Editorial

Connection and community are themes that run deep in occupational science. These ideas are invoked as perspectives from which to view occupation (Lavalley & Bailliard, 2021) and health (Townsend et al., 2009), and have been theoretically grounded in Dewey’s transactionalism (Cutchin et al., 2017). Researchers have explored how communal occupations are supported or restricted by contextualised practices, policies, and facilities (Bratun & Asaba, 2008; Huot & Veronis, 2018) and by loss of natural environments (Manuel, 2003). Skills to enable others to participate in shared occupations in their community have been described (Jones et al., 2017) and community-engaged research reported (Aldrich & Marterella, 2014).

This issue of the Journal of Occupational Science comprises two parts, both of which contribute further insights to that discussion. The first part consists of four feature articles and a contribution to the Learning and Knowing section of the journal, each of which addresses connection with community at socio-political or personal levels. The second part of this issue features translations of the JOS Editorial Board’s pledge to mobilize against racism into French, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, along with a collection of author responses to invitations from the JOS Board to reflect on previously published articles from the perspective of antiracism and decoloniality. In confronting such issues and taking a public stance against racism, the JOS Board and authors of the commentaries hope to contribute to confronting barriers to connection and community across deep-seated racial, ethnic, and cultural divides.

Feature Articles: Enablers and Barriers to Connecting

First up, Mason (2021) reveals the complexities children attending a suburban school in the US must navigate to participate with their community of peers. Despite encountering an ‘undesirable’ and unpredictable situation in the school lunchroom, the child informants managed to coordinate their actions so that they could sit together with friends, engage with them socially, and to both eat and play—thereby sustaining and reinforcing their relationships. These findings reinforce the value of attending to contextual aspects of the situations in which occupation takes place.

Taking a more overt occupational justice stance, Lewis and Lemieux’s (2021) study concerned experiences of social participation for seniors living in Montreal, Canada. Both structural and contextual factors were found to be influential in enabling or preventing community participation. On the plus side, individuals might function as a link to people or shared occupations, as do ‘meeting spots’, low costs associated with participation, and ease of access. However, ageism systemically worked against participation, via both cultural values and ageist policies relating to the scheduling of recreational occupations and the design and accessibility of neighbourhoods.

Similarly, Dubuc, Gagnon-Roy, Couture, and Bottari’s (2021) exploratory study with Canadian survivors of severe traumatic head injury demonstrates how community integration can be hampered by task requirements that exceed an individual’s capacities, inadequate supports available to surmount such difficulties, and resource limitations. Despite high quality rehabilitation services post-injury and stable living arrangements, limitations in participants’ resources and social environments, combined with prolonged experiences of forced abandonment of previous occupations, inevitably resulted in low levels of interest in occupations beyond their everyday routines. Participants’ level of dependency, their accommodation to the loss of valued occupations, and the negative attitudes they encountered amounted, in the authors’ opinion, to violations of their occupational rights.

At a more intimate level, Citter and Ghanouni (2021) uncovered how mothers of children in neonatal intensive care units try to establish a connection with their infants. They worked to overcome their fear of handling their ‘fragile’ infant, vigilantly watched over them to ensure they received the care they needed, assumed responsibility for breastfeeding and other cares, and sought support and coaching from staff, mothers of other babies in the unit, partners, family, and friends. While trusting relationships enhanced connection with their infants, structural factors such as lack of privacy for bonding, intrusive technologies, the sense of being constantly watched and not fully informed by staff, and uncertainty about their infant’s condition disrupted and constrained their actions.

Connection through collective occupation is at the heart of Castro de Jong, Pike, West, Valerius, Kay, and Ellis’s (2021) account of a collaboration between an occupational therapy programme and a music outreach programme. Grounded in the Diamond’s philosophy of using creativity to enhance health and well-being, the aim is to promote the enjoyment and participation of everyone involved. As a contribution to the learning and knowing section of the journal, this paper centres on opportunities for students to experience for themselves the complexity of creative co-occupations, thus coming to value them as individuals and future health professionals.

Anti-Racism and Decoloniality: Reflections and Contributions to Community

In the final editorial of 2020, I noted the growing, collective impatience with systemic injustices experienced by people subjected to everyday racism and to historical and present-day colonisation. Stimulated to action by the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, and marking our belief in the valuable contribution occupational scientists can make to exposing and countering the ill effects of racism, the JOS Editorial Board signed a pledge to continue to support that work (Stanley et al., 2020). Along with translating the pledge into multiple languages to increase its visibility, we assembled a virtual issue of key articles published in JOS where racism is exposed and challenged. In addition, we invited authors whose articles were included in the virtual issue to revisit their work and submit a reflective commentary updating and strengthening its anti-racism and decolonial message. Extending that work, we sought critical commentary om the virtual issue from Dr Frank Kronenberg, long-time colleague and supporter of the journal. Two members of the JOS Board guest edited the issue (Farias & Simaan, 2020), emphasising the value of the articles and commentaries in lifting the discussion from individual-centred understandings of racism as actions based on prejudice to knowledge of racism as discriminatory systems perpetuated by historical, social, and economic structures.

The invited commentaries are presented in this issue, headed up by Kronenberg’s (2021) critique and challenge to define critical terms, such as racism and anti-racism. As with the original JOS articles, the commentaries can be broadly described as falling into three topic areas: Racism and colonialism, including resistive occupations; decoloniality and decolonization, which expand scholarly understandings beyond the Western paradigm; and articles that address the occupational injustices experienced by marginalised groups. The first topic, racism and colonialism, is addressed by Robinson Johnson and Lavalley’s (2021 reflection on antiracist praxis; Beagan’s (2021) reflection on how racism has shifted from being an unspoken background in their publication of a decade ago to being explicitly named; Gerlach and Browne’s (2021) call for the interrogation of play as a strategy to counteract racism and racialisation; Stenersen’s (2021) reflection on the power of language to differentiate people according to race, thereby shaping the occupational possibilities available to them; and Nicholls and Elliot’s (2021) heartfelt dialogue about why race matters.

Working in the realm of decoloniality and decolonisation, Huff, Laliberte Rudman, Magalhães, and Lawson (2021) point to an epistemological shift, from reductionist conceptualisations of racism as based on skin colour to recognition that it is a hierarchical system of superiority and inferiority that operates globally; Magalhães, Farias, Rivas-Quarneti, Alvarez, and Serrata Malfitano’s (2021) bilingual (English/Spanish) commentary celebrates the new spaces opening up for anti-racist dialogue, while also warning occupational scientists to guard against enacting new forms of colonisation; and Simaan (2021) reflects on his doctoral work with Palestinian communities from the vantage point of racially and ethnically-based oppression. Finally, from an occupational justice perspective, Bailliard, Carroll, and Peak (2021) rethink findings from an earlier study, recognising it to be an account of overt racism and injustice; Gonçalves, Serrata Malfitano, Lopes, and Neto (2021) consider their earlier work from the vantage point of the racism inherent in Brazil’s slave heritage as a European colony; and Pizarro and Whiteford (2021) discuss the Mapuche – Chilean State conflict from the perspective of occupational displacement and racism.

There remains much work to be done to address occupational injustices internationally, but our hope in publishing an occupational perspective on these enduring problems is to support occupational scientists to contribute to the creation of a more equitable and inclusive future, one where connection across racial and other divides and strong sense of community are the daily reality.