A move for framing occupation as transcending the individual?

The notion that occupation is a phenomenon that transcends the individual has been a core element of reasoning on occupation over generations and cultures. When knowledge about what people do has been narrated, it has seldom been sketched only as an individual affair. Rather, what people do has been framed within their social belongings and their physical location, as well as being written into the knowledge, ideologies and myths constituting the grand stories of each era. In other words, it might be fair to say that understanding human occupation in ways exceeding the individual has been traditional.

However, when knowledge on occupation has been developed in a scientific context, there has been a tendency to examine discrete components, making it difficult to acknowledge transcending dimensions. That is, when occupation is presented and used in science, there is a strong individual focus that might or might not include attempts to recognise individual occupations as taking place within contexts. We might also see generic social science theory framing occupation at an overall group level. However the individual and social grounding of the concept are often separated from each other, and knowledge is developed either on individual performance or on situated influences. Within the field of occupational science, we have seen increasing discontent with this state of the art, with growth in the number of scholars aiming to develop knowledge on occupation in ways that access and connect more of its multifaceted nature. In this special issue we have gathered arguments from some of these scholars. The ambition is to foster awareness and critical dialogue, and to sketch ideas for future development of knowledge of human occupation.

Why is it so important to better understand occupation beyond an individual scope? There are many possible answers to that question, but I would like to stress one in particular. By better understanding the full nature of occupation, it might also be possible to more fully portray how occupation can be either a resource or a hindrance for humans. When operating on the individual or group-level only, we address only part of what constitutes human occupation and, therefore, fail to acknowledge its connecting and transformative possibilities. In other words, presenting occupation as only some of its parts is limiting the development of the science of occupation.

There are, of course, several more reasons and motives to draw on when addressing occupation as a construct that transcends the individual. This special issue can be viewed as a meeting place for some of these, spanning possibilities and challenges within some different genres of analysis and theory.

First we meet Kathleen Reed (2017) presenting her 2016 Ruth Zemke Lecture in Occupational Science. The focus of her lecture was to explore when occupation began to be used as a change agent to enhance individual health. Her analysis shows how the concepts and conceptual models that were addressed in this era framed occupation as social practices rather than individual performance and, in that way, Reed's important ground work has relevance for the topic of this special issue.

Dewey was already active as an educator and philosopher with a strong interest in the everyday when the ideas that Reed addresses in her paper were published. Several scholars in occupational science have used Dewey's writings, rooted in pragmatic philosophy, to develop knowledge of how human occupation transcends the individual. In this special issue, Jacob Madsen worked with me in drawing from Dewey to better understand occupation as an inquiring process (Madsen & Josephsson, 2017b). We argue that mapping and the component-focused language often used within our science present obstacles for identifying and drawing on the transcendent dimensions of occupation which may, in turn, be hindering the development of knowledge on occupation's transformative function. Madsen and I sketch some possibilities for the future development of the knowledge of occupation. The notions that we set out to explore are not easy to carry through, and need resistance and dialogue from other scholars to develop. The critique Aldrich and Cutchin (2017) raise to our arguments, in their commentary, is therefore welcomed and needed. Leaving it to the reader to value both their arguments and our response (Madsen & Josephsson, 2017a), it might be fair to say that our dialogue reflects the challenges that traditional language raises when moving in new terrain on the phenomenon of occupation.

Three further contributions draw specifically on Dewey, in the quest towards transcending the individual. The first expands on influential reasoning presented more than 10 years ago in this journal. In 2006, Dickie, Cutchin and Humphry presented their argument, based on Dewey, in Occupation as Transactional Experience. Now they are back (Cutchin, Dickie, & Humphry, 2017) proposing groundwork for a new phase in the development of transactional perspectives on occupation, by highlighting its relevance when taking a community perspective. They provide a thorough review of key concepts in a transactional perspective, showing their relevance when framing occupation in ways that acknowledge the community. Moreover, they give a case example of work with the transactional perspective at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for community research, education and practice.

In the second paper, Fritz and Cutchin (2017) address how a transactional perspective can be used as a theoretical grounding to develop knowledge on health behaviour change and maintenance, an area they argue has suffered from reliance on theory that privileges individual agency. Their article is an example of how application of the emerging theoretical resources on occupation transcending the individual can find specific application to develop knowledge in important areas for people as well as society. Lavalley (2017) takes a rather different route when contributing to developing transactional perspective of occupation. By using Dewey's concepts of private and public acts, he addresses how understandings of occupation on associated levels can be achieved. Through changes to the modes in which people and their situations combine, relate and engage, Lavalley argues that other knowledge and resources will be available when studying occupation. Very rich examples are provided, and the article is a grounded example of new possibilities that can be developed from the theoretical resources provided by Dewey.

