Societies, Volume 6, Issue 2 (June 2016) – 12 articles

The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of everyday life. The demand for occupational therapists in Canada is expected to grow sharply at an annual growth rate of 3.2%, compared to 0.7% for all occupations. At the same time, it is believed by occupational therapists in Canada that the Canadian public does not understand the role of occupational therapy. Occupational science is an emerging basic science field that supports the practice of occupational therapy. Given that newspapers are one source the public uses to obtain information and that newspapers are seen to shape public opinions, the purpose of this study is to investigate how “occupational therapy” is covered in Canadian newspapers from the term’s first appearance in 1917 until 2016 and how “occupational science” is covered from the term’s first appearance in 1989 to 2016. We interrogated the findings through the lens of three non-newspaper sources—two academic journals: Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy (CJOT) and Journal of Occupational Science (JOS); and one Canadian magazine: Occupational Therapy Now (OTN). We found that medical terms were prevalent in the newspaper articles covering occupational therapy similar to the presence of medical terms in the CJOT and OTN. However, the newspapers missed contemporary shifts in occupational therapy as evident in the CJOT, OTN and JOS—such as the increased engagement with enablement, occupational justice and other occupational concepts. The newspapers also failed to portray the societal issues that occupational therapy engages with on behalf of and with their clients, and the newspapers did not cover many of the client groups of occupational therapy. Occupational science was only mentioned in n = 26 articles of the nearly 300 Canadian newspapers covered with no concrete content linked to occupational science. The scope of occupational therapy presented in Canadian newspapers may be one contributing factor to a situation where occupational therapists in Canada think that there is lack of public understanding around their role, as readers are not getting the full picture and as such approach occupational therapy with different expectations. Given the lack of coverage of occupational science, readers will likely obtain limited knowledge about occupational science and its focus. Full article

This study asked two broad questions: (1) what is the prevalence of teen pregnancy in contemporary Vietnam; and (2) what selected social, family, and individual factors are associated with teen pregnancy in Vietnam? The study utilized Vietnam Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth surveys conducted in 2003 and 2008 to answer the two research questions within the context of fast political, economic, and social change in Vietnam in the last two decades. Results of this study show that the prevalence of pregnancy among Vietnamese teenagers in the surveys was stable at 4%, or 40 pregnancies per 1000 adolescent girls aged 14 to 19. Age, experience of domestic violence, and early sexual debut were positively correlated with higher odds of teenage pregnancy for both survey cohorts; however, being an ethnic minority, educational attainment, sexual education at school, Internet use, and depressive symptoms were significantly related to teenage pregnancy only in the 2008 cohort. Full article

This article condenses the key findings of qualitative studies on assembly work. Grounded conceptually in considerations of the role of experiential knowledge and living labor capacity with regard to informal expertise and tacit knowledge, the empirical results challenge the dominant view of assembly work as routine tasks that could easily be replaced by robotics. The empirical basis comprised of 62 qualitative interviews in five assembly plants provides answers to two questions: Are there non-routine aspects to be found in assembly work today? What exactly is the nature of experience in assembly work? The detailed research results are presented in three steps: the first focuses on the role of the non-routine in core assembly tasks; the second discusses the important and increasing role played by interactive capabilities in assembly work to ensure high performance, quality, and a smooth material flow; and the third highlights the usually neglected role of assembly workers in processes of innovation and organizational learning. The concluding chapter discusses the findings from the perspective of new technological options in robotics, possible worker resistance and effects on employment. Full article

The impact of robots on employment is discussed extensively, for example, within the academic literature and the public domain. Disabled people are known to have problems obtaining employment. The purpose of this study was to analyze how robots were engaged with in relation to the employment situation of disabled people within the academic literature present in the academic databases EBSCO All—an umbrella database that consists of over 70 other databases, Scopus, Science Direct and Web of Science and within n = 300 Canadian newspapers present in the Canadian Newsstand Complete ProQuest database. The study focuses in particular on whether the literature covered engaged with the themes of robots impacting (a) disabled people obtaining employment; (b) disabled people losing employment; (c) robots helping so called abled bodied people in their job to help disabled people; or (d) robots as coworkers of disabled people. The study found that robots were rarely mentioned in relation to the employment situation of disabled people. If they were mentioned the focus was on robots enhancing the employability of disabled people or helping so called abled-bodied people working with disabled clients. Not one article could be found that thematized the potential negative impact of robots on the employability situation of disabled people or the relationship of disabled people and robots as co-workers. The finding of the study is problematic given the already negative employability situation disabled people face. Full article

Scholarship in the area of cross-racial organizing between Latina/o and African Americans has increased substantially over the past ten years. Within that literature, scholars have identified many reasons why cross-racial coalitions both succeed and fail. Among the factors most often cited is the issue of trust. Despite the recognition of the crucial role trust plays in cross-racial organizing, little attention has been paid to what contributes to actually building trust between African Americans and Latina/o. I argue that one factor contributing to the distrust of Latinas among African American women involved in cross-racial organizing in Atlanta is the perceived discrepancy between Latinas’ own asserted identity and the identity assigned to them by African American women organizers. Using data gathered from six years of participant observation and forty interviews conducted with African American women and Latinas organizing in Georgia, I discuss the consequences of identity construction for cross-racial organizing. I find that within cross-racial organizing spaces in Atlanta, perceived racial identities are used by African American women as proxies for determining Latina organizers’ commitment to social justice and, correspondingly, how much individual Latinas can be trusted. Specifically, I find that African American respondents view Latina identity as optional and potentially white. Latina respondents, on the other hand, assert strong identities and contend that their perceived “optional” identities are a function of what Anzaldúa calls a mestiza consciousness or the straddeling of multiple identities. I argue that understanding how these identities are assigned and asserted by Latinas and African American women is a crucial and often-overlooked component to building trust, and by extension, to building sustainable cross-racial coalitions. Full article

