S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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It argues that every act of establishing something is linked with the different factors influencing it, such as its surroundings, regulations, other people, and technology. Humans are not the only beings with agency or the only entities to act; all actants are actors which all have influence. Non-human actors can be anything from machines to landscaping or anything with a capability to make a difference (Giddens, 1984). Hence the laptop computer dictates the actions of the remote nurse in sending an email, just as a mobile phone dictates different actions on the nurse if wishing to make a call. In the former, the object requires booting up the computer and typing on a keyboard, whereas the latter requires dialling numbers and speaking into it. This illustrates how objects in the social world create actions. 8.2.7 Increasing complexity of the remote nurse’s social world While there are multiple transitions and stages in temporal and physical spaces in the process of delivering remote mental healthcare, this section examines the complexity and multiplicity of enactments, actors and relationships. Adopting an assemblage approach (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) to the notion of network in actor-network theory (Latour, 2005; Law, 2007) facilitates consideration of the complexity, unpredictability, contextualised processes and relations in the delivery of mental healthcare by remote nurses. It focuses attention to the many interacting and varied actors, agencies and practices through which human subjects and material objects take shape and form (Law & Hassard, 1999). The concept of assemblage denotes the ‘amalgam of places, bodies, voices, skills, practices, technical devices, theories, social strategies and collective work that together constitute ... knowledge/practices’ (Wright, 2005, p. 908).