Course code: OCT 1111Y
Date due: Oct. 6/04
Reading (CORE): Hasselkus (2002) The meaning of everyday occupation (pg. 41-56)
This article describes the meaning of everyday occupations in a cultural context. The similarities and differences between our occupations and of those of different cultures allow us to have a better sense of who we are. The author also relates these similarities and differences in terms of disability and health care.
Culture as Similarity and Difference
-What we are aware of in other cultures can help to reveal who we are in terms of our own culture
-This phenomenon is similar to Agar’s (1994) “rich points” – meaning a time in our lives when we are encountered with a word/situation/behaviour that doesn’t fit in our cultural context
-We are able to see these situations as “rich points” if we are able to realize that our way of doing isn’t the only way, and that our way would be perceived as different to someone else
-Rich points in our lives allow us to have heightened awareness and appreciation of our own culture and the culture of others
** Occupation is the primary vehicle by which we experience rich points
Ethnocentrism
-This is when a rich point is not achieved and we have lack of understanding and appreciation for the “other”
-From an ethnocentric point of view anything seen as different (ie- in other cultures) is judged against that person’s cultures and is seen as inferior
The Deeper Threads
-to move past an ethnocentric view, a person must examine the differences encountered until “the deeper threads that tie the differences together” become visible for the first time
-A person must be able to link the observations together until a pattern emerges, that pattern being culture
-Being able to “tie the threads together” allows a person to appreciate the differences seen in “others” and gain new appreciation about their own culture
Cultivating the Similar in our Lives
-The author gives an example of attending a visitation as a teen when her friend’s mother died. Never attending a visitation meant she didn’t know the cultural norms of how to act at one (her and her friends were talking loudly to each other), and it took an adult to tell her and her friends attending how to act appropriately
The Threads of Difference
-After modifying her behaviour so it was appropriate for the situation, the author was able to see the differences of acting at a visitation compared to how she normally acted with her friends
-The differences served as “symbols” and the meaning of how to act at this ritualized event was “stored”
-This situation also served as a “web of significance” where the author was able to piece together how this situation was different from everyday life, and was able to learn how to act appropriately in that particular situation
Structuring the Similarities: Routines, Habits and Rituals
Habits- “relatively automatic things a person thinks or does repeatedly”
Routines- “a type of higher order habit that involves sequencing and combining processes, procedures, steps or occupations”
Rituals- “in additions to traits common with habits and routines, rituals are infused with drama, symbolism and meaning- centeredness”
Habits as Liberating
- Clark (2000) suggests that habits and routines enable us to lead enriched lives and experience enhanced periods of creativity, because we are freed from thinking about the repetitive concerns of our lives
-The habitual nature of our daily lives allows us to experience a fairly stable and familiar cultural world
The Rituals of Professional Health Care
-Professional health care is something that is highly ritualized- people in the profession are aware of the protocols for communication, authority, control and social interaction
- When these rituals are interrupted or break down we (the professionals or the people receiving
the care) experience uncomfortableness in the situation
-Differences and similarities are also seen when comparing health care cross-culturally (ie- western medicine vs. non-western medicine beliefs)
Disability as Difference
-meaning of disability in a society is the “the amalgamation of people’s definitions of difference compared to similarity”
-disabilities long been regarded as debilitating phenomena that needs medical intervention
- this view has had criticism (eg. Mitchell and Synder) whose perspective is outside that of the health care arena
- they feel that the health care field in general focuses on disabled peoples’ limitations and abnormalities to continue the legitimacy of their respective professions
-Although a harsh view, western health care does owe its existence and legitimacy to the fact that they have strongly labeled disability as “different”
The Paradox of Rehabilitation
-Professionals in rehabilitation set goals and plan treatment in effort to minimize disability (a persons’ difference) in order to make them more the same (ie- more like able- bodied people)
-The nature of treatment is a paradox- because people in society are labeled as different, they are viewed as needing services to be more like everyone else, but the people must be categorized as different before they are recognized as needing services in the first place
-People with disabilities caught in same paradox- between the need to accept their disabilities as part of themselves and their desire to see themselves as “normal”.
IN SUMMARY- We need to moderate our tendency to divide the world into those who are able and those who are disabled, and be able to see a continuum where people are “normal” in their own way relative to each other.