From Society to Self (and Back) Through
Place: Habit in Transactional Context
Malcolm P. Cutchin
Key words: John Dewey, habit, place, landscape
Abstract
This argument extends the efforts of scholars of occupation and habit in several ways. It extends
previous examinations of John Dewey’s perspective on habit by bringing to the forefront his
view of the social and moral dimensions of habit in the context of his larger metaphysical
ground-map. That view suggests a habit process involving the transaction of the social and the
individual, with habit as central to that transaction. Dewey’s view is further enhanced with a
portrayal of how it operates in the material experience of place and landscape. Examples from
several scales of place are discussed to illustrate the essential role of material landscapes in this
habit process. Using these analyses, the concept of rehabilitation is reconsidered.
I
have recently come to the conclusion that most of
my social science colleagues and I have missed
something important by overlooking the power
and importance of habit in our subject matter.
However, that criticism can be reversed to say that
social and geographical aspects of experience play
a more important and complex role in habits than
has yet been realized by non-social science scholars.
Although several scholars, particularly those who
have presented arguments in this journal, such
as David Swartz (2002), Kathy Charmaz (2002),
Graham Rowles (2000), and David Seamon (2002),
have articulated complex and useful social or geographical dimensions of habits, we must be honest:
as a scholarly community, we have only begun to
scratch the surface and meaning of those realms as
they pertain to the habitual.
As participants in the American Occupational
Therapy Foundation conferences have recognized,
the thinking on habit as a concept needs to continue,
and it should do so by considering different perspectives on the concept and its implications. In this article, I attempt to bring several perspectives—philosophical, social theoretical, and geographical—to
bear on the problem of habit and its significance. The
ultimate goals are to provoke thought and to arrive
at a synthesis that advances current thought on habit
and on rehabilitation.
I have several points to make along this path of
provocation and synthesis. The first is to suggest
how a Deweyan understanding of habit, in its broadest sense, allows us to view what are typically taken
as personal predispositions (habits) more broadly
as natural, social, transactive, and moral phenomena. Taking a transactional view allows us to focus
on habit and its significance in a way that unifies it
with individual, social, and material experience. The
second point emphasizes the way that habits, perhaps the most taken-for-granted aspect of human
life, cannot be fully understood without more careful
consideration of how humans “in-habit” the natural
world. A particular understanding of places—another taken-for-granted element of human experience—as cultural landscapes that are scalar in character clarifies how the mediation of self and society
occurs and brings habits to the forefront of our thinking. If we think of ourselves as inhabiting places in
the transactive sense that I suggest here, rehabilitation takes on a deeper and more extensive meaning.
My third, briefer point suggests what the meaning of
rehabilitation is in light of the argument presented,
and what implications it has for personal well-being,
Malcolm P. Cutchin, PhD, is Associate Professor, Division of Occupational Science, Department of Allied Health Sciences,
School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Presented in part at Habit and Rehabilitation: Promoting Participation, January 31-February 4, 2007, Pacific Grove, California.
Address correspondence to Malcolm Cutchin at [email protected].
50S
OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
society, and those who construct interventions to address either.
The Transactional Nature of Habit
Once known as America’s most significant philosopher (Hickman, 1998), John Dewey is one of the
few theorists to take habit seriously as a foundation
for understanding human action, experience, and
meaning. Dewey’s well-known definition of habit
as “an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of
response” comes from his book Human Nature and
Conduct.1 Dewey’s most important treatment of habit was issued in the same year as Adolph Meyer’s
(1922) essay so often cited in the occupational therapy literature as a foundation for the profession.
At least two dimensions of Dewey’s argument
about habit in that text have been relatively overlooked in developing discourse on habit, occupation, and well-being. First, the subtitle, An Introduction to Social Psychology, is indicative of the in-depth
treatment Dewey gave to habits as social or cultural
phenomena that entail social relations, social classes,
institutions, and customs. Dewey began and ended
that book with a discussion of morals as a full component of habit and its significance. Both of these
aspects, together with the larger and later shape of
Dewey’s philosophy, are necessary to my argument
here and will be introduced in due course.
Dewey’s philosophy was, and remains, creative
and full of potentialities. His anti-foundationalist (or
anti-essentialist) worldview orients us to focus on
process, the fallibility of knowledge, pluralism, and
a critique of enlightenment philosophy. An overriding motive in Dewey’s work was the reconstruction
of philosophy through, among other things, expunging what he called “the philosophic fallacy”: creation
or acceptance of pervasive dualisms that effectively
create a gap between philosophy and experience.
Among these dualisms that Dewey discusses in his
writings are subject/object, mind/body, ideal/material, science/common sense, ontology/epistemology, and knower/known. Although Dewey was
consistent throughout his career in his critique of the
philosophic fallacy, it was not until the last 25 years
of his life that he clearly articulated what he called a
“metaphysical ground-map.”
