Offentliga eller privata religioner i läroböcker : en kvalitativ inehållsanalys om hur Judendom, Kristendom, Islam, Hinduism och Buddhism framställs i läroböcker för Religionskunskap 1.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to examine how Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are portrayed in four Swedish textbooks for use in upper secondary school using José Casanova’s theory about the public and the private sphere and Craig Calhoun’s interpretation of Jürgen Habermas theory of the public sphere. The four textbooks examined are all to fit the latest curriculum for upper secondary school education on the subject Religionskunskap 1 (Religious education 1). The research questions for this paper are: (1) how can the depictions of the five world religions in Swedish textbooks be understood analysed with the concept of public and private and (2) how can the presentations be understood using José Casanovas theory of de-privatization. The result of the study showed that the depictions given of the religions differed from religion to religion while being rather consistent throughout the different textbooks. It showed that Christianity and Buddhism were depicted as private while Islam and Judaism are depicted as public. Hinduism on the other hand were harder to decide which category they belonged to since they are depicted as both public and private.