Negotiating the boundaries between home and work practices: The case of home-workers

When people work from home, the domains of home and work are co-located, often under one roof. Home-workers have to cope with the meeting of two practices that have traditionally been physically separated. In light of this, we need to understand: how do people who work from home negotiate the boundaries between their home and work practices? What kinds of boundaries do people construct? How do boundaries affect the relationship between home and work as domains? What kinds of boundaries are available to home-workers? Are home-workers in charge of their boundaries or do they co-create them with others? How does this position home-workers in their domains? In order to address these questions, I analysed a variety of data, including newspaper columns, online forum discussions, interviews, and personal diary entries, using a discourse analytic approach that lends itself to issues of positioning. Current literature clashes over whether home-workers are in control of their boundaries, and over the relationship between home and work that arises out of boundary negotiations, i.e. whether home and work are dichotomous or layered. I seek to contribute to boundary theory by adopting a practice theory stance (Wenger, 1998) to guide my analysis. By viewing home and work as practices, I show that boundary negotiations depend on how home-workers are positioned, e.g. if they are positioned as peripheral in a domain, they lack influence over boundaries. I demonstrate that home and work constitute a number of different practices, rather than a rigid dichotomy, and that the way home and work are related are not the same for all home-workers. The application of practice concepts further shows how relationships between practices are created. The contribution of this work is a reconceptualisation of current boundary theory away from individual and cognitive notions (Nippert-Eng, 1996) into the realm of positioning.

Fractionation and compositional studies of rabbit skeletal muscle membranes

The observations of Hooke (1665), Schleiden & Schwann (1839) and Virchow (1855) led to the identification of the cell as the basic structural unit of living material. In the intervening years, it has been firmly established that the chemical processes which underlie the proper functioning, development and reproduction of the organism are cellular activities. The development of the electron microscope has enabled cell structure to be studied in detail. A picture of the cell as an entity with a complex and highly organised internal structure has emerged from the work of Palade, Porter, Fernandez-Moran and many others. Although cells from different tissues and organisms differ in aspects of their structure and consequently in function, they have several features in common. A retentive membrane encloses a number of cell constituents, which include membrane-enclosed subcellular structures known as organelles. The cells of most tissues also contain a reticulum or system of branching tubules. The interplay of the biochemical activities of these structures enables the cell to function. Almost thirty years ago, Claude, Palade, Schneider, Hogeboom, de Duve and others set out to analytically fractionate the subcellular components obtained after the fragmentation of liver cells. This approach has become known as subcellular fractionation, and signalled a major conceptual breakthrough in biochemistry (reviewed by de Duve, 1964, 1967, 1971). The significance of this breakthrough has been underlined by the award of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Medicine to de Duve, Palade and Claude. This thesis is concerned with the application of subcellular fractionation techniques to the separation and characterisation of the membrane systems of the rabbit skeletal muscle cell.

Molecular genetics of the imprinted gene - SPROUTY3 (SPRY3)

Sprouty proteins are key regulators of cell growth and branching morphogenesis during development. Human SPRY3 which maps to the pseudoautosomal region 2, undergoes random X-inactivation in females and preferential Y-inactivation in males, behaving as though genetically X-linked. Spry3 is widely expressed in neuronal tissues, being found at high levels in the cerebellum and particularly in the Purkinje cells which, notably, are deficient in the autistic brain. Spry3 is also highly expressed in other ganglia in adults including retinal ganglion cells, dorsal root ganglion and superior cervical ganglion. SPRY3 enhancer can drive SPRY3 expression in the lung airway, which is consistent with a role in branching morphogenesis and the function of the original Drosophila Spry gene, which is critical for lung morphogenesis, providing a possible explanation for an observed anatomic abnormality in the autistic lung airway. In the human and mouse, the SPRY3 core promoter contains an AG-rich repeat and we found evidence of coexpression, promoter binding and regulation of SPRY3 expression by transcription factors EGR1, ZNF263 and PAX6. Spry3 over-expression in mouse superior cervical ganglion cells inhibits axon branching and Spry3 knockdown in those cells increases axon branching, consistent with known functions of other Sprouty proteins. Novel SPRY3 upstream transcripts that I characterised originate from three start sites in the X-linked F8A3 – TMLHE gene region, which is recently implicated in autism causation. Arising from these findings, I propose that the lung airway abnormality and low levels of blood carnitine found in autism suggest that deregulation of SPRY3 may underpin a subset of autism cases.

Zazen, philosophy of mind, and the practicality of realising impermanence

This dissertation involves a general overview of the meditative practice of zazen and analytic philosophy of mind while suggesting a potential bridge between them in the form of an analysis of the practicality of realising impermanence. By the end of my argument I hope to have offered up some compelling evidence in favour of the idea that analytic philosophy would benefit greatly from adopting principles which are best learned and expressed through the practice of, and scholarship around, Zen Buddhism and in particular the treatment of the concept of impermanence. I demonstrate the Western philosophical tendency to make dichotomous assumptions about the nature of mind, even when explicitly denying a dualist framework. I do so by examining the historical and philosophical precedent for dualistic thinking in the work of figures such as Plato and Descartes. I expand on this idea by examining the psychology of categorisation - i.e. creating mental categories and boundaries - and demonstrating how such categorisations feeds back into behaviour in practical ways, both positive and negative. The Zen Buddhist principle of impermanence states that all phenomena are impermanent and therefore lack essential nature; this includes intellectual concepts such as the metaphysical framework of the analytic approach to mind. Impermanence is a principle which is realised through the embodied practice of zazen. By demonstrating its application to analytic philosophy of mind I show that zazen (and mindfulness practice in general) provides an ongoing opportunity for clearing up entrenched world views, metaphysical assumptions and dogmatic thinking. This in turn may promote a more holistic and ultimately more rewarding comprehension of the role of first-person experience in understanding the world. My argument is not limited to analytic philosophy of mind but reflects broad aspects of thinking in general, and I explain its application to issues of social importance, in particular education systems.