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In this chapter, we explore an actual incident of cyberbullying that occurred at a large Canadian university. In our analysis, we frame cyberbullying as part of the more general phenomena of classroom incivility. We focus on the sociocultural context and demonstrate how the structures and processes within the classroom environment can enable incivility as well as cyberbullying.

Although Harriet Martineau's death predates the establishment of cultural studies by nearly a century, the writing of this first woman sociologist and founder of the field, evidences several key ways in which her work anticipates the emergence of the new field. Martineau's social and political philosophy, concern with the emancipation of subordinate groups, and ethnographic method parallels major cultural studies tenets. In line with the quality of life concerns now associated with cultural studies, she identified personal happiness as a major concern for society. She was an advocate of democracy and capitalism as the way forward, as well as of education for all. Martineau argued that work was critical to individual lives and the health of society, and she was adamant about the right for people to freely choose the work they wanted to do. Martineau wrote extensively on the social issues of her time, identifying gender, racial and class tensions, and was particularly concerned with the woman question and the emancipation of women.

Purpose: This chapter examines how healthcare technologies (electronic medical records, personal cell phones, and pagers) help manage patient care work to accelerate processes of communication and blur boundaries between work time and non-work time, thereby revealing dynamics of power as indicated through temporal capital, or the amount of time under an individual’s control.

Method: The data were collected from 35 in-depth semistructured interviews of health practitioners, which included 26 physicians, 7 nurses, and 2 administrators.

Findings: Communication technologies fulfill promises of temporal autonomy and efficiency, but not without cost, particularly as it intersects with organizational/institutional power structures and non-work-related social factors such as pre-existing technological literacy and proficiency. The blurring of work and non-work time gives practitioners perceived higher quality of life while also increasing temporal flexibility and autonomy. The higher up one is in the relevant hierarchy, the more control one has over one’s own time, resulting in higher levels of temporal capital. The power hierarchies serve to complicate the potential recuperation of temporal capital by communication technologies.

Implications: This study uses a critical cultural perspective that takes into consideration structures of institutional power hierarches impact temporal organization through the use of communication technologies by health practitioners. Practitioner-facing research is particularly crucial given the high rates of burnout within the profession and concerns around the well-being of health practitioners, and autonomy and control over one’s time is a factor in work and life satisfaction.

This chapter examines the concepts of race and racism, critically reviewing their historical and contemporary applications in everyday life as well as in academic and policy debates. Racism has been extensively researched, with various theories and conceptualisations developed across social science. However, there is a great deal of disagreement regarding its nature, contemporary significance and empirical validation. This chapter examines these and attempts to synthesise some of the common definitions of racism provided in the literature. It explores related concepts and underlying themes pertaining to expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, it unpacks current knowledge about racial issues and discusses recent advances in the conceptual understanding of various forms of racism. It also elucidates the social, political and analytical applications of racism as a concept and the significance of racism in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes by highlighting how racism is a dynamic phenomenon, continuously evolving with the social, political and technological transformations in contemporary societies.

Few scholars become notable figures in their areas of specialization. Understanding how and why some scholars are identified by their unusual accomplishments, therefore, can be difficult, especially when some scholars achieve more notable careers and are invisible in their professions than others, more recognized colleagues. The reasons for some scholars’ visibility and their colleagues’ invisibility may be unclear or ambiguous. One common reason for invisibility is being a woman in a patriarchal discipline. Men’s ideas, values, and careers are privileged and more highly rated in a patriarchal subject like sociology.

Here, I analyze case studies of invisibility that emerge from deliberate suppression but focus on the more hidden processes of making women invisible in sociology. These less overt processes of invisibility require different theories, networks, and methods to discover the women’s notable careers than those used in examples of more overt processes.

Making invisible women visible requires multiple processes, over time, by a number of professionals and gatekeepers.

Harriet Martineau's first and last articles on American society concerned the Salem Massachusetts witch hunts, trials and executions of 1692. She shared the Victorian fascination with psychological phenomena, especially perception and the power of suggestion, and the sociological aspects of community reactions to ‘fitful’ and erratic behavior. Martineau insisted that accusations of witchcraft and the responses to them required objective scientific study. Her accounts of events in Salem are used to examine the role of the clergy and organized religion in the community, citizens’ vulnerability to accusation, anxiety about colonial life in early America, and panic and mob action. Martineau explores the universal implications of the case.

Harriet Martineau's writing about Ireland spanned over 35 years of her career and, as a topic of socio-cultural, political, and economic interest, was second only to her prolific writing on the United States. Through the contexts of her writing (fiction and nonfiction) and of 19th-century Anglo-Irish history, this discussion examines a singular episode in Martineau's life and work, one that highlights her complex views on Ireland and challenges her assumptions about the relentless conundrum popularly termed “the Irish Question.” Martineau's brief epistolary relationship with the young repeal advocate, Mr. Langtrey, helped shape and clarify her thinking about Anglo-Irish relations; subsequently, she produced some of the best writing of her career as a traveling correspondent for the Daily News, reporting on post-famine Ireland. Although on a par with her better-known sociological analyses of America, Martineau's writing about 19th-century Ireland remains comparatively unexamined by scholars of the British Empire, of Victorian intellectual and social history, and of the enduringly contentious Anglo-Irish relations.