S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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with others. Strauss (1978, 1991) referred to social worlds as ‘universes of discourse’; Mead (1938/1972) described them as social groups concomitant with their own meaningful universes of discourses, while Clarke (2005) described them as ‘collectives which participate in the same discourse or … simply a number of people acting together’ (Mathar, 2008). Clarke (2005) differentiated social worlds from social arenas by narrowing the scope of ‘worlds’—there are several social worlds (i.e. collectives which participate in the same discourse or, to describe it simply, a number of people acting together) within one arena. The researcher in this study reversed this classification; in other words, in this study, there are a number of arenas within the broader social world. There were two reasons for this. First, etymologically, ‘arena’ derives from the Latin word harena , meaning ‘sand strewn place of combat’. The researcher visualised aspects of the remote nurses’ social world as places of combat, for example, their workplace, resources and skills; however, the researcher did not see the whole life of the remote nurse delivering mental healthcare as a place of combat. There are spaces in their lives of peacefulness, tranquillity and enjoyment, such as holidays, family and beautiful landscapes. Second, the definition of ‘world’ is ‘a person’s normal or habitual sphere of interest, action or thought’ ( Shorter Oxford Dictionary , 2007), which connoted to the researcher a sense of largeness or wholeness. This case study aimed to examine the entirety of a remote nurse’s social world. While in a remote setting, a remote nurse, even if not at the workplace or on duty, remains within the ‘world’ involved in delivering mental healthcare. Accordingly, the difference between the researcher’s and Clarke’s (2005) classifications is that when the researcher refers to