A widely observed tracer in the field of oceanography is dissolved oxygen (O2). A tracer crucial to ocean biogeochemical cycles, O2 plays an active role in chemical processes, marine life, and ecosystems. Recent advances in observation and numerical simulation have introduced opportunities for furthering our understanding of the variability and long-term changes in oceanic O2. This work examines the underlying mechanisms driving O2 variability and long-term changes. It focuses on two distinct time-scales: intra-seasonal variability (i.e., a time scale of less than a month) and centennial changes in O2. The first half of this work analyzes state-of-the-art observations from a profiling float in an investigation of the mechanisms driving the intra-seasonal variability of oceanic O2. Observations from the float show enhanced intra-seasonal variability (i.e., a time scale of about two weeks) that could be driven by isopycnal heaving resulting from internal waves or tidal processes. Observed signals could result from aliased signals from internal waves or tides and should be taken into account in analyses of the growing observational dataset. The methods proposed in this study may be useful for future analyses of high-frequency tracer variability associated with mesoscale and sub-mesoscale processes. Using outputs from state-of-the-art earth system models and a suite of sensitivity experiments based on a general circulation and biogeochemistry ocean model, the second half of this work focuses on investigating mechanisms regulating centennial changes in O2. It explores the aspect of anthropogenic climate change (e.g., changes in the sea surface temperature and wind stress fields) that significantly impacts oceanic O2, focusing specifically on tropical oxygen minimum zones. Results suggest that ocean heating induces a water mass shift, leads to decrease apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) in the tropical thermocline. The AOU decrease compensates the effect of decrease in oxygen saturation due to the ocean warming. Our sensitivity experiments show that both physically (i.e., age) and biologically (i.e., the oxygen utilization rate) driven AOU will contribute almost equally to controlling changes in oceanic O2 in the next century. However, additional sensitivity experiments indicate that physically and biologically driven AOU balance has regional characteristics. We need to address the unanswered question of how varying large-scale oceanic circulations regulate this balance and answer fundamental questions that lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that control the variability and the future evolution of oceanic O2.

Albert Einstein believed “we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This quote, in my opinion, is particularly relevant for the academic literature that examines individual energy use. I believe that we have historically taken a categorized approach towards looking at individual energy use. Instead of thinking about multiple behaviours widely, we tend to look at individual behaviours deeply - focusing on electricity use, gas use, or travel behaviour in isolation instead of examining them simultaneously. For this reason, this thesis explores if and how an intervention aimed at one energy behaviour may influence or have untargeted effects on other energy behaviours across household energy use and personal travel behaviour from an interdisciplinary research perspective. The relevant literature is reviewed and an innovative methodology is devised to answer the research questions. By examining quantitative and qualitative data, the thesis evaluates the targeted and untargeted effects of an electricity display study across household energy and travel behaviours, assesses the influence that social and technical experiences with the display may have on behaviour, and explores how individuals conceptualize their energy usage to better understand untargeted effects. The findings indicate that 1) in a sample of 19 participants, 15 had untargeted effects in gas and 4 had untargeted effects in gas and travel, 2) the combined effect of social and technical experiences with the display can explain why an untargeted effect did or did not take place, and 3) participants perceived household energy as a resource but perceived travel as a means to move from one place to another. These findings lead to the development of a novel contribution of this research, known as the tangential effect. Contributions to theory and policy, an assessment of the methodological approach, and future research areas are given.

