We show how the type of alcohol consumed is related to the type of entrepreneurship present for economies in Europe. We differentiate between beer-, wine-, and spirit-drinking countries and distinguish between productive, unproductive, and destructive entrepreneurship. The underlying links do not emerge from drinking per se but rather the drinking habits and taste for beverage types capture deep cultural features and cultural similarities amongst the countries. Societies that prefer to drink beer are closer to each other culturally than those which prefer drinking wine or spirits. Therefore, the taste for alcohol type is merely an instrument in explaining cultural and institutional differences across entrepreneurship. Broadly speaking, beer-drinking countries are characterized by higher shares of productive entrepreneurship, wine-drinking countries with unproductive entrepreneurship, and spirit-drinking countries with destructive entrepreneurship. We discuss mechanisms in which the results are found and highlight a new research agenda, emphasizing the potential role of epigenetics. 

Child Participation is defined by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health forChildren and Youth (ICF-CY) as involvement in life situations but knowledge on children´s specific everydaylife situations (EDLs) is lacking. Professionals in early intervention services need a structured tool to identifyand assess child participation in everyday life situations. It should support children with disabilities indescribing what matters most for them in intervention planning. With the long term goal to create ICF-CY codesets, EDLs were identified by a systematic literature search for measures of performance or participation andby collecting professional opinions on EDL and participation. Information was linked to the ICF-CY andtriangulated with research exploring family opinions. Most items in measures were linked to moving around,play, and recreation and leisure. The six measures of performance and six of participation differed regardingcontent and content dependent on age group.Descriptions on EDLs from 297 professionals were linked to ICF-CY codes. Frequent linkages were Self-care,such as eating and hygiene; Major life areas, such as play and education; and Relationships, but also sleep. Byrelating EDLs directly to predefined ICF-CY categories in the ICF-CY component Activities and Participation,five EDLs across categories were identified based on responses from 207 professionals. These concernedsleep, communication, dressing, family relationships and play. Some differences emerged dependent onparticipants’ culture and on age group. A triangulation between professional and family opinions concerningEDL’s revealed relatively high agreement. As a final result, a set of approximately 12-15 everyday lifesituations is expected to be identified in this study to be used for development of code sets.

The objectives of Food4Me work package 5 included a baseline assessment of the ethical and legal aspects of personalised nutrition at the start of the project in 2011, as well as a final assessment at the end of the project (2015), taking into account results achieved in other work packages. The initial assessment made a number of ethical issues visible, most of them relating to the consumer of personalised nutrition service. The results depicted in this publication indicate that many of the questions raised in relation to these issues remain unsolved, and in some cases they seem to be neglected in relation to the services offered by internet companies.

Consumers often have a positive attitude to the option of receiving personalized nutrition advice based upon genetic testing, since the prospect of enhancing or maintaining one’s health can be perceived as empowering. Current direct-to-consumer services over the Internet, however, suffer from a questionable level of truthfulness and consumer protection, in addition to an imbalance between far-reaching promises and contrasting disclaimers. Psychological and behavioral studies indicate that consumer acceptance of a new technology is primarily explained by the end user’s rational and emotional interpretation as well as moral beliefs. Results from such studies indicate that personalized nutrition must create true value for the consumer. Also, the freedom to choose is crucial for consumer acceptance. From an ethical point of view, consumer protection is crucial, and caution must be exercised when putting nutrigenomic-based tests and advice services on the market. Current Internet offerings appear to reveal a need to further guaranty legal certainty by ensuring privacy, consumer protection and safety. Personalized nutrition services are on the borderline between nutrition and medicine. Current regulation of this area is incomplete and undergoing development. This situation entails the necessity for carefully assessing and developing existing rules that safeguard fundamental rights and data protection while taking into account the sensitivity of data, the risks posed by each step in their processing, and sufficient guarantees for consumers against potential misuse.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how teachers describe opportunities and barriers with traditional writing acquisition through WTR. The goal is to provide knowledge about how the methods can be used in teaching. Four research questions were asked based on the aim:

• How do teachers describe that they work with traditional writing acquisition?
• How do teachers describe that they work with WTR?
• What are the advantages of the methodes according to teachers?
• What are the disadvantages of the methodes according to teachers?

