Resource Seeking as Occupation: A Critical and Empirical Exploration

Abstract

Occupational therapists and occupational scientists are committed to generating and using knowledge about occupation, but Western middle-class social norms regarding particular ways of doing have limited explorations of survival occupations. This article provides empirical evidence of the ways in which resource seeking constitutes an occupational response to situations of uncertain survival. Resource seeking includes a range of activities outside formal employment that aim to meet basic needs. On the basis of findings from 2 ethnographic studies, we critique the presumption of survival in guiding occupational therapy documents and the accompanying failure to recognize occupations that seem at odds with self-sufficiency. We argue that failing to name resource seeking in occupational therapy documents risks alignment with social, political, and economic trends that foster occupational injustices. If occupational therapists truly aim to meet society's occupational needs, they must ensure that professional documents and discourses reflect the experiences of all people in society.

Picturing precarity through occupational mapping: Making the (im)mobilities of long-term unemployment visible

“…By ordering the presentation of these four maps from most to least mobile, we aim to show how occupations can shift in relation to experiences of precarity, such as decreasing discretionary spending and increasing need for resource seeking. Resource seeking refers to the need to look for alternative means of acquiring a range of resources (e.g., finances, housing subsidies, childcare, and food supplements) for maintaining oneself and, in some cases, one's family given limited or absent formal work income (Aldrich et al, 2017).…”

Low Income and Stroke Rehabilitation: A Tale of Two Clients

“…Further, providing direct assistance with access to entitlements may be a particularly powerful way to promote health and valued occupations among low-income patients. We should not forget that resource seeking is a vital and valuable occupation (Aldrich, Rudman, & Dickie, 2017).…”

Mapping Out One’s Own Paths Toward Work: Focus on Experiences of Return to Work After Spinal Cord Injury

“…The distance from perspectives perceived as dualistic or individualistic (25) is motivated through a risk of seeing the individual as always being the authority on how occupations turn out, rather than understanding occupations as process located "at the level of the situation of which the individual is an integral part" (25 p. 91). Based on these understandings, a transactional perspective on occupation has informed critical perspectives in occupational science (49) and research targeting unemployment in relation to socio-political contexts (50)(51)(52). Using a critically informed perspective on occupation brings awareness of how occupation is shaped in relation to social structures, processes and practices, instead of framing challenges to occupation as a result only of factors within the individual (49).…”