Situating occupation in social relations of power: Occupational possibilities, ageism and the retirement 'choice'

Abstract

ABSTRACT. However, building on foundational work related to occupational justice and the political nature of occupation 6,7 , there has been increasing recognition of the need to employ theoretical and methodological approaches that address social relations of power 8,9,10 . To date, work addressing the situated nature of occupation has tended to neglect how social relations of power are enacted in ways that create and perpetuate situations of discrimination, marginalisation and oppression 11,12,13,14 . Attention to social relations of power is essential if the study of occupation is to critically raise awareness of the mechanisms through which ocKey words: Narrative, discourse, occupational injustice, later life cupational injustices are enacted and, in turn, inform practice aimed at transforming socio-political practices, systems and structures to create more occupationally just conditions 15,16,17,18 . This paper addresses the embeddedness of occupation within social relations of power tied to age. It aims to both illustrate a methodological approach that can be employed to critically examine the influences of discourse on lived experience and occupational possibilities, and also the potential understandings of occupation that can evolve from such work. Drawing on narrative data collected from retired individuals in a Canadian city, the analysis critically addresses how ageism, as an ideology and form of discrimination based in social relations of power, bounded occupational possibilities and choices in the work to retirement transition. In concert with the emerging body of work integrating critical social science frameworks to examine how social relations of power tied to race, gender, citizenship status, and other attributes shape possibilities for occupations, this paper aims to further raise awareness of the need to attend to social relations of power in occupation-centred research and practice in order to form and sustain contexts that enable human flourishing and dignity through occupation. Politicising occupation: Occupation and social relations of powerSeveral authors have pointed to the importance of politicising occupation; that is, placing occupation within broad relations of power to raise awareness of, and inform actions to address, how such relations shape and perpetuate occupational inequities 3,

Occupational needs and priorities of women experiencing homelessness

“…Participants also highlighted their need to draw both from their own strengths and from community and social support networks, a finding consistent with the literature on resilience, defined not as an individual trait but rather as an interactive process between broad social environments and individual adaptive mechanisms (Panter-Brick & Eggerman, 2012;Ungar, 2011). It is also consistent with the emerging literature on occupational possibilities, which moves away from a focus on the individual toward an inclusion of the social and political factors that affect occupational engagement (Laliberte-Rudman, 2010, 2015. Taking the shelter as a site of occupational possibilities for the participants, one can identify many contextual influences on seemingly individual choices of activities.…”

Employment Concerns and Associated Impairments of Women Living With Advanced Breast Cancer

“…Furthermore, this could be suggestive of the potential difficulty of maintaining work status when disabled and older. 28 The rates of early retirement can be high for survivors of some cancers and for older women in particular. 29 , 30 Future research needs to determine if early retirement is due to actually not wanting to go back to work, or the societal pressures of ageism.…”

Making Choices from the Choices we have: The Contextual-Embeddedness of Occupational Choice

“…Thus, Galvaan (2012, 2015) drew from research among marginalized young people in South Africa to illustrate how a community's familiar and habitual patterns of occupational engagement informed the sociocultural expectations-or scripts-that shaped the occupational choices the young people viewed as available, realistic, or possible within their own lives. This resonates with Rudman's (2005Rudman's ( , 2010Rudman's ( , 2015 conceptualization of "occupational possibilities": the occupations people view as ideal or possible within their particular political, cultural, and social contexts. For people whose race and class privileges afford seemingly unbounded opportunities, cultural scripts may promise a limitless range of occupational possibilities.…”

“…However, the assumptions underpinning this belief are challenged by critical epidemiologists and public health researchers, whose work on the social determinants of health demonstrates that health behaviours and actions are not the products of free choice and autonomous action, but result, instead, from inequitable social conditions and social structures that determine people's abilities and opportunities to engage in health-enhancing behaviours or in "wise" occupational choices (Baum & Fisher, 2014;Frohlich & Abel, 2014;Marmot, 2015;Marmot & Bell, 2011). In line with this work, feminist theorists contend that it is impossible to be autonomous and to feel able to exercise some control over one's life choices in the absence of supportive and nurturing social circumstances (Nedelsky, 1989); Rudman (2005Rudman ( , 2010Rudman ( , 2015, an occupational therapy theorist, has advanced the idea of "occupational possibilities" to draw attention to the ways in which political, cultural, and social factors influence the occupations people envision as ideal, realistic, or possible.…”