The study is based on the socio-cultural perspective. A qualitative method has been used to collect data through semi-structured interviews. The respondents were of five teachers who work in primary schools. The collected material was analyzed with the help of a thematic analysis method in which the collected material was color-coded according to how it respondse to the questions of the study. The findings shows how teachers work with traditional writing and digital writing in school, as well as what there are for opportunities and barriers there are in connection with the two methodes.

According to the Swedish curriculum the teaching in school must proceed from the pupils’ earlier experiences, language and knowledge (Skolverket, 2016b). The aim with this study is to examine how teachers in grade 1-3 work to make use of multilingual pupils’ linguistic and cultural experiences in a classroom where several languages and cultures are represented. In fulfilling the aim of this study, following questions where given: How do teachers describe that they are working to give the pupils’ linguistic and cultural experiences space in their teaching and in the physical classroom environment?  Which approach is expressed about how much space the pupils’ linguistic and cultural experiences should be offered in the teaching?

This study is a qualitative study where four teachers have been interviewed, classroom environments have been photographed and educational planning has been reviewed. The material has been analysed by an intercultural and post-structural perspective. The result shows that to gain knowledge about the pupils’ earlier experiences teachers must build relationships with the pupils, which often happens outside the classroom environment. Digital tools and mother tongue tutors are important in the work in making use of the pupils´ different languages in the classroom. The teachers in the study see multilingual and multiculturalism as a resource and they mean that several cultures and languages in a class enrich the teaching. Lastly the result shows that the teachers experience difficulties when it comes to making use of pupils’ earlier experiences in mathematics

Syftet med denna studie är att granska vad samtida forskning säger om användningen av skönlitteratur i undervisning i engelska som främmande språk i mellanstadiet. Forskningsfrågorna fokuserar på för- och nackdelar med användningen av skönlitteratur, samt hur dessa förhåller sig till kunskapskraven i engelska i mellanstadiet. Bakgrunden berör olika begrepp viktiga för förståelse av detta ämne, skönlitteraturens betydelse allmänt och i skolans värld samt de delarna i styrdokumentet Lgr 11 som pekar på behov av ett komplext undervisningsmaterial i engelska som främmande språk. Resultatdelen lyfter fram olika forskningsresultat som rör användningen av skönlitteratur i de yngre och äldre årskurserna. Här berörs för- och nackdelar när det gäller inlärning av nya ord, grammatik samt utveckling av andra aspekter såsom empati, kritiskt tänkande och interkulturell kompetens. Det lyfts även fram olika aspekter av arbetet med skönlitteratur som till exempel att förberedelse, genomförande och uppföljning av lektioner kräver mer tid av en lärare, än undervisning som endast följer en kursbok. Granskningen är baserad på forskningsartiklar, samt böcker som behandlar temat skönlitteraturens betydelse allmänt samt skönlitteraturens betydelse för inlärning av främmande- och andraspråk. Eftersom denna granskning är inriktad mot grundskolans mellanstadium, och i avsaknad av ytterligare material som behandlar mellanstadieålder, har jag även använt mig av undersökningar som omfattar äldre elever. Genom en noga granskning av forskningsmaterialen återger studien en bild av skönlitterära texters för- och nackdelar för språkundervisning i engelska som främmande språk i mellanstadiet.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka tillgången till autentisk engelsk litteratur i skolbibliotek i Jönköpings kommun. Syftet är också att tolka litteraturens lämplighet för engelskundervisning i årskurs 4-6, samt tolka skolornas val vid inskaffandet av böckerna. Detta syfte uppfylls med hjälp av följande forskningsfrågor:

1. Hur många exemplar av autentiska texter ämnade för årskurs 4-6 finns på biblioteket?

2. Vilka teman behandlar de autentiska texterna?

3. Vilka olika genrer är representerade?

Teorin som denna studie utgår ifrån är autentiska engelska texters fördelar när de används för inlärning av engelska språket. Begreppet autentisk text i denna studie beskriver autentisk litteratur skriven av och för dem som har engelska språket som sitt modersmål. Metod som används i denna studie är hermeneutik. Utgångspunkten i hermeneutiken är att det som är skapat av människor bär ett budskap, och därför kan tolkas. Resultatet av denna studie visar en stor variation i utbudet av autentiska engelska böcker i skolbibliotek i Jönköpings kommun.