This thesis explored the dynamics of cost accounting systems (CAS). It focused on particular situations in which CAS can become institutionalised, embodying settled patterns of action and thought common to an organisation (Burns & Scapens, 2000). In such context, it is argued that the greater the degree of institutionalisation of CAS, the more difficult they are to change, and vice versa. This thesis has investigated the conditions and processes through which CAS can change and/or persist (i.e., remain relatively unchanged) through time. Exploring when, how and why institutional change and/or resistance may occur in CAS, is the specific motivation of this thesis. The following investigates CAS at a large oil refining organisation operating in Libya (RefCo). RefCo was undertaken as an interpretive case study, involving data collected through interviews, archives, internal company documentation and general (formal and informal) observations. The CAS in RefCo was subject to two change initiatives in a relatively short space of time. The first source of change was a requirement of its parent company to shift from a traditional production-orientation to a more commercial-orientation. With minimal resistance, the highly institutionalised CAS of RefCo evolved to become much more geared towards commercial decision-making. The second source of change originated in the recommendations of an external consulting organisation, who recommended that RefCo changed its CAS to take on more ‘best-practice’ principles, but also as part of a wider initiative of implementing Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs). However, this particular change initiative faced significant resistance. Analysis of the case was informed by institutional theory using, in particular, the concepts of deinstitutionalisation (Oliver, 1992), institutionalisation (Burns & Scapens, 2000), and politics and power mobilisation (Hardy, 1996). In contrast to the more conventional view that institutionalised practices (e.g., CAS in RefCo.) are difficult to change, this thesis has shown how such practices can be destabilised and changed through the configuration of a complex and dynamic process of costing system change. It suggests an institutional interdependence that underpins the interrelation between various components of the organisational system, and exemplifies an intertwining between CAS and operation control. While CAS change processes were shaped by ongoing changes in operation control, the outcomes of the former provided an institutional basis from which to make sense of the operational activities (Scapens, 1994). This interdependence helps sustain day-to-day organisational life in RefCo and contributes to our understanding of both change (processes) and resistance in relation to institutionalised practices. Moreover, we observed that a great deal of such change and/or resistance could be understood and explained in terms of politics and power mobilisation.

Recent (post-1950s) climate change impacts on society and ecosystems have been recognised globally. However these global impacts are not uniform at regional or local scales. Despite research progress on such scales there are still gaps in the knowledge as to 'what' is happening and 'where'? The goal of this study addresses some of these gaps by analysing climate variability and vegetation response at the furthest south westerly peninsula of the United Kingdom. This research is focused on West Cornwall (South West England) - an area dominated by a strong maritime influence. The first part of this PhD research analysed archive and contemporary instrumental data in order to detect any trends in climate variability. The weather data was retrieved from the Met Office archive for Camborne 1957-2010 and Culdrose 1985-2011 stations; Trengwainton Garden (1940-2010), and from the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, for Falmouth (1880-1952) and Helston (1843-1888). The data showed positive trends in mean annual and maximum temperature with the largest trend magnitude in the 20th and 21st century. Seasonal temperature change varies locally with the highest increase in autumn spring and summer. Precipitation trends were only positive for the 19th century for Helston. Correlation between precipitation data and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO index) was negative, however the opposite result was detected when the NAO index was correlated with temperatures. Surprisingly, return period analysis showed a decrease in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events post 1975 for Camborne and Trengwainton Garden stations. The second part of this study analysed changes in vegetation distribution in West Cornwall using historical and contemporary vegetation records. Historical vegetation records were used from the Flora of Cornwall collection of herbarium records and contemporary vegetation records which were available online, containing mainly the 'New Atlas of British and Irish flora'. Data sets were geo-referenced using ArcGIS in order to analyse changes in species geographical distribution pre and post-1900. Analysis showed that historical vegetation records can be used to assess any changes in geographic distributions of vegetation. Analysis for the area of West Cornwall showed a loss of range for 18 species, for 6 species this loss was larger than 50% of the area, and there was no change in overall range area for 10 species. Ellenberg values and environmental indicator values showed that they can be used as an indicator of environmental change, showing a decrease in species with lower January temperatures. Analysis also showed an increase in moderate wetter species, where species with extreme low and high precipitation environmental indicator values showed a greater loss. Furthermore species with a higher requirement for light showed a loss as well as species with lower nitrogen values. To analyse the loss of species at the local scale, West Cornwall was divided into three areas (North Border Cells, Central West Cornwall Cells and South Border Cells). The highest loss of 11 species was detected for South Border Cells, where the loss for Central West Cornwall Cells was 6 and for North Border Cells 8 species. It was found that 17 species were experiencing loss on different local sites. For 9 of these 17 species, change at the local scale was different to the national scale change at the individual species level, group level and habitat level. Furthermore, the whole area of West Cornwall lost two species post-1900, with a different loss locally. This showed that species could be protected locally in appropriate microclimate refugia, which will be of benefit for the preservation of regional identity ecosystem services and overall genetic pool of the species.

