om vad som kan hända när kyrkliga traditioner möter sekulära värderingar. Detta påverkar deras syn på såväl kultur och nationalitet som vad det innebär att vara individ i en grupp, som starkt präglas av kyrkliga traditioner, i ett samhälle som är så individcentrerat som Sverige.