Thousands of refugees have immigrated to Turkey because of the current Civil War in neighboring Syria. This is causing tensions between refugees and locals. These increasingly negative attitudes towards the incoming victims of conflict are of particular interest. The present study, therefore, aimed at determining the premises of the emergence of such negative attitudes. The research sample consisted of university students who all studied at various faculties at Cumhuriyet University in the Turkish province of Sivas. Data were collected by the Attitude Scale Towards Refugees, the Patriotism Attitude Scale, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and the Cirhinlioğlu Religiosity Scale. Data were analyzed by Independent Sample t-tests as well as using Stepwise Regression Analyses. Results showed that the feeling of empathy correlated negatively with negative attitudes towards refugees, while blind patriotism, religiosity, and having nationalist/conservative orientations, correlated positively. Men were found to be more negative than women. The feeling of empathy was the most prominent factor in predicting the nature of attitudes towards refugees. Religious doctrine and distancing oneself from conservative and patriotic perspectives appeared to be effective in potentially preventing the development of negative attitudes. In conclusion, research results are discussed in the light of relevant literature.

Syftet med den här undersökningen är att ta reda på hur lärare använder sig av läsprojekt och litteratur i sin undervisning i grundskolans senare år. Frågeställningarna som är utgångspunkt för studien är:-Hur argumenterar lärare för användningen av litteratur i grundskolans senare år?-Vilka likheter eller skillnader mellan lärares användning av litteratur och läsprojekt finns i olika skolor?-Vilken effekt har läsprojekten, enligt lärarna, haft på eleverna?

Undersökningen innefattar 3 stycken intervjuer gjorda med fyra lärare och en bibliotekarie på skolor i Jönköpings kommun. Lärarna har svarat på frågor rörande arbetsmetoder, målbeskrivning, litteraturval och effekter rörande de läsprojekt de arbetat med. Alla lärare arbetar på liknande sätt med litteraturen i sina läsprojekt och har mål som liknar varandra. Det som mest skiljer sig åt mellan lärarna är bakgrunden till att de startat läsprojekt. Det finns olika faktorer som påverkat lärarna till att starta projekten. En av lärarna hade startat sitt projekt på grund av att hennes elever hade dåligt självförtroende och dåliga resultat i svenskan. En annan för att hon tyckte det skulle vara kul att samarbeta med någon med ett litteraturintresse. En skola hade sedan en längre tid haft läsprojektet som ett stående moment i undervisningen. Studien visar att effekterna av läsprojekten var något lärarna inte reflekterat närmare över. En av lärarna hade dock sett en skillnad i elevernas beteende och självförtroende i klassrummet. Effekterna av ett läsprojekt är dock något som kan vara svårt att mäta.

Facial recognition is a complex skill necessary for successful human interpersonal and social interactions. Given that the most prevalent disorder of social interaction is autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a number of studies have investigated and found impaired facial recognition abilities in people with ASD. Further, this impairment may be critically involved in mediating the deficits in interpersonal and social interactions in people with ASD. We sought to address the question of whether face processing is impaired in children with ASD in the current study. While there were a number of differences in visual search behaviours between the 19 children with ASD and the 15 controls, this did not manifest in deficits in facial recognition accuracy. In addition, there were notable differences with respect to eye fixation behaviours and recognition accuracy in this study compared to the findings in a previous similar study conducted in adults with ASD. These differences suggest a performance enhancing developmental trajectory in facial processing in controls that may not be present in individuals with ASD.