Roller derby is an emergent women’s sport; self-organized on a not-for-profit, do-it-yourself model it initially developed outside existing sports institutions and remains un-professionalized. Roller derby thus occupies an ambivalent position of gendered alterity in relation to a broader cultural field of sport, where women’s struggles for sporting legitimacy are well rehearsed in the literature. Existing research interprets roller derby as a unique context, particularly conducive to re-configurations of both gender and sport. Despite such uniqueness, research participants increasingly claim roller derby’s similarity to other sports practices, become concerned with its recognition as a ‘real, legitimate sport’ and orientate their practice towards getting taken seriously. I develop an ‘insider’ ethnographic account from analysis of five years of participant observation with one roller derby league of approximately 100 members, including 26 in-depth interviews and a collaborative film-making project. The thesis responds to a broad question, ‘how is getting taken seriously negotiated in practice?’ and analyses shifts in participants’ gendered self-representations, the bureaucratization of a 'by the skaters, for the skaters' organizational ethos, and the institution of competition. As participants work to diminish distinctions between roller derby and ‘sport’, they enact a set of related distinctions between; what the league used to be like and what it became; who roller derby is and is not by and for; and practices that are and are not condusive to serious recognition. As participants’ definitions of roller derby move away from ‘a sport for women who don’t like sport’ towards ‘a sport for people who really, really like sport’ a second over-arching question arises; in seeking serious recognition did the league eventually become what it once defined itself in opposition to? Concentrating on moments when participants’ claims for serious recognition refuse and rework the gendered terms of such intelligibility, I argue that a sociological analysis of seriousness is crucial to understanding such fateful dilemmas. Enactments of non-/seriousness enable skaters to create new organizational and representational praxis, identities, meanings and relations, as they negotiate the possibilities and limits of working together to make something relatively new. Non-/seriousness is how participants move between roller derby, sport and gender as inevitable, singular, certain and beyond their influence and yet malleable, contingent, multiple, ambivalent and created in their own actions. Four interludes, between chapters, reflect on non-/seriousness in ‘insider’ research. The interludes interrupt and expand upon the thesis’ central analytical contentions; that analyzing non-/seriousness both enhances and unsettles our understanding of familiar sociological preoccupations with gender, organization and mid-ranges of agency between dichotomies of voluntarism and determinism.

Scientific knowledge is often relied upon for informing crucial societal decisions. Where this knowledge is uncertain, and/or where these decision are made amidst a contexted political landscape, science tends to become the focus of intense scrutiny, as has been evident throughout the history of climate change politics. One consequence is that instead of "scientising" decision-making, science itself becomes more explicitly politicised. This thesis argues that in order to contribute to contemporary debates about the governance of science, it is essential to move beyond the question of whether or not policy-relevant scientific knowledge is credibly and to examine how scientific knowledge is made to be credible. Drawing upon the concept of co-production and other insights from Science & Technology Studies (STS), this thesis presents a detailed examination of how research into the health impacts of climate change (infectious diseases especially) gradually gained in prominence in both public health and climate change circles. Particular analytical attention is paid to an epistemic community of climate change and health (CCH) researchers, following the ways in which they interacted with global political entities such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). Based upon in-depth interviews with actors intimately involved in CCH research, this thesis documents how the rise of CCH research influenced and was influenced by particular scientific and political contexts related to the governance of climate change as well as emerging infectious disease. The examination of a longstanding controversy surrounding CCH research reveals many socio-economic and political assumptions embedded in it, further demonstrating its contingency. However, despite that CCH research is both uncertain and contested, actors in the political world often need to know what the state-of-the-art of the field is. To examine the implications of this, the CCH controversy as treated by the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) is explored. Although IPCC follows a complicated set of procedures aimed at ensuring scientific and political legitimacy, this thesis demonstrates that values and normative judgements are important components of scientific assessments, helping to co-construct particular science-policy orderings at the expense of alternative ones. Amidst ongoing debates about how to shore-up the credibility of climate change science and politics, this thesis argues that the way in which IPCC assessments are currently performed, as well as their tendency to present findings as "consensus", may undermine their political and scientific credibility.