This paper reports on a project that looked at the meaning stroke survivors assigned to assistive devices. Material culture theory served as a framework to help stroke survivors explicitly consider [dis]ability as a discursive object with a socially constructed meaning that influenced how they thought about themselves with impairment. Material culture theory informed the design (taking and talking to their peers about photos of anything that assisted) and analysis of the meaning of the assistive devices project. In our analysis of the narratives, survivors assigned three types of meanings to the assistive devices: markers of progress, symbolic objects of disability, and the possibility of independent participation. Notably, the meaning of assistive devices as progress, [dis]ability, and [poss]ability was equally evident as participants talked about mobility, everyday activities, and services. We discuss how considering [dis]ability as a discursive object in the situation might have enabled stroke survivors to participate. Full article

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable leftist movements also known to exhibit diversity strains. A content analysis of Nonhuman Animal rights, women’s rights, and gay rights magazine covers spanning from 2000 to 2012 was undertaken to determine the manifestation of gender, race, body type, and sexualization. We find that the Nonhuman Animal rights media in our sample overwhelmingly portrays white women with a tendency toward thinness, but with low levels of sexualization as comparable to that of the other movements. All three movement samples unevenly depicted gender, overrepresented whites, and underrepresented non-thin body types. Full article

Plastic beads have recently become of importance in the lives of women with disabilities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). Using a materialist approach that focuses on such specific items, this article deviates from most materialist approaches to disability that are focused on the built environment, medical objects, or assistive technology. Rather, the focus is on “things” (this term is to be understood as items being alive in meshworks of social relations) that are explanatory of disability, gender, and world formation or “making”. We show how the interplay of materials, gender, and disability results in acts of creation and performance, and involves an unfolding of life and orientation towards the future. Full article

This article considers media narratives that suggest that hiding in trucks, buses, and other vehicles to cross borders has, in fact, been a common practice in the context of migration to, and within, Europe. We aim to problematize how the tension between the materiality of bordering practices and human migrants generates a dis/abled subject. In this context, dis/ability may be a cause or consequence of migration, both in physical/material (the folding of bodies in the crypt) and cultural/semiotic terms, and may become a barrier to accessing protection, to entering and/or crossing a country, and to performing mobility in general. Dis/ability and migration have not been associated in the literature. We adopt an analytical symmetry between humans and non-humans, in this case between bodies and crypts. By suggesting an infected, ambivalent, and hybrid approach to the human subject, the body-crypt traveling border challenges the essentialist dichotomies between technology and biology, disability and impairment. The articles and reports upon which we rely were collected through extensive searches of databases/archives of online newspapers and news websites. Full article

Internal and external validity are threatened when subjects fail to complete an intervention and when they are lost at follow-ups. Accordingly, researchers and intervention staff continually strive to identify predictors of attrition and non-compliance. The present study investigated the success of models that incorporate program, family, and individual characteristic variables in predicting treatment adherence and retention at six months in a sample of 1319 youth who participated in an abstinence-only intervention, as well as the relative importance of the predictors in explaining retention and adherence among Hispanic and non-Hispanic youth. The findings indicated that the likelihood of completing the intervention was greater for youths whose mothers or someone who functioned as a mother did not work. The effect of this predictor was consistent across all models in which it was tested. In addition, youth who planned to have sex were more likely to withdraw from the intervention than were youth for whom the opposite was true. Youth satisfaction with the intervention successfully predicted the likelihood of completion. Retention at six months was influenced by youth completing the intervention, having a non-working mother, and being satisfied with the program. Results from the discriminant analyses suggested that the predictors varied in importance for Hispanics and non-Hispanics. For Hispanics, having a non-working mother and satisfaction with the intervention were critical to their decisions to complete the intervention and to return for the six-month follow-up. For non-Hispanics, parental attitudes regarding sex, youths’ intentions to have sex, and youths’ gender were significant predictors. Full article

This paper draws on evidence from our three-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded research study of the lives, careers, experiences and aspirations of Generation X (under 40 years of age) principals and vice-principals in London, New York City, and Toronto. More specifically, the paper examines interview evidence from nine school-based studies in which nine leaders and 54 teachers discuss their perspectives on leaders’ care of their staff members. The evidence demonstrates that leaders and teachers both place a high level of importance on leaders’ ability and willingness to be supportive, understanding, and approachable. Teachers also expect leaders to serve as advocates for and role models of good work/life balance. While the school-level studies take place in radically different city-based contexts, the expectation of leaders’ care for teachers transcends different accountability and policy structures. Both groups focus their discussion on work/life balance and, more specifically, the need for leaders to understand that teachers are people with lives beyond school. The paper highlights implications for policy, practice, and future research. Full article

Indigenous people often occupy different overlapping or co-existing food environments that include market-based foods, land and water based foods, and combinations of the two. Studying these food environments is complicated by the cultural and geographic diversity of Indigenous people and the effects of colonialism, land dispossession, relocation and forced settlement on static reserves, and increasing migration to urban areas. We conducted a scoping study of food insecurity and Indigenous peoples living in urban spaces in Canada, the United States, and Australia. The 16 studies reviewed showed that food insecurity among urban Indigenous populations is an issue in all three nations. Findings highlight both the variety of experiences of urban Indigenous peoples within and across the three nations, and the commonalities of these experiences. Full article