Recently, there has been heightened interest in suggestions of enhanced visual acuity in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) which was sparked by evidence that was later accepted to be methodologically flawed. However, a recent study that claimed children with ASD have enhanced visual acuity (Brosnan et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 42:2491–2497, 2012) repeated a critical methodological flaw by using an inappropriate viewing distance for a computerised acuity test, placing the findings in doubt. We examined visual acuity in 31 children with ASD and 33 controls using the 2 m 2000 Series Revised Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study chart placed at twice the conventional distance to better evaluate possible enhanced acuity. Children with ASD did not demonstrate superior acuity. The current findings strengthen the argument that reports of enhanced acuity in ASD are due to methodological flaws and challenges the reported association between visual acuity and systemising type behaviours.

Background. In line with patient-centered health care, it is necessary to understand patients’ perceptions of health. How stroke survivors perceive their health at different time points after stroke and which factors are associated with these feelings provide important information about relevant rehabilitation targets. Objective. This study aimed to identify the independent factors of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) from a biopsychosocial perspective using the methods of multivariate regression at 3 different time points poststroke. Methods. Included in the study were 99 patients from stroke units with diagnosed first-ever stroke. At admission and at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 1 year poststroke, HRQoL was assessed using the EuroQoL-5D Visual Analogue Scale (EQ-5D VAS). Consequences in Body Functions and Activities and Participation, and Environmental Factors were documented using 155 categories of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Core Set for Stroke. Results. For a period of 1 year, problems with recreation and leisure, personality functions, energy and drive functions, and gait pattern functions were repeatedly associated with worse HRQoL. Whereas Body Functions and Activities and Participation explained more than three-fourths of the variances of HRQoL at 6 weeks and 3 months (R ² = 0.80-0.93), the variation at 1 year was best explained by either Body Functions or Environmental Factors (R ² = 0.51). Conclusions. The results indicate the importance of Body Functions and Activities and Participation (mainly personality functions and recreation and leisure) on HRQoL within 3 months poststroke, but increased impact of Environmental Factors on HRQoL at 1 year.

The aim of this study was to describe and analyse social workers’ approach in working with parents with mild intellectual disability. The study intends to find out if work approach is related to position and type of organisation. The data consists of six semi structured interviews with social workers from three different organisations that in work meet parents with mild intellectual disability. These organisations were Vuxenhabiliteringen, LSS and Individ- and Familjeomsorgen. In addition, an interview with a researcher that has expert knowledge in development for parents with mild intellectual disability was done. In the analysis the experiences of social workers were linked to organizational tasks and importance of cooperation. The study purposed to analyse the result from two theoretical perspectives; street- level bureaucracy and human-service organisations. The result shows that social workers in the organisations have different approaches dependent on what organisation they work in and the role and working tasks they have in work. The study also indicated how the organisations and their tasks affected the parenthood for persons with mild intellectual disabled parents.   

The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the depiction of women in Quran from an Islamic feminist perspective. The questions that my study is based on are: How is the woman accounted in the Quran according to Islamic feminists? How do Muslim feminists argue and what do they base their reasoning on? My study is based on analyzes of the feminists’ works and statements. The results were analyzed with the help of different theories including Miriam Cookes “multiple critique”, Jan Hjärpes “The Islamic basket”, Jonathan Potters “methodological relativism” and Luckman & Bergers “social construction of reality”. The main result of this study is that it highlights how different Islamic feminists interpret the Quran in relation to the present and how their interpretations have created debates internationally. I also discuss the importance of new interpretations and the globalization for Muslim women.

This essay examines the importance of decadence in the generational novel Gentlemen (1980) by Klas Östergren. The aim is partly to draw attention to a neglected authorship, partly to apply a theory that can illuminate Gentlemen. That is why I ask how decadence is reflected in the novel's main characters, community atmosphere and form.

My definition of decadence is based on Paul Bourget's Theorie de la decadence (1883), in which he portrays society, individuals and the language's decline. With these thoughts in mind, I assume a broad definition of decadence that focuses on man's ambivalence towards life in a world that is fallen in sense of values. The theory of decadence is thus the starting point of this analysis through close reading, where I discern prominent aspects of decadence.

