Improvisational Theater and Insights into the Function of Habit in Occupation

Abstract

Various authors have recently approached the study of habit in occupation using a Deweyan understanding. This paper serves to further develop the theoretical and empirical literature on habit and advocate for focused research on the role of habit in occupation. An ethnographic study was conducted on an improvisational theater class to investigate how habits function in the particular occupation of “improvisational theater.” Ethnographic methods including interviews, audio recordings of in-class performances, field notes, and participant observation were used during weekly sessions over a 13 week period. The study of improvisational theater revealed extended understandings of the role of habit in occupation including the following: habits contributed to continuity of action, habits allowed for shared meaning making, participants embodied habitual ways of being in the material world, and habits contributed to possibilities, constraints, and change. In the discussion, it is proposed that the continued study of habit in human occupation is essential to occupational science and will require scientists to broaden their theoretical orientations, utilize multiple methodologies, and expand their unit of analysis to include the environment in order to capture the complexity of habit functions in human occupation.

Keywords:

• Habit
• Occupation
• Improvisational theater
• Ethnography

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. Virginia Dickie, and Dr. Malcolm Cutchin, and Sumita Rege for their generous feedback on previous versions of this text.

Notes

1. The study was conducted as part of a doctoral level course on ethnographic methodology and was therefore exempt from ethics review by the Institutional Review Board. However, the study was carried out in accordance with University of North Carolina guidelines for the ethical conduct of research. Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to conducting the study.