A further important facet of developing knowledge on occupation transcending the individual is the need for methods sensitive to such qualities. In this special issue, there are three papers aiming to contribute to the development of research methods that take the transcending dimension of occupation into account. Rudman and Aldrich (2017) take on this task, suggesting critical narrative inquiry as a suitable resource. In showing how this method bridges discursive contexts and narrative inquiry's power to elucidate and mediate individual's experience, Rudman and Aldrich succeed in answering the call for methods embracing the richness of occupation's various dimensions.

A second contribution on methods sensitive to transcending dimensions comes from Mewes, Elliot and Kim (2017). They highlight multivocal analysis as a resource to achieve multiple, rather than singular, conceptualisations of occupation. By introducing different theoretical lenses to the same scenario, they argue the everydayness in occupation can be revealed in more abundance. Completing this set of three methodological papers, Hitch (2017) grounds her argument in ways to develop methods with the capacity to transcend an individual scope on occupation in Wilcock’s (2006) framework of doing, being and becoming. Reading the challenge as more than focusing on integration of person and place, Hitch proposes the Pan Occupation paradigm as a resource. As she outlines, the Pan Occupation paradigm is an attempt to explain occupation beyond merely describing its components. It thus proposes understanding occupation's situated qualities, as well as trying out the transformative functioning of occupation. Further, Hitch suggests a method based on the proposed framework, potentially enabling occupational scientists to transcend individual understandings of occupation.

Several scholars within as well as outside occupational science have argued that, in order to achieve an alternative and more transcendent knowledge of occupation, theoretical and political research that challenges traditional theories is needed. When Simaan (2017) studied olive growing in Palestine, he framed his study in de-colonial theory and occupational justice concepts. With the goal of contributing to better understandings of how collective occupations and individual engagement intersect, he applied critical ethnographic methodology to his material. In doing so, he provides an example of how political perspectives and theoretical grounding can sensitize methodology and amplify the toolbox of occupational science.

The next article introduces a broader understanding of the theme for this special issue of JOS. In the call for papers the term ‘transcending the individual’ was used without specific theoretical grounding, apart from a general intent to frame occupation as situated rather than based solely on individual agency. This choice can be critiqued, given that language is always loaded with different meanings and groundings. Barlott, Shevellar and Turpin (2017) question such use of the term, in their presentation of the poststructuralist framework of Deleuze and Guattari as a resource to enable analyses of occupation acentred from the individual, and from categorical and normative language. They show how the notion of transcendence, in the tradition of Deleuze and Guattari, can be read as referring to a ‘higher’ ruling level. Arguing against that perception, they introduce the concepts of major and minor and the rhizome as tools inviting better articulation of the flows entwined with occupation, and ways of thinking and acting about occupation beyond the individual. The paper also gives an informative grounding of these concepts.

In the last two papers in this special issue, we move out to empirical studies conducted within institutional settings. Some might argue that theories and methods that aim to transcend an individual scope will face particular challenges when applied in empirical studies of occupation within programs or institutional frames. Within these arenas, the tradition of language addressing components of people and their functioning, and the traditional individualised gaze is strong. Despite that, the final papers are examples of the immense power of methodology transcending the individual when studying occupation in clinical contexts. Alsaker and Ulfseth (2017) draw on Ricoeur's narrative in action approach to study how relations between staff and patients emerge and are facilitated in the occupational context of a milieu therapy ward in mental health. They identify how narrative imagination has a role in creating socially grounded transformation in the everyday occupations of the ward. Similarly, Johnson and Bagatell (2017) studied the inter-related ways that national, state and local policies mediate the possibilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities living in intermediate care facilities to participate in occupations of their own choice. Using institutional ethnography, they succeed in showing how aspects of the everyday occupations at these facilities, such as choice, are socially constituted and situated in ruling relations reflecting the enacted power structures. Both of these articles illustrate how empirical studies of occupation that aim to transcend individual perspectives can be designed, and how the results of such endeavours can be sketched.

So this brings us to the end of my presentation of the papers of this special issue and we might ask what can be learnt from reading these attempts to write and investigate human occupation in ways that transcending the individual. Do we glimpse a shift in how we conceptualise and discuss occupation? Are we more informed about how such a move can be enacted? If you ask me, I have a strong belief in developing dialogue and communicative knowledge rather than generic and definitive statements and models. And dialogue requires that we value different positions as resources that uphold our curiosity for arguments and positions other than those we usually take.

In the film “Il Postino,” the postman teaches the poet Pablo Neruda, “Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but those who need it”. Perhaps we can borrow these words and view them as calling to those of us who recognise a need for knowledge and methods on occupation that transcend the individual. This special issue is for us.