Digital norms and extitution: the case of telehome care

Abstract

The deinstitutionalization of society is in part associated with the growing implementation of new information and communication technologies. These new technologies bring about new collective formations. if the social sciences are succesfully to understand the impact of these technologies, we will need new ways of thinking about institutions and power. We shall take the case of telephone helplines as a test-bed for Foucault's proposals for understanding institutions' operation of power. Specifically, we use the Foucaultian notion that space, body and norms are constitutive elements of the corporeality of institutions. We report how this applies to the case of telephone helplines, and we claim that Foucault's concepts do not go far enough. Instead, we propose the new concept of 'extitution'. Extuition helps understand new anatomies of power anatomy and new kinds of social practices.