S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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procedures and systems generates and ensures ordering actions within the network(s) and across partial, disorganised, contingent and local networks. Hence the importance of ordering (Law, 1994) as a feature embedded in policies, procedures and systems. Ordering materialisations through docile and tractable materials (policies, procedures and systems) is/are central to the networks’ coordination of actions. Without it, the actions of remote nurses and other groups delivering mental healthcare would be fragmented and arbitrary (Law, 1994). At times the group’s actions would be inconsistent with each other, uncoordinated and counterproductive. Policies and procedures are not entities, but rather processes to ensure order (Law, 1992). They become ‘immutable mobiles’ in that they become immutable (literally—‘not able to change’) and mobile (literally—‘able to move freely around’). Law and Singleton (2005) suggested an immutable mobile is, ‘something that moves around but also holds its shape’ (p. 335). Latour (1986) would consider policies and procedures as ‘objects which have the properties of being mobile but also immutable , presentable , readable and combinable with one another’ (p. 26, emphasis in original). Due to these qualities, policies and procedures combined with systems, ensures their wide distribution throughout the geographic diverseness of the actors within the social world. Policies and procedures as immutable mobiles are tools for long-distance control and universality of action, throughout the social world. For example, mental healthcare throughout the remote nurse’s social world, irrespective of geographical location, is in accordance with twenty-first century mental health belief that there is an element of neuro chemical imbalance in an illness like severe depression, and that a ‘front line’ response is to administer medications to correct that imbalance. Policies, procedures and systems for