Occupational Consciousness

Abstract

Occupational consciousness refers to ongoing awareness of the dynamics of hegemony and recognition that dominant practices are sustained through what people do every day, with implications for personal and collective health. The emergence of the construct in post-apartheid South Africa signifies the country’s ongoing struggle with negotiating long-standing dynamics of power that were laid down during colonialism, and maintained under black majority rule. Consciousness, a key component of the new terminology, is framed from post-colonial perspectives – notably work by Biko and Fanon – and grounded in the philosophy of liberation, in order to draw attention to continuing unequal intersubjective relations that play out through human occupation. The paper also draws important links between occupational consciousness and other related constructs, namely occupational possibilities, occupational choice, occupational apartheid, and collective occupation. The use of the term ‘consciousness’ in sociology, with related or different meanings, is also explored. Occupational consciousness is then advanced as a critical notion that frames everyday doing as a potentially liberating response to oppressive social structures. This paper advances theorizing as a scholarly practice in occupational science, and could potentially expand inter or transdisciplinary work for critical conceptualizations of human occupation.

“休闲意识”是指，在不断感受到霸权活动存在的同时，认识到主流活动可通过人们的日常行为而保持。这种认识对个人和集体健康都有意义。在后-种族隔离的南非，这种认知结构的出现意味着该国正在进行与长期当政的权力状态相争斗，该权力在殖民主义期间被解除，而在黑人多数统治下被维持。“意识”是新术语的一个重要组成部分，是从后-殖民视角所提出 （特别是比科和法农的工作）并 成为解放哲学的理念，以引起对人类休闲活动中表现出来的持续的不平等主体间关系的注意。本文还提出休闲意识和其它相关结构的联系，即休闲可能性、休闲选择、休闲种族隔离和集体休闲。本文还探讨了“意识”一词在社会学中的运用及其相关或不同的含义。这样的话，休闲意识作为一种关键概念而提出，它涉及对压迫性社会结构所进行的潜在解放性反应的日常行为。该文将休闲科学的学术实践理论化，并可能为人类休闲的关键概念化扩展学科之间或跨学科的工作。

Keywords:

• Post-colonial theory
• Coloniality
• Oppression
• Philosophy of liberation
• Politics of human occupation