Occupation and Identity

Question 1

Conceptualising identity
Erikson (1968)
- Social identity?

Answer 1

• Reflects social location, appearance & can ve gleaned by others at a glance
  
  • Markers include gender, age, race

Question 2

Conceptualising identity
Erikson (1968)
- Personal identity?

Answer 2

• Gleaned though social interactions & not solely derived from appearance
  
  • Examples include tase in music, political views, cultural identity

Question 3

Conceptualising identity
Erikson (1968)
- Ego identity?

Answer 3

• Core aspects of the self - unlikely to vary over time
  
  • Core characteristics such as being impatient leading to other qualities such as punctuality not making others impatient by making them wait

Question 4

Conceptualising identity
Goffman (1959)
- Structure?

Answer 4

• Structures and forces external to human agency (e.g. Social systems and institutions)

Question 5

Conceptualising identity
Goffman (1959)
- Interaction field?

Answer 5

• Social interaction in situations of face-to-face contact, micro social interactions, we all bring previous experience and assumptions into each interactions -> suspicion towards health professions or bias towards weight
  
  • Manage the exceptions at the interaction, ex. Addressing up nicely to go see the doctor to be taken more seriously or writing a professional email vs. an email to Ellen
  • Not looking only at the structural level or the personal agency.

Question 6

Conceptualising identity
Goffman (1959)
- Agency?

Answer 6

• Individual’s capacity to recognise their situation, monitor their situation, monitor their actions, etc.

Question 7

Linking occupation & identity
Christiansen (1999)?

Answer 7

• Identity is an overarching concept that shapes & is shaped by relationship with others
• Identities are closely tied to what people do & their interpretations of those actions in the context of their relationships with others
• For example, doing and preforming gender, often though occupations
• Identities are important to self-narratives & life stories that provide coherence & meaning for life and everyday events
• Life meaning is an essential element for promoting well-being & life-satisfaction because it is derived in the context of identity
• Example, how does being diagnosed with a particular illness shape one’s identity, well-being and life satisfaction. Or pressure of finding out what to do next at year 3 and 4 in university, getting into a grad program, pressure not only from oneself but also recipes repetitional pressure by disclosing your goal.

Question 8

Linking occupation & identity
Laliberte Rudman (2002)?

Answer 8

• Demonstrating core characteristics
• Limiting and expanding possibilities, “why middle-class kids, get middle-class job” What we are exposed to can limit or expand opportunities to different occupations
• Maintaining an acceptable self-identity, a sense of bride of oneself such as doing yoga
• Managing social identity, how we are viewed by others example, what occupations do we disclose engaging in
• Control as an essential condition, people need to feel a sense of control over their occupation. Example, enforced or imposed occupation. Not much benefit in making volunteering mandatory, remove the intrinsic motivation. A sense of agency is important
• We are in the content process of constructing out identity and it can change over time, managing indignity is largely done though identity

Question 9

Linking Occupation and identity (general)?

Answer 9

• Contextual & temporal relationship between occupation & identity
• Emphasis upon impact of illness, injury, disability
• Considering other makers of identity: age, class, cultural, gender, race, sexuality, etc.
• Attention paid to intersectionality of identity markers

Question 10

Occupational Identity
Unruh (2004)?

Answer 10

• “So… what do you of?”
• Occupation and continuity of occupational identity, we have preconceived notions of different occupations.
• In a capitalist society, economic productivity shapes people’s perspective of you.
• Contributions of productivity, leisure & self-care to occupational identity.
• Public & private aspects of occupational identity, what we do out in public might differ from what we do at home.

Question 11

Intersectionality?

Answer 11

• A term initially coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw
  
  • Proposed intersectionality as a tool to examine perpetuation of a single-axis framework when approaching anti-discrimination law & politics

Question 12

Intersectionality relevance for occupational science & occupational therapy?

Answer 12

• Limitation of single-axis frameworks of understanding people’s experiences.
  
  • Marginalisation outside prototypical identities, people tend to be cataogized according to different boxes might not be factoring in people’s identities holistically.
    
    • Work on migration, communities based on country instead of looking at other parts of identity such as sexuality. But the LBTQ+ might not be a perfect fit either for the normative ways of being queer in this particular context.
  • Interrelated (rather than additive or compounding), people are always who they are in different situations
  • Social positions, who you are in a given context shapes people’s perception of their occupations
• Kimberlé Crenshaw said black women has been killed while “shopping while being black, driving while being black..” Doing these normal occupations

Question 13

Reciprocal nature -> Identify can be shaped by occupation and occupation can be shaped by identity?

Answer 13

The occupation to occupation is linked with identity, such as the trend “What is classy is you’re rich and trashy if you’re poor”.
- Being really into wine
- Showing up to a formal occasion in t-shirt and jeans.
- Having other people raise your kids
- Walking around all day in a bathrobe
- Living at a hotel

Question 14

Occupational Apartheid & Humans Rights:
Narratives of Chilean same-sex couples who want to be parents
- Occupational perspectives of parenthood?

Answer 14

• Understanding parenthood as an occupation in context (e.g., impacts of laws, policies, socials norms)
  
  • “…preparing this occupation can involve solid planning and organisation, being understand as an occupational transition process” (p.42)

Question 15

‘Without Occupation You Don’t Exist’:
Occupational engagement and mental illness?

Answer 15

• Relationship between work and recovery
• Findings:
  
  • Building & maintaining an occupational identity
  • Work & other ways of belonging, social connections and sense of self