Especially significant is the so-called Makten (The Force), and its claims for loyalty, as a cause of apocalyptic atmosphere. In order to deal with this dark, contemporary period, art becomes a refuge in similar ways as the artificial paradises of the Decadent era. Henry, like a dandy turns himself and his comforting everyday rituals into art; Leo, faithful to his disloyalty, tries to uncover the truth about the lies of Makten in his poetry; and Klas the narrator tells the truth about Henry and Leo by writing Gentlemen. By a homodiegetic narrator the characters are dissolved into their actions and the plot into details. Thus, both the book's aesthetics and themes can be traced to decadence.

Investigating the Indian society, culture and truck market to develop a list of criteria (design brief) for an optimal truck for these markets. These criteria will be used as a starting point for the design process of designing the truck.

Investigations in Sweden (at Volvo) and in India (at Eicher).

Research conducted through design methods and interviews with stakeholders.

It is the goal of this thesis to create two examples of what a domestically built truck for the Indian market could be.

This review article discusses some problems and needs for clarification that are connected with the use of the concepts culture, language, tool, and communication in Daniel Everett’s recently published book, Language: The Cultural Tool. It also discusses whether the idea of biological readiness and preparedness for language (rather than grammar) can really be disposed of as a result of Everett’s very convincing arguments against a specific genetic predisposition for the syntactic component of a grammar. Finally, it calls into question whether Everett really is true to his professed ideology of scientific ideographical pragmatism. ©2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a view of word meaning on the type level which is based on “meaning potentials” rather than on reified type meanings founded on either of the two traditional approaches of abstract generalization (Gesamtbedeutung) and typical or basic meaning (Grundbedeutung). It is suggested that actual meaning on the occurrence level is produced by context-sensitive operations of meaning activation and meaning determination which combine meaning potentials with each other and with contextually given information rather than by some simple compositionality operations yielding phrase and sentence meaning from simple type meanings of one of the two traditional kinds. To establish this goal, I first present the traditional notions and discuss some problems which arise when trying to handle variation in meaning. I then specifically discuss the relation of homonymy and polysemy to the traditional notions. In section 3, 1 introduce the notion of “meaning potentials” as an alternative to the traditional notions and then discuss in section 4 how this notion might be used to handle problems of meaning variation, focusing especially on homonymy and polysemy.

This paper discusses the relations between the semantic and the pragmatic web. After recapitulating some characterizations and definitions of the semantic and the pragmatic web two main tasks of pragmatics and of the pragmatic web are distinguished. The nature of the first of these tasks is then briefly discussed, leaving a further explication for future work. The paper ends by relating both tasks of the pragmatic web to the semantic web. Copyright 2008 ACM.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some problems in identifying stances and the features that express these stances in televised political debates where there is conflict escalation. The study is based on an analysis of video-recorded political debates in different European languages (Italian (1), German (2) and US-American English (1)) and consists of a qualitative analysis of the videos in order to understand the similarities and differences in the use of social signals for stances in conflict situations in a similar setting (televised political debate) in three western cultures. ©2012 IEEE.

There are currently two distinct but not necessarily mutually exclusive approaches to the retrieval of information from linguistic corpora. ’Corpus-driven’ approaches rely solely on the corpus itself to yield significant patterns. With the exception of orthographic spacing, no additional annotations to a ’raw’ corpus are used to guide searches and the retrieval of information from the corpus. Typically, key word in context (KWIC) analyses are applied to relevant concordance lines to extract statistically significant lexical and grammatical patterns. In ’corpus-based’ approaches, on the other hand, information is retrieved from an enriched corpus on the basis of annotations in the form of linguistic tags and annotations. That is, the annotations are used to direct the searches to specific grammatical and lexical phenomena in a corpus. In this article, we propose a corpus-based approach and a tagset to be used on a corpus of spoken language for the African languages of South Africa. A number of problematic linguistic phenomena such as fixed expressions, agglutination, morphemic merging and spoken language phenomena such as interrupted words etc., often have some effect on tagging principles. These problematic phenomena are discussed and illustrated. The development of the tagset is based on the morphosyntactic properties of Xhosa for reasons that are outlined in the article. Manual tagging of a large corpus would be quite a daunting and time-consuming task, not to mention the potential for various kinds of errors. This problem is solved in a two-step process. Firstly, a computer-based drag-and-drop tagger was developed to facilitate the manual tagging of a so-called training corpus. This training corpus then forms the input to the development of an automatic tagger. The principles and procedures for the development of an automatic tagger for African languages are also discussed. ©2003 NISC Pty Ltd.

