Fluids and barriers of the CNS: a historical viewpoint

Tracing the exact origins of modern science can be a difficult but rewarding pursuit. It is possible for the astute reader to follow the background of any subject through the many important surviving texts from the classical and ancient world. While empirical investigations have been described by many since the time of Aristotle and scientific methods have been employed since the Middle Ages, the beginnings of modern science are generally accepted to have originated during the 'scientific revolution' of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. The scientific method is so fundamental to modern science that some philosophers consider earlier investigations as 'pre-science'. Notwithstanding this, the insight that can be gained from the study of the beginnings of a subject can prove important in the understanding of work more recently completed. As this journal undergoes an expansion in focus and nomenclature from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) into all barriers of the central nervous system (CNS), this review traces the history of both the blood-CSF and blood-brain barriers from as early as it was possible to find references, to the time when modern concepts were established at the beginning of the 20th century

Eating with the Mafia : belonging and violence

This article presents a reading of the place of food in a variety of texts which concern the Mafia. In many organizations, food often seems to be symbolically deployed as a representation of community through commensality. However, in the Mafia, unlike many contemporary organizations, food preparation and consumption appears not to be relegated to liminal times and spaces, but to be a central part of being a Mafiosi. The article explores this idea in terms of the connections between metaphors of community and family in the Mafia and in legal business organizations, and then the tensions between community and violence in the Mafia and in legal business organizations. After a consideration of the partial dislocation of women and food in the Mafia, the article concludes with some reflections on organizations and belonging

Secret Societies: Intimations of Organization

This paper uses the secret society to pose questions about the politics, epistemology and ontology of organizing. Against assumptions of transparency, or the possibility of hermeneutic understanding, I suggest that much organizing is actually invisible and opaque. The paper begins with a consideration of the characteristics of historical and contemporary organizational conspiracies, and then moves on to elaborate what sort of ‘facts’ need to be claimed about a secret society to bring it into existence. After a section on the politics of contemporary organizational conspiracies, the paper concludes with some speculations on what the example of the secret society can tell us about the paranoia required by contemporary organizational researchers, as well as the ontology of organizations. After all, we have still never seen an organization