Editorial: Special issue on Inclusion and Participation

Prof Clare Hocking

Dr Valerie Wright-St Clair

Inclusion and participation in society was the theme for the 7^th Australasian Society of Occupational Scientists’ (ASOS) Symposium, held in Auckland on the 21^st and 22^nd of April 2016. This special issue brings eight of the invited speakers’ papers together. It profiles the voices that collectively explored, at multiple levels, a range of social forces that shape people’s inclusion and participation in New Zealand and Australia, as contemporary societies that increasingly honour the worldview of their respective indigenous peoples. The authors’ diverse perspectives are given coherence by seeing their particular concerns through an occupational lens. They focus on occupation as both everyday participation and the mechanism by which inclusive societies are produced. As profiled in these papers, inclusion is evident when people are incorporated into something bigger, when they are enabled to be part of something beyond their private worlds. Inclusion embraces diversity and coheres communities. Participation is visible in the stories and research that examines how the partaking in human occupations is a sharing. The sharing imparts people’s contributing to what matters for the diverse communities represented in these papers.

First up in this Special Issue is the 2016 Ann Wilcock Lecture, an award first proposed by the Australasian Society of Occupational Science in 2010. In agreeing to the establishment of an award honouring her contribution to occupational science, Wilcock expressed her hope that it would encourage “some exceptional thinkers to extend their ideas towards the impact that occupation has on the health of the population at large. Only an occupational scientist can understand that the combination of what individuals, communities and populations do has a profound influence. To separate one aspect from another without reference to the whole provides biased research and faulty understanding of the workings of the body, mind and spirit of people singly or collectively and the impact on environment.” In accordance with that brief, Wilcock lecturers are selected for their ability to reflect an holistic picture of population health.

Wilcock selected Valance Smith to be the second recipient of the Lecture Award, because his paper on “Energising everyday practices through the indigenous spirituality of haka” considers participation in occupation at a philosophical and spiritual level that is both specific to traditional Māori culture and relevant to all human engagement in occupation. Though Smith has lived in urban environments since childhood, he remains involved with his tribal (Ngāti Mahuta, Te Parawhau, Te Uriroroi, Te Māhurehure) communities, participating in Māori language schools of learning in his tribal area of Waikato and Ngāpuhi. Smith is an active musician in Auckland city, performing at venues on a regular basis. His theoretical paper (Smith, 2017) investigates the nature of indigenous Māori spirituality and its relationship to art, proposing that it is a cultural framework that inspires, energizes, and synergizes all those who engage and share in its life force. In his paper, Smith proposes ‘kaupapa ora’ as a possible Māori understanding of occupational science. It is underpinned by the understanding that mārama (enlightenment) permeates kaupapa (sense of purpose), and as such we reify ora (health and well-being) through enlightened ‘purposeful activity’ or meaningful human occupation. He concludes that “integrating spirituality into everyday practices is essential for one’s mauri – one’s life ethos” (p. 17).

Also presenting an indigenous perspective, Hinematau McNeill’s (2017) paper powerfully draws the link between rightful access to ancestral lands and occupations that exercise a sense of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over these lands. Backgrounding the story of one tribe’s alienation from their land through the colonial period, McNeill shares Māori creation narratives that personify the entire universe, which is defined both physically and spiritually, explaining how its mauri (life force) is maintained through everyday occupations. McNeill thus explores the concept of inclusion and participation from a Māori perspective, viewed in relation to physical and spiritual aspects of the natural environment. This is an account of occupation supporting the collective well-being and sovereignty of the Tapuika people, but more broadly, it is about occupation as empowerment, preserving cultural beliefs, and occupational justice.

Continuing the theme of occupational justice, Clare Hocking (2017) reported her analysis of how instances of occupational injustice have been argued in the occupational science literature published from 1997-2016. The review spanned diverse populations, from inmates in a special needs unit to “coloured” youths in South Africa and undocumented migrants in the US. Its focus was on whether authors pinned their argument to concepts of social or occupational justice and rights, and whether ethical or moral appeals were made. Hocking concluded that in their efforts towards realising a just and inclusive society, authors use the terminology of social and occupational justice in tandem, although few cite formal declarations of rights. It is, however, the moral claims of people wronged and harmed by being deprived of occupation that gives this body of work its power: the harm inflicted is made palpable by being described in occupational terms that all people can understand and relate to.