Pakistan, a late starter in fertility transition, has been experiencing a rapid fertility decline since 1990. Although existing research often presents patriarchal family systems as a major reason for the delay of the onset of this transition, there is no empirical study investigating the transformations in these family systems or intrafamilial power relationships during the ongoing transition. Published research also often fails to reflect the complex nature and processes behind this fertility transition as it lacks diachronic analysis and remains within disciplinary boundaries. This thesis contributes to filling these gaps through investigating the social processes underpinning the fertility decline in Punjab, Pakistan by: 1. employing an interdisciplinary approach that links demography with sociology, and quantitative approaches with qualitative ones, to provide a more comprehensive analysis of fertility and family change 2. employing an intergenerational approach that enables diachronic analysis of the differences in the reproductive careers of two generations of women and the actors’ perceptions of factors contributing to these differences 3. providing multiple perspectives of family members regarding the reasons for fertility change, how reproduction is negotiated within the existing power hierarchies in the family, and how familial power relationships evolve to adjust these changes The study employs a two-phased explanatory sequential mixed methods approach. Phase one utilises two existing Demographic and Health Surveys to compare the changes in fertility preferences and behaviour of Punjabi women aged 25-34 in 1990/1 and 2006/7. Phase two is a qualitative study conducted in Punjab in 2010/11 among young women, their mothers, mothers-in-law and husbands to gather data on their perceptions of reasons for fertility change and the ways in which families and family relationships bearing on reproductive decision-making has transformed during the ongoing transition. The findings show that “planning a family”, which was seen to be in the hands of God among the older generation, has entered into the “calculus of conscious choice” among young women who have specific preferences with regard to when and how many children to have. This transition has mainly been a response to rapid socioeconomic developments and improved living conditions that are paradoxically experienced as growing economic constraints for the households through increasing costs of childbearing and rearing as well as generating aspirations for social mobility. This was also complemented by changes in values and attitudes regarding family planning, parenthood and familial relationships led by institutional changes and policy developments including expansion of family planning programme, changing religious stances about family planning, the spread of mass media, and increased (importance given to) female schooling. All of these developments also coincide with a subtle transformation of family systems in Punjab, as well as a limited dissolution of previously existing power relationships within the families by expansion of the boundaries of gender roles, honour and obedience. Although young women are expected to be obedient to their husbands and mothers-in-law with regard to fertility decisions, they have been able to influence the power dynamics between themselves and their mothers-in-law by building stronger conjugal relationships and being submissive to their husbands’ desires.

