Enacting the Critical Potential of Occupational Science: Problematizing the 'Individualizing of Occupation'

Over the past decade, many occupational science scholars have emphasized the critical potential of occupational science; that is, its capacity to generate knowledge to inform practices that work against occupational inequities. Within this lecture, previously articulated concerns regarding the 'individualizing of occupation' within occupational science are politicized, by placing them within the broader 'individualizing of the social' that is associated with neoliberalism and related socio-political transformations. This broader 'individualizing of the social', which has involved configuring various social problematics as individual concerns and responsibilities within an array of social policies, discourses and practices, obscures the economic, political and other social factors that shape inequities in possibilities for work, retirement, education, leisure and other occupations. Working against such inequities requires problematizing the 'individualizing of occupation', within and outside of occupational science, and situating occupation within economic, political and other types of social forces. Drawing upon on-going research addressing the contemporary re-construction of retirement and later life work, I argue that critically examining how occupational possibilities are constructed in ways that align with broader socio-political forces, as well as how they are actively negotiated by individuals and collectives, provides a valuable way forward in enacting the critical potential of occupational science.