In this paper we give an outline of a corpus planning project which aims to develop linguistic resources for the nine official African languages of South Africa in the form of corpora, more specifically spoken language corpora. In the course of the article, we will address issues such as spoken language vs. written language, register vs. activity and normative vs. non-normative approaches to corpus planning. We then give an outline of the design of a spoken language corpus for the nine official African languages of South Africa. We consider issues such as representativity and sampling (urban-rural, dialects, gender, social class and activities), transcription standards and conventions as well as the problems emanating from widespread loans and code switching and other forms of language mix characteristic of spoken language. Finally, we summarise the status of the project at present and plans for the future. ©2003 NISC Pty Ltd.

Today, intercultural first acquaintance meetings are becoming more and more frequent. The aim of this study is to describe, analyze and compare Swedish, Chinese and Swedish-Chinese first acquaintance interactions. Our focus lies on a classification of the topics in mono- and intercultural first-time encounters. The analysis is based on 12 arranged face-to-face first acquaintance interactions between Chinese-Chinese, Swedish-Swedish and Swedish-Chinese students (4 of each dyad). The interactions are video-recorded and transcribed. In addition, semi-structured interviews with the participants have been conducted to get a better understanding of their communication. The method of activity-based communication analysis is used to analyze the data. The result of the study is a classification and a cross-cultural comparison of topics and the order of their occurrence in first time encounters. In addition, the study sheds light on the similarities and differences between Chinese and Swedish communication patterns. ©2011 Springer-Verlag.

This paper is an exploration in the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic feedback, i. e. linguistic mechanisms which enable the participants in spoken interaction to exchange information about basic communicative functions, such as contact, perception, understanding, and attitudinal reactions to the communicated content. Special attention is given to the type of reaction conveyed by feedback utterances, the communicative status of the information conveyed (i. e. the level of awareness and intentionality of the communicating sender), and the context sensitivity of feedback expressions. With regard to context sensitivty, which is one of the most characteristic features of feedback expressions, the discussion focuses on the way in which the type of speech act (mood), the factual polarity, and the information status of the preceding utterance influence the interpretation of feedback utterances. The different content dimensions are exemplified by data from recorded dialogues and by data given through linguistic intuition. Finally, two different ways of formalizing the analysis are examined, one using attribute-value matrices and one based on the theory of situation semantics. ©1992 N.I.S. Foundation (1992).

Social activities are an important part of the context of language use and provide many keys to understanding linguistic and communicative features. Such features can be well understood only if they are observed in their natural setting which to some extent is possible using a multimodal corpus as linguistic communication itself is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and further issues, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Lohorung.

Language is used for communication and communication facilitates social activities. If we want to capture this, linguistic investigation has to be carried out within a wider context. Examination of linguistic communication in a wider context shows that it is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and preliminary findings, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Nepali. ©2012 IEEE.

The text analyzes and compares the presence of the Anthropocene discourse in picture books from the northern hemisphere, both published in 2007, I skogen (In the wood) by Swedish author Eva Lindström and Winston of Churchill: One Bear’s Battle Against Global Warming by Canadian Jean Davis Okimoto. The books depict the tripartite relation between man-animal-nature as interdependent, but differently. While the Canadian book has an overt mission to enlighten the public about the effects of climate change for the artic region, in the Swedish book there is no overt message, but can be spotted and understood from an ecocritical perspective.

According to Anthropocene discourse nature is no longer a passive and static context for human actions (Crutzen 2000) and human control is an illusion (Carson 2002) [1962]. With Darwin man is defined as one species among many and after the rise of Ecology man is regarded as a species subsumed into an ecosystem. Ecologist Tormod Valaand Burkey advocates therefore for a new ethics where economy and man´s practices and values must adapt to a larger ecological context (2013).

