Cutting through the layers: Alternating perspectives and co-laborative analytic approaches to understanding occupation and its objects

ABSTRACT
In this paper, three qualitative researchers with professional backgrounds
in social anthropology, occupational therapy, and occupational science
present their methodological and theoretical standpoints and resultant
analytical approaches on a single set of ethnographic data – an event
occurring in an in-patient psychiatric unit. In doing so they propose
benefits to and considerations for a practice-based understanding of
occupation. Data analysis and synthesis from interdisciplinary
perspectives is a novel approach to the close examination of occupation.
The three analyses presented draw from figured worlds, a praxeographic
approach to sociomaterial arrangements, and social identity focusing on
what happens when the everyday is made through occupation. The
paper concludes with discussion of how these approaches, different in
their theoretical perspective, disciplinary, and geographical backgrounds,
might contradict or complement one another. Multi-vocal analysis,
introducing different theoretical lenses through which to reflect on the
construction of the ‘everyday-ness’ in occupation, serves as an impetus
towards an empirically drawn understanding of occupation. Additionally,
such an approach reveals similarities, differences, and complexity that
may arise when attempting to locate occupation as the central unit of
analysis. The conclusion suggests that cutting through the layers of
occupation necessarily provides multiple ontologies.