Embracing and Enacting an `Occupational Imagination': Occupational Science as Transformative

This paper addresses the question of how occupational science can move forward in its development as a socially and politically engaged discipline. It is argued that a transformative approach to scholarship needs to be embraced, and that enacting such an approach requires a radical reconfiguration of the sensibility underpinning occupational science. After reviewing the key defining characteristics of a transformative paradigmatic approach, key insights regarding how to foster a radical sensibility in occupational science are drawn from C. Wright Mills' (1959) conceptualization of `the sociological imagination'. Embracing an occupational imagination premised on these key insights would foster the transformative potential of occupational science by providing a sensibility that challenges scholars to make critical, creative connections between the personal, occupational `troubles' of individuals and public `issues' related to historical and social forces. Five key areas of action crucial to moving forward in cultivating an `occupational imagination' are outlined, including: pushing beyond the limits of dualistic thinking; attending to the socio-political nature of occupation; addressing the moral and political values that shape and energize occupational science work; questioning the familiar and exploring the unfamiliar; and, engaging in innovative interdisciplinary syntheses.