Engagement in living: Critical perspectives on occupation, rights, and wellbeing

Founding CPN member Karen Whalley Hammell has recently published a book for critical thinkers in occupational therapy that will be highly relevant to CPN members.

Details of the book are below, plus we’ve also attached a short piece Karen wrote for the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists on occupational disruption and the COVID crisis

Book overview

Engagement in Living: Critical perspectives on occupation, rights, and wellbeingDescriptionCritical thinkers within the international occupational therapy profession are challenging the culturally-specific and value-laden assumptions that underpin dominant models of occupation and modes of practice, and are advocating the adoption of critical perspectives. This book addresses these concerns, employing an evidence-informed approach that helps readers recognize specific social structures and ideological assumptions that inform occupational therapy’s research, theories and practices; how these same factors create and reinforce conditions that impact people’s abilities to participate in occupations; and how they perpetuate inequitable occupational opportunities, thereby undermining the wellbeing of marginalized people and populations. Drawing from a wealth of cross-cultural research evidence the author demonstrates that occupation is a determinant of human health and wellbeing, and is thus a human right.

Engagement in living: Critical perspectives on occupation, rights, and wellbeing introduces a new conceptual framework for occupational therapy. It provides an empirical foundation for those occupational therapists who aspire to utilize their specific knowledge in efforts to pre-empt ill-health and enhance wellbeing, rather than focusing solely on the issues confronting people with existing illnesses and impairments. And it enables occupational therapists to think critically about what “client-centred” practice means and what it entails; and about what it might mean and what it might entail. The book is a timely and valuable resource for all occupational scientists and occupational therapists – students, practitioners, educators, researchers and theorists – for policy makers, and for anyone interested in the relationship of occupational engagement to human wellbeing and human rights.