The picture book analysis focuses on the combined pictorial and verbal narrative depiction of climate change and its threat to biodiversity. The focus is on how the representation of man as a species is depicted as well as its relation to other species of fauna and flora. The analysis will concentrate on attitudes, actions and ethical values expressed by protagonists when dealing with climate change in relation to an ecological ethics where human rights are closely knit with animal rights and biodiversity.  

Nesser’s most popular crime novel Kim Novak and its pendant Piccadilly, set in the 1960’s in Midsweden, share time, location, and the adolescence’s search for identity. In that quest the merging popular culture plays an important role. (Grossberg 1997) Nesser catches the characteristics of the time; Erik, 14 years, reads and writes comics; Mauritz, 17 years, listens to the latest pop music and constantly adds to his album collection. He also writes poetry and reads classics while listening to his rock music. The preferences of music, film and literature as well as the media practices by the protagonists convey authenticity to the setting but also serve as a narrative device to characterize the protagonists. The paper illustrates how the references to popular culture are used to depict the complexity and the dynamics of the main characters’ development.

Konstetablissemanget speglar en patriarkal värld i vilken olika spelregler gäller för kvinnor och män. Detta förhållande påkallar en undersökning för hur förutsättningarna ter sig för manligt och kvinnligt konstnärskap i bilderböcker i barnlitteraturen. Den västerländska bilderboken är ett lämpligt undersökningsobjekt eftersom den sedan modernismen har varit en konstform som uttrycker, speglar och experimenterar med bildkonst och konstnärskap. (Beckett 2012, Druker 2008). Beckett undersöker i sin översikt av crossover-bilderböcker en del av detta fenomen, nämligen bilderböcker som alluderar till bildkonst. I hennes redogörelse framkommer det att anmärkningsvärt få böcker handlar om kvinnliga konstnärer, liksom om konst skapad av kvinnor, Frida Kahlo undantagen. Om Becketts översikt är representativ bekräftar den att framställningar av kvinnligt konstnärskapande är försummat i bilderböcker. 

Syftet med mitt paper är sålunda att studera hur bildkonstnärer och konstnärlig aktivitet representeras på den svenska bilderboksmarknaden med hänsyn till genus. Till min hjälp har jag genusstudier utförda på barnlitteratur (Andrae 2001, Söderberg et al. 2013) och på bilderböcker (Österlund 2009). Min metod är att jämföra framställningar av kvinnliga och manliga konstnärliga aktiviteter ur ett genusperspektiv. Min analys kommer också att inkludera en inledande kvantitativ undersökning av bilderböcker som behandlar konstnärer och konstnärlig kreativitet på marknaden. Hur många är de? Hur många representerar kvinnors konstskapande? Min avsikt är att kvantifiera antalet böcker som behandlar kvinnliga konstnärer i förhållande till manliga, liksom att skissera typiska karakteristiska i dessa bilderböcker för konstnärskap och konstnärlighet med hänsyn till genusmönster.

Föredraget kommer att ge exempel på representationer av konstnärskap i vilken också paratexter (biografier och marknadsföring) har undersökts. Den preliminära studien är ur ett genusperspektiv betraktad en besvikelse (2014). Det finns inte en enda bilderbok som endast ägnar sig åt en svensk kvinnlig konstnär. I de fall de förekommer är de i egenskap av hustru, till exempel Karin Larsson i böcker om maken Carl.

Eftersom den kvinnliga konstnären är marginaliserad är nästa steg att finna ut om och hur kvinnligt konstnärskap kan definieras i andra termer än manligt? I så fall, hur ser villkoren ut? Eftersom materialet är så tunt med historiska karaktärer kommer jag att inkludera bilderböcker som porträtterar fiktiva karaktärers kreativa aktiviteter, till exempel Lundbergs Vita Streck, Wirséns Nallen och Höglunds Mina, vilka kan betecknas som konstnärliga, om än inte utifrån ett konventionellt synsätt.