It is important to note that Dewey did not interpret
the term “metaphysics” in the same way as philosophers of his time. He strongly critiqued philosophical
positions based on an a priori understanding of re1
Emphasis here and elsewhere is reproduced from the
original source unless otherwise noted.
Fall 2007, Volume 27, Supplement
ality, such as materialism, idealism, empiricism, and
logical positivism. Dewey was a “reluctant metaphysician” (Boisvert, 1998, p. 159) who did not feel entirely comfortable with the term “metaphysics” because
it threatened a distancing from the world as experienced (Campbell, 1995). Garrison (2005) explained
that Dewey’s “ground-map” was an intentional metaphor for his metaphysics used to describe the tool
that enables inquiry about worldly experience.
Dewey was first and foremost a philosopher, but
he also was a social theorist. However, his social theory was built on his naturalistic metaphysics. Nature
came to take such an important role in Dewey’s thinking that he viewed the human–nature relationship
as a continuous, organic one from which sociality
and human affairs emerged. This form of continuity
became a key principle on which Dewey based his
concept of experience. Dewey therefore saw experience as continuous and unified with nature, and it is
from this relational continuity that all understanding of the world comes. He wrote that “experience
is of as well as in nature. . . . Experience thus reaches
down into nature; it has depth” (Dewey, 1929/1989,
p. 4). A Deweyan scholar summed up the continuity
of experience and nature in the following way:
Nature has a life of its own, undergoing its own relatings, which in turn become what we experience. Our
own transaction with the affairs of nature cuts across
the givenness of nature and our ways of relating. This
is how we experience what we experience (McDermott,
1973, p. xxv).
Moreover, Dewey wanted to explain the consequence of these natural relations and transactions.
We do not experience nature in a vague, abstract
way. The world and our transaction with it are concrete and limited by space and time:
In actual experience, there is never any such isolated
singular object or event; an object or event is always a
special part, phase or aspect of an environing experienced world—a situation. The singular object stands
out conspicuously because of its especially focal and
crucial position at a given time in determination of
some problem of use or enjoyment which the total complex environment presents (Dewey, 1938/1986, p. 72).
Situations are examples of the “qualitative unity of
continuously developing experience,” as Alexander
(1987, p. 105) stated, and they provide the specific
and material context for understanding experience.
Situations also provide a way to understand the
social nature of selves in Dewey’s pragmatism. Our
situations make us part of others’ worlds and socially connect us, to various degrees, with others. How-
51S
ever, Dewey’s view of sociality is one that comprises
more than social relations and networks. The social
is pervasive in the formation of selves and action:
The stuff of belief and proposition is not originated by
us. It comes to us from others, by education, tradition
and the suggestion of the environment. Our intelligence
is bound up, so far as its materials are concerned, with
the community life of which we are a part. We know
what it communicates to us, and know according to the
habits it forms in us (Dewey, 1922/1957, p. 287).
Garrison (2002, p. 11S) translates this to mean that
“culture has us before we have it.” Dewey hastened
to make the social an integral part of the natural in
his metaphysics:
Upon the hypothesis of continuity. . .the social, in spite
of whatever may be said regarding the temporal and
spatial limitation of its manifestations, furnishes philosophically the inclusive idea. . . . [T]he ulterior meaning of the mental as well as the physical and vital is revealed in this form of associational interaction (Dewey,
1928/1984, pp. 45, 49).
Near the end of his philosophical journey, Dewey
characterized the combination of continuity and action in the world as “transaction” (Dewey & Bentley,
1949; Garrison, 2001). Consistent with his metaphysics, Dewey’s transactional view means that elements
we are used to conceiving as separate from each other are really part of each other. More than being part of
one another, things such as person and environment
are considered co-defining and co-constitutive (Sullivan, 2001). Garrison (2001) argued that Dewey’s
transactional view is based on the functional relationship between the person and the world. Those
relations continually change through the ongoing
transactions that occur or because of other uncertainties and instabilities inherent in a changing and
changeable world. Much of the purpose of transaction, then, is to functionally coordinate or re-coordinate relations for the benefit of the entities that
constitute it. For example, functional coordination is
apparent in the way that a person and society may
share a positive relationship (survival, adjustments,
development) through processes of education, work,
and leisure. Through those processes (relations), the
person and society are co-constitutive.
Dewey’s metaphysical ground-map was present,
but not explicit, in his fullest theorization of habits
in Human Nature and Conduct; it wasn’t until 3 years
later, in Experience and Nature, that he articulated it in
detail. Nonetheless, the natural, situated, social, and
transactional senses of how he believes that habits
arise, continue, and change can be gleaned from his
52S
earlier text. Because Garrison (2002) has powerfully
described much of this, my initial explanation will be
truncated and derivative, but some unexplained aspects of Dewey’s ideas require further elaboration.
