Revisiting Bott to connect the dots: an exploration of the methodological origins of social network analysis

Against a backdrop of a growing interest in qualitative and mixed-method approaches to social network analysis (SNA) and the exploration of ego-networks, in this article I revisit the pioneering urban families research of the social anthropologist and psychoanalyst Elizabeth Bott (1971 [1957]) in the mid-twentieth century. While Bott's work has been widely recognized as formative for contemporary approaches to, and concepts in, SNA, her methodological practice has been under-explored. In the discussion that follows I therefore seek first to precis the methods of data collection and analysis employed by Bott with a view to distilling insights for current practice. In addition, I analyze the approach to research design taken by Bott in order to better understand how the social networks innovation her work heralded was realized

Orchestrated public space: the curatorial dimensions of the transformation of London's Southbank Centre

Since 1999, London’s Southbank Centre, an assemblage of arts venues and constituent public spaces in central London, has been undergoing a gradual ‘transformation’ that continues to this day (Southbank Centre, 2016). In addition to works to refurbish the arts venues, this transformation has involved the renewal of the public realm between, around and (most infamously) beneath those venues. Using ethnographic data I seek to unpack the curatorial dimensions of the redesign and reappropriation of public space at this site

Everyday without exception? Making space for the exceptional in contemporary sociological studies of streetlife

Over the last twenty years we have witnessed an increasing prevalence of ethnographic studies concerned explicitly with the social and cultural life, and production, of space and specifically of the urban public realm. In line with a wider trend, many of these studies seek to analyse urban public life through the prism of the ‘everyday’, using accounts of the ordinary to explore the ways that city streets are used and experienced. In this paper I seek to interrogate this multifarious deployment of ‘everydayness’ in ethnographic work on urban ‘streetlife.’ This interrogation is both theoretical, exploring how the everyday became the privileged approach for studies of the street, and methodological, asking what is it about our methodological choices that lends itself to conceptualising public life as everyday, and what might we do differently? At the same time, the paper will draw on ethnographic work on London’s South Bank to open up a space to consider the exceptional in sociological studies of streetlif

Our house, in the middle of our street

Despite hearing that Mercury’s current orbit is disrupting our ability to communicate at the present time, I rather fortuitously learned last night that a BBC Radio 4 series has just started looking into the history of private life. I wish I could claim that this coincidence, in terms of content, with my initial blog posting for Connected Communities was all exquisitely planned but the truth is far less strategic on my part

Public realm ethnography: (non-)participation, co-presence and the challenge of situated multiplicity

Against the backdrop of abstract accounts of a variety of processes associated with the ‘end of public space’ (disneyfication, commodification, privatisation, gentrification, securitisation and so on), the last few decades have witnessed a marked growth in ethnographic accounts of the production, meaning and experience of urban public spaces. Methodologically, studying these dimensions of public space ethnographically poses clear challenges for how researchers design and conduct their fieldwork: practically, how can fieldworkers participate in a socio-spatial context typically characterised by ‘situated multiplicity’ (Amin A (2008) Collective culture and urban public space. City 12(1): 5–24) and co-presence with strangers? Moreover, what do researchers do when there are no core group activities, institutional roles or (sub-)cultural practices to participate in? With these questions in mind, I first seek to review the practical fieldwork techniques used by ethnographers interested in studying the urban public realm. I then use this review to synthesise and distil a set of four interlinked fieldwork heuristics for public realm ethnography

Living in an Age-Friendly Community: Evidence from a Masterplanned Development in Southwest Sydney

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).This paper is situated at the interface of a growing urban studies literature concerned with ‘masterplanning’ practices in urban planning and another, hitherto relatively discrete, body of research concerned with age-friendly cities and communities. The authors are interested in exploring a gap in aging in place literature around how neighbourhoods and residential settings developed with aging in place principles in mind are experienced and perceived by residents. To explore this research gap, the authors analyse qualitative (primarily interview and focus group) data collected in Park Central, a masterplanned development located in the Campbelltown suburb in the southwest region of the Sydney metropolitan area, Australia. This development was delivered in response to a need identified by the state’s land and property development agency, Landcom, for more diverse and affordable medium-density housing in Campbelltown. In particular, a need was identified for housing developments that would be able to sustainably accommodate the changing lifestyle needs of a maturing population in the region. Drawing on our thematic analysis of our data, we discern three key themes in research participants’ experiences of Park Central as a place for aging. These themes are elaborated via recourse to excerpts from our data and discussed with a view to informing how the conception, development and practice of further age-friendly communities is approached.Peer reviewe

Operationalising capacities theory to integrate quasi-experimental and inductive designs in evaluation

Building on a research seminar given at the Department of Methodology by Professor Judith Green (LSHTM) I am pleased to say that the latest paper out of the ‘On the buses’ study I worked on as a Research Fellow has now been published. Using already published papers on the findings of this study as a backdrop, as well as presenting some of this data in the course of the argument, this paper reflects on some theoretical and practical challenges of conducting a mixed-methods evaluation of a public policy and the approach we employed for meeting these challenges

Activity-dependent regulation of NMDA receptors in substantia nigra dopaminergic neurones.

