The Complexity of the Analytic Unit of Occupation: How do We Find Our Findings (Panel)

Occupational science demands a complex unit of analysis to examine the phenomena of concern. The concern to understand individuals engaged with others in meaningful activities situated in both time and place is admittedly ambitious. The study of occupation inherently requires analytic strategies to address sociality (Lawlor, 2003)—including intersubjectivity—and the change and transformation of meaning(s), human experience, and actions as constituted both individually as well as within and across historically situated social and cultural worlds. This task enters directly into dialogue with the concurrent shifts in psychology, sociology and anthropology towards similar interdisciplinary units of analysis that could provide a more complete understanding of human experience. A unit of analysis that could bracket the individual within a particular social, cultural and historical context is reflected in such terms as “mediated action” (Wertsch, 1998), “activity” (Cole, 1995, 1996; Rogoff, 2003), and “practice” (Bourdieu, 1977; Holland, Lachicotte Jr., Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The philosophical basis of occupational science assumes individual agency in both the creation of and orchestration of meanings that are embedded in and created from practices (Yerxa, 1993). This panel presentation seeks to add to the developing methodology of occupational science by examining how a multiple methods approach that is both event-centered and captures multiple perspectives forms an analytic frame that facilitates an exploration of the complex phenomena of occupation. We will argue that this approach foregrounds “agency” and “meaning” in a way that can potentially situate occupational scientists to engage in key debates in social theory. In this panel, we will present three conceptual frames of analysis to study occupation that to varying degrees draw on a narrative analysis of social interaction. Each panel member will draw upon their ethnographic research projects and articulate specific challenges that they have encountered: (1) situating discrete moments of significant experience in lives across time and place (Lawlor), (2) integrating the sensory and symbolic, embodiment and objective structures of power in the analysis of intersubjective action (Park), and (3) framing multiple perspectives on joint endeavors on the playground, negotiation of moral dilemmas, and the emergence of occupations (Huecker)