This thesis is a study of the cultural politics of environmentalism in an era of climate change and the public curriculum that it generates. Scientists and the policy elite alone are unlikely to solve the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change, even in the unlikely scenario that consensus was reached and concerted international action was forthcoming. Increasingly, it is recognised that institutional learning through technocratic refinements of the status quo are inadequate. Although there is widespread belief that anthropogenic global warming is an urgent problem, political action has not followed scientific knowledge, because we have been slow to recognise the problem’s cultural implications. A range of voices within the environmental movement (broadly conceived) have increasingly challenged technocratic policy framing, with new ways of thinking. By widening the debate these critical voices increase the possibility of learning to react in new ways, which increase the capacity for collective agency. Based on this assessment, the aim of this thesis is to explore the ways in which the cultural politics of particular activist milieus generate public curriculum, through catalyzing the relationship between the cultural politics of civil society and the political culture of the state. From the 1960s onwards, the environmental movement has undergone a process of differentiation and specialisation, such that distinct cultural formations – oriented around direct action, relocalisation, and professional campaigning – emerged. Different ideal typical modes of “climate change communication” – agonistic pluralism, public participation, and social marketing (Carvalho & Peterson, 2012) – can be mapped onto the public pedagogies of these activist cultures. Political theorist Chantal Mouffe (2005, p. 20) uses the term agonistic pluralism to describe a situation where the “adversary” is understood in a productive sense to be “a crucial category for democratic politics”: where this is denied, we/they relations are understood to be “antagonistic” in the sense that conflicting parties do not recognise the legitimacy of one another. This view recognises the power play and affective commitments that determine modes of political association. On the other hand, “public participation” views politics as constituted through non-partisan rational deliberation in legitimate public fora. Finally, “social marketing” approaches discard the notion of people as rational decision makers, but also discard the principle of public participation in favour of the notion that political communication can be improved through expert evidence-based interventions. Cultures of direct climate action tend towards agonistic communicative styles, characterised by contestatory moments and a public pedagogy of “defining the enemy” (Newman, 1994). On the other hand, this approach has been perceived as problematic by movement intellectuals in relocalisation movements, who have argued that the non-politicised experimental practices of local communities, which engage optimistically with a sense of the possible, may in the long run, be more productive of the kind of mass cultural value shift required in order to tackle climate change. More recently, reflecting their own situated organisational structures and actor-networks, knowledge workers in the professional campaigning sector have increasingly applied insights from social psychology, behavioural economics, and cognitive science in order to find ways that engage tacit cultural values and norms in their public pedagogical efforts. In seeking to ascertain the ideal conditions for communication, the ENGO sector aligns most closely with a ‘social marketing approach’ to public pedagogy. Working with the ‘agonistic’ discourse theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, I believe that all cultures of activism necessarily engage in a contingent politics of articulation, at the heart of which lies antagonism and hegemonic struggle. In this thesis, I construct an intertextual research model, capable of exploring the contingent processes of articulation within cultures of climate change activism, between them, and between the movement at large, and the wider public, as they engage (implicitly or explicitly) in hegemonic struggles that provide moments of educative potential to activists, bystanders and politicians. I argue that the public pedagogies of these cultures of activism cohere around the articulation of what Laclau (2005) would call “empty signifiers”, which link particular claims, interests, and identities through creating a frontier separating them from an outside, which partially constitutes the inside’s identity.

Recent curriculum reform agendas appear to exert pressure on teachers to incorporate Mathematical Problem Solving (MPS) meaningfully into their lessons, with the view to engaging pupils with real life problems, guessing, discovering, and making sense of mathematics. However, a comprehensive review of both government and academic literature indicate that understanding teachers' reform implementation decisions is largely unexplored, particularly within the Ghanaian context. The purpose of this mixed-methods sequential explanatory study was to identify factors contributing to teacher intentions to teach MPS by obtaining quantitative results from a survey of 375 primary teachers and then following up with six purposefully selected teachers to explore those results in more depth through interviews. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the quantitative phase of the study explored how certain different but interrelated belief variables such as attitudes towards the behaviour (AB), perceived norms (PN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) lead to an explanation of teacher intentions to teach MPS, and an understanding of the contributions of relevant socio-demographic factors in defining these intentions in this context. In the follow up, qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews with six teachers were conducted to explore in depth the results from the statistical analyses. Results indicated that several beliefs about teaching MPS significantly contributed to AB, PN and PBC. Two factors, AB and PBC were found to have significant influences and accounted for 80% of the variance in the teachers' intent to teach MPS. Differences appeared to exist between private and public school teachers' for both intent and the three constructs (AB, PN, and PBC), whilst familiarity with the curriculum had an effect on teachers intentions only. In the qualitative phase, the study addressed some factors found to potentially influence teachers' intentions including MPS conceptions, past experience in mathematics, availability of resources, adequate classroom spaces and professional development opportunities. The quantitative and qualitative findings from the two phases of the study are discussed with reference to prior research. The results provide an understanding of the relevant social-cognitive processes which may influence a teacher's reform decisions, and in particular suggest strong implications for developing the capacity of schools to support teachers' intentions to implement curriculum reform policies.

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