N-Methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are Ca(2+)-permeable glutamate receptors that play a critical role in synaptic plasticity and promoting cell survival. However, overactive NMDARs can trigger cell death signalling pathways and have been implicated in substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) pathology in Parkinson's disease. Calcium ion influx through NMDARs recruits Ca(2+)-dependent proteins that can regulate NMDAR activity. The surface density of NMDARs can also be regulated dynamically in response to receptor activity via Ca(2+)-independent mechanisms. We have investigated the activity-dependent regulation of NMDARs in SNc dopaminergic neurones. Repeated whole-cell agonist applications resulted in a decline in the amplitude of NMDAR currents (current run-down) that was use dependent and not readily reversible. Run-down was reduced by increasing intracellular Ca(2+) buffering or by reducing Ca(2+) influx but did not appear to be mediated by the same regulatory proteins that cause Ca(2+)-dependent run-down in hippocampal neurones. The NMDAR current run-down may be mediated in part by a Ca(2+)-independent mechanism, because intracellular dialysis with a dynamin-inhibitory peptide reduced run-down, suggesting a role for clathrin-mediated endocytosis in the regulation of the surface density of receptors. Synaptic NMDARs were also subject to current run-down during repeated low-frequency synaptic stimulation in a Ca(2+)-dependent but dynamin-independent manner. Thus, we report, for the first time, regulation of NMDARs in SNc dopaminergic neurones by changes in intracellular Ca(2+) at both synaptic and extrasynaptic sites and provide evidence for activity-dependent changes in receptor trafficking. These mechanisms may contribute to intracellular Ca(2+) homeostasis in dopaminergic neurones by limiting Ca(2+) influx through the NMDAR

Changing socio-spatial definitions of sufficiency of home: evidence from London (UK) before and during the Covid-19 stay-at-home restrictions

In this paper, we explore how London residents understand, live, and experience their dwellings. Growing evidence shows that existing housing stock in the UK performs poorly in terms of functionality and flexibility. Policy and planning debates focus on the potential benefits of introducing standards for dwelling size while engaging less with broader questions of how to develop standards. Drawing on an online survey (n = 234) and in-depth interviews (n = 22) concerned with experiences of housing, we explore Londoners’ understandings of housing design sufficiency. Our findings show that experiences of dwellings, and understandings of those dwellings as sufficient for occupants’ needs, vary by household type and dwelling occupancy patterns. Moreover, social constructions of dwelling sufficiency are related not only to the size of dwellings, as often described and conceptualised by housing authorities in the UK, but also to the type, form, and layout of rooms. We further show that stay-at-home restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic challenged understandings of dwelling size and dwelling sufficiency. This prompts a discussion of the assumptions made in UK housing design regarding dwelling use, dwelling users, and future housing

Nuclear expression of Lyn, a Src family kinase member, is associated with poor prognosis in renal cancer patients

Background: 8000 cases of renal cancer are diagnosed each year in the UK, with a five-year survival rate of 50 %. Treatment options are limited; a potential therapeutic target is the Src family kinases (SFKs). SFKs have roles in multiple oncogenic processes and promote metastases in solid tumours. The aim of this study was to investigate SFKs as potential therapeutic targets for clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Methods: SFKs expression was assessed in a tissue microarray consisting of 192 ccRCC patients with full clinical follow-up. SFK inhibitors, dasatinib and saracatinib, were assessed in early ccRCC cell lines, 786-O and 769-P and a metastatic ccRCC cell line, ACHN (± Src) for effects on protein expression, apoptosis, proliferation and wound healing. Results: High nuclear expression of Lyn and the downstream marker of activation, paxillin, were associated with decreased patient survival. Conversely, high cytoplasmic expression of other SFK members and downstream marker of activation, focal adhesion kinase (FAK) were associated with increased patient survival. Treatment of non-metastatic 786-O and 769-P cells with dasatinib, dose dependently reduced SFK activation, shown via SFK (Y419) and FAK (Y861) phosphorylation, with no effect in metastatic ACHN cells. Dasatinib also increased apoptosis, while decreasing proliferation and migration in 786-O and 769-P cell lines, both in the presence and absence of Src protein. Conclusions: Our data suggests that nuclear Lyn is a potential therapeutic target for ccRCC and dasatinib affects cellular functions associated with cancer progression via a Src kinase independent mechanism