Understanding the person-occupation enmeshment through exploring the erosion of tribal occupations in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Increasingly, occupational science scholars are seeking to broaden understandings of occupation beyond current conceptualizations heavily embedded within a Western paradigm, with its assumptions of individualism, autonomy, and progress and dominance over the environment. Located in India, Dadra and Nagar Haveli is a union territory primarily inhabited by tribal communities for whom farming and forestry are defining cultural occupations. However, rapid changes in the surrounding environment and social development, as a result of oppressive socio-political structures—colonization and industrialization—are eroding the occupations of farming and forestry in the name of other occupations that are adversely affecting people’s health and nature (environment) itself. Using the metaphor of the enmeshment of networks of fungal mycelium and the trees in a forest, this theoretical paper offers a reflection on the rich enmeshed relationship tribal (Indigenous) communities have with land and forest, and how disruption of the person-occupation enmeshment is promoting occupational injustice and occupational apartheid. It is argued that socio-political injustices have altered access to, and are slowly eroding, historically nurturing occupations, detrimentally impacting health and well-being of people and nature. The discussion aims to contribute to the growing literature addressing the intersection of occupation and human within the Global South.