Marilyn Waring (2017), a renowned feminist economist, furthered the theme of participation as a human rights issue in her accounting of “women’s work”. Taking the United Nations System of National Accounts, from which governments derive Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as her starting point, Waring charted the systematic exclusion of the unpaid labour women contribute to their households. Because such tasks attract no pay, people are considered to be “unoccupied” while they clean their home and things in it; instruct and care for their children, sick and old people; and transport members of or goods for their household. In an economic sense, these occupations are considered “unproductive” and thus not worth counting. As Waring revealed, however, participating in occupations that are not counted is a precarious situation because it frees governments from responsibility to intervene. This raises the question of whether unpaid workers have the same human rights as paid workers. Looking back to an international study of the human rights of caregivers from an occupational perspective, along with her own more recent experience of care-giving to her aging parents, Waring characterised carers’ lives as over-occupation. Acknowledging the focus given to occupational deprivation, Waring concludes that transgressions of human rights encompass having no respite from having too much to do and advises occupational scientists to explore the synergies of economics, human rights and over-occupation.

Striking a more positive note, Gail Whiteford (2017) reports a joint programme across five Australian universities to enact the human right to education, as stipulated in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She links access to higher education to the key tenets of social inclusion – dignity and recognition, realising capabilities, having opportunities and resources, exercising choice, sharing social bonds and respecting diversity, equitable access to occupation, enacting civil rights, and achieving equal status as a citizen. While education is thus the pathway to achieving societal respect, realising one’s capabilities, and participation, accessing higher education begins with raising aspirations and continues through support with progression, retention and success. Of these, Whiteford asserts, raising aspirations is the most contentious, and most worthy of occupational scientists’ attention.

Older Chinese, Indian, and Korean immigrants’ participation is at the heart of Valerie Wright-St Clair and Shoba Nayar’s (2017) paper reporting one aspect of a grounded theory study. They describe how working across cultures and languages called for gaining each ethnic community’s trust and building research partnerships with native speakers. Only then could they explore how these older immigrants contribute to civic society through their occupations. Participants’ stories reveal how the host society’s inclusive quality, often received as deficient, was a central condition to their participation in society. Occupational engagement within their co-ethnic communities was a way in. Rather than being exclusionary, such “participatory ethnic enclaves” became these older Asian immigrants’ way to strengthen communities and help build a culturally-rich, inclusive society. You can hear the abstract read in Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, and English by selecting the supplemental data link for the article.

Stories of inclusion are the substance of Helen Hamer, Jacquie Kidd, Shona Clarke, Rachael Butler and Debra Lampshire’s (2017) paper, which brings an occupational lens to Isin’s citizenship theory. Reporting findings of a larger study of mental health service users’ experiences, Hamer and colleagues discuss the reality of being marginalised and excluded from occupation, framing this an occupational injustice. Rather than passive recipients of exclusionary practices, however, the research participants also revealed practices of inclusion that restored their rights (and responsibilities) as active and occupied citizens. These actions are framed according to Isin’s theory, as accounts of the extent of the participants’ citizenship and enactment of the norms and rules of inclusion and exclusion.

Also addressing actions that promote inclusion, Margaret Jones, Clare Hocking and Kathryn McPherson’s (2017) study generated contextualised understandings of the participation-enabling skills that children and adults learn and use when they share occupations. This case study research investigated the participation of six children with traumatic brain injury. An important aspect of the study was its use of a Deweyan transactional perspective, where the children’s participation was viewed as continuous with their environment – the community of people they share occupation with. Drawing data from interviews with the children, parents, teachers and community members, observation of shared occupation and document review, skills in driving, leading, including and performing were identified and described as a means of promoting others’ inclusion.

Concluding this Special Issue, we draw your attention to the call for papers for two forth coming special issues: Transcending the individual; and Immigrant and refugee health. See the published announcements in this issue of JOS, or visit the Journal’s website: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rocc20/current. The JOS Editorial Board also extends its sincere thanks to all those who reviewed a JOS submission in 2016. Without the time and efforts of these knowledgeable people, we could not sustain the quality of papers we present to readers each year.

ORCID

Clare Hocking http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0364-5157

Valerie Wright-St Clair http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7505-3946