Virginia A. Dickie

Transactional perspectives on occupation

1: Transactional Perspectives on Occupation: An Introduction and Rationale: Malcolm Cutchin and Virginia Dickie.- I. THEORETICAL EXTENSIONS.- 2: Deweys Concepts of Embodiment, Growth and Occupation: Extended Bases for a Transactional Perspective: Rebecca Aldrich and Malcolm Cutchin.- 3: Being Occupied in the Everyday: Valerie Wright-St. Clair and Elizabeth Smythe.- 4: Resituating the Meaning of Occupation: A Transactional Perspective: Kirk Reed and Clare Hocking.- 5: Conceptual Insights for Expanding Thinking Regarding the Situated Nature of Occupation: Debbie Laliberte Rudman and Suzanne Huot.- 6: Exploring the Transactional Quality of Everyday Occupations Through Narrative-in-Action: Meaning-Making Among Women Living with Chronic Conditions: Sissel Alsaker, Staffan Josephsson and Virginia Dickie.- II. CASE STUDIES: 7: Navigating Cultural Spaces: A Transactional Perspective on Immigration: Shoba Nayar and Clare Hocking.- 8: The Situated Nature of Disability: Sharon Dale Stone.- 9: Place Integration: A Conceptual Tool to Understand the Home Modification Process: Karin Johansson, Malcolm Cutchin and Margareta Lilja.- 10: A Transactional View of Shedding at the Berry Mens Shed: Alison Wicks.- 11: A Transactional Perspective on a Consulting Practice: Lauren Holahan, Laurie Ray and Virginia Dickie.- III. METHODOGOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: 12: Where the Transactions Happen: The Unit of Analysis When Applying a Transactional Perspective: Lena Rosenberg and Karin Johansson.- 13: Ethnography and the Transactional Study of Occupation: Antoine Bailliard, Rebecca Aldrich and Virginia Dickie.- 14: Critical Discourse Analysis: Adding a Political Dimension to Inquiry: Debbie Laliberte Rudman.- 15: Mixed Methods and Pragmatism for Research on Occupation: Kendra Heatwole Shank.- IV. APPLICATIONS: 16: Deweyan Educational Philosophy in Occupation-Centered Curricula: Susan Coppola.- 17: Educational Implications of Taking a Transactional Perspective of Occupation in Practice: Ruth Humphry and Linn Wakeford.- 18: 21st Century Pragmatism and Social Justice: Problematic Situations and Occupational Reconstructions in Post-Civil War Guatemala: Gelya Frank.- 19: Occupational Justices Intents and Impacts: From Personal Choices to Community Consequences: Rachel Thibeault.- 20: Transactional Perspectives on Occupation: Main Points of Contribution in This Volume: Virginia Dickie and Malcolm Cutchin. .- 19: Occupational Justices Intents and Impacts: From Personal Choices to Community Consequences: Rachel Thibeault.- 20: Transactional Perspectives on Occupation: Main Points of Contribution in This Volume: Virginia Dickie and Malcolm Cutchin.

Transactional Perspectives on Occupation: An Introduction and Rationale

In this introductory chapter, we begin by offering a rationale for the book’s value. We suggest that the transactional perspectives articulated throughout this book both implicitly and explicitly suggest that occupations are forms of activity that create and re-create a multitude of our relationships with the worlds we experience. We thereby argue the book’s interest to readers who are already interested in transactional perspectives on occupation, those from occupational therapy or science who want to learn what the perspectives are about, and those from other disciplines who work either on subjects related to the study of occupation or in fields where a transactional perspective may be beneficial. We then connect the development of transactional perspectives from the early works of John Dewey to more recent efforts in occupational science. In doing so, a brief orientation to the concepts that hold the perspective together is provided. We then suggest how the contributions to follow signify a pluralistic approach to the transactional perspective before explaining the structure and content of the chapters to follow.

Ethnography and the Transactional Study of Occupation

Studying occupation from a transactional perspective calls for a focus on the relationships that constitute the situation of occupation. In this chapter we discuss the fit of ethnographic processes and the transactional perspective. We propose that the ethnographic study of occupation reveals its transactional nature by exposing influences, relationships, and occupations that make up a study situation. We argue that ethnographers and participants play an active role in data collection and that their transactions generate a co-created ethnographic product grounded in the relationship. Moreover, the scope of ethnography goes beyond the interpersonal elements of a relational situation to examine other factors such as place, objects, environmental features, traditions, history, politics, and economics. The relationships joining these elements, occupations, and humans are significant components of a study situation addressed by ethnographies. The chapter is grounded in our research experiences on occupation with ethnographic methods. Examples from our research illustrate the transactional nature of studying occupation through ethnography.

Exploring the Transactional Quality of Everyday Occupations Through Narrative-in-Action: Meaning-Making Among Women Living with Chronic Conditions

In this chapter, we introduce everyday occupations as embedded in local cultural perspectives and how embeddedness is to be understood in the light of women living with chronic conditions. We address the dilemma between individual actions and experiences and their local and global contextualization. To that end we introduce our reading of Ricoeur’s reasoning on narrative-in-action and establish possible links to a transactional perspective. Stories elicited from the everyday life of women living with chronic conditions show how narrative meaning may occur in occupation and how the transactional qualities of occupation are unpacked through these everyday stories. Our presentation and discussion elaborates on how the inherent flexibility and openness of everyday occupation makes transactional opportunities available for the women. In such processes, meaning and morals are communicated between the individual woman and her local culture, showing transactions from different angles. Finally, we elaborate on the possibilities and hazards that we identify by using the concept of narrative-in-action to access transactional dimensions of human occupation.

Transactional Perspectives on Occupation: Main Points of Contribution in This Volume

In the final chapter, we propose that this book positions occupation as the functional coordination of problematic situations. Occupation viewed in this way can be studied across a continuum from individual meanings to issues of social justice, as demonstrated in previous chapters. Authors have shown that a transactional perspective can add to and work with other theoretical perspectives, and have presented a number of research methods and approaches that are useful in examining occupation with a transactional vantage. The book provides examples in which the construct of transaction can be used to understand complex occupational wholes at scales ranging from the intimate to the institutional. Finally, we express our discomfort with the notion of transactionalism, proposing that a transactional perspective should be considered as a tool that can afford a different, broader, and deeper understanding of situated occupation.

Participation in everyday life as lived negotiations: Challenges and opportunities within a situated understanding of participation

Participation from the perspective of the user : From subjective experiences to lived experiences

A Transactional Perspective on a Consulting Practice

In this chapter, we provide a case study of the partnered occupation (job) of two state-level special education consultants with a wide-angle perspective, explicating the transactional nature of their work. We review the history of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) occupational and physical therapy consultant positions and the policies that shape the context of their work, including federal and state special education, civil rights, licensure, and funding regulations. Further, we present perspectives of key stakeholders to demonstrate the manner in which a transactional perspective on practice provides a rich and holistic understanding of its totality. From these accounts, we conclude that the consultants perpetually coordinate elements of a situation—with all the constraints of law, economics, logistics, and personalities—through different tasks within complex, problematic situations. The functional coordination of this work through action and learning illustrate the essence of transactional experience.