As Garrison explained, Dewey’s theory of habit was
tightly interwoven with his larger philosophy. In other
words, Dewey did not depart from his metaphysical
ground-map in his theorization of habit, and it is important to understand that ground-map to understand
his view of habit. Garrison clearly depicts Dewey’s “organism-in-environment-as-a-whole” as coordinated by
means of habits as functions. Habits are functions acquired from both natural and social dimensions of our
habitats that provide the means to an end. They are social tools— “sub-functions of their habitat”—that are at
the ready as potentialities and only actualized through
transactional coordination with a situation. In this last
sense, Garrison rightfully understands Dewey’s multiple senses of habit both as tools that are ready to use
and as components of creative acts. All of these aspects
of habit arise because of Dewey’s detailed and distinct
metaphysical ground-map.
Although Garrison’s argument is rich, powerful,
and persuasive, he did not fully convey two important parts of Dewey’s position on habit that I must
add here. First, Dewey makes it clear that institutions, particularly social customs, are what shape our
individual habits. Although we often take our habits
for granted or even fail to realize their power, our
shared situations bring out similar predispositions
that recreate previously existing customs. Dewey is
clear about this point, and I quote him at length:
The family into which one is born is a family in a village
or city which interacts with other more or less integrated systems of activity, and which includes a diversity
of groupings within itself, say, churches, political parties, clubs, cliques, partnerships, trade-unions, corporations, etc. If we start with the traditional notion of mind
as something complete in itself, then we may well be
perplexed by the problem of how a common mind,
common ways of feeling and believing and purposing,
comes into existence and then forms these groups. The
case is quite otherwise if we recognize that in any case
we must start with grouped action, that is, with some
fairly settled system of interaction among individuals.
The problem of origin and development of the various groupings, or definite customs, in existence at any
particular time in any particular place is not solved by
reference to psychic causes, elements, forces. It is to be
solved by reference to facts of action, demand for food,
for houses, for a mate, for some one to talk to and to
listen to one talk, for control of others, demands which
are all intensified by the fact already mentioned that
each person begins [life] a helpless, dependent creature
(Dewey, 1922/1957, p. 58).
OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
In this one statement, Dewey packs numerous
interrelated significances. First, entrenched social
customs (collective habits) from the past create individual habits, not the other way around. Second, this
process emerges in concrete, specifiable situations.
Third, because custom has us before we have it, our
minds and behaviors and, therefore, our relations
with the social are fundamentally structured (although still co-constitutive) through the patterning
of habits. Fourth, there is a source of power located
at both the social and the individual through the basis of habits and their structuring. Taken together,
we should understand Dewey as explaining a habit
process and what habit is as a functional tool (Fig.
1). Because Dewey understands habits as the building blocks of all thought and action, including reflective, intelligent, creative action, this primordial,
transactive relationship between the social and the
individual becomes the most important we can conceive of if we are interested in any notions of meaning, choice, change, and a better world.
Dewey is not about to leave habit at that, however. The continual interplay of the social and the individual in situations contains an ongoing tension.
That tension is the moral dimension. Dewey puts it
the following way:
Reason, moral principles, cannot in any case be shoved
behind these affairs, for reason and morality grow out
of them. But they have grown into them as well as out
of them. They are there as part of them. No one can
escape them if he wants to. He cannot escape the problem of how to engage in life, since in any case he must
engage in it in some way or other—or else quit and
get out. In short, the choice is not between a moral authority outside custom and one within it. It is between
adopting more or less intelligent and significant customs (Dewey, 1922/1957, p. 75).
Dewey avoids the trap of human experience as
fully structured. As strongly as he argues that the social conditions and limits us, Dewey also takes care
to explain that the social generates the tools—habits—that allow us to act with the insight of morals to
change the world. Dewey’s innovative insight about
ethics was that they entail a situated use of general
moral principles (Pappas, 1998). Perhaps less well
understood is how he infused an understanding
of habits with morals and vice versa. Swartz (2002)
notes that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been
compared with Dewey’s concept of habit and found
remarkably similar. My reading of Bourdieu and
Swartz leads me to agree, with the notable exception
that Dewey’s view of habits is infused with an ethical tension and a concern for social reconstruction
Fall 2007, Volume 27, Supplement
Figure 1. The habit process.
over and above the description of how habits arise
and work in individuals and society.
Place, Landscape, and Materialization of the
Habit Process
Place
A ground-map is one thing; the ground itself is
another. The concepts of the social, individual, and
moral are abstract ideas, but we live and experience
on the ground in material circumstances. What then,
of the family in a village or city that Dewey mentions? We need to ask how the abstract social, habitual, and moral basis of experience happens on the
ground or, in other words, in the real world. My contention in this section is that without understanding
how, at least in part, the process of habits operates
between the social and the individual through material places, we cannot really understand how we
might concretely intervene to rehabilitate our affairs
when things go wrong.
A Deweyan understanding of place is somewhat
different from conventional understandings. “Place”
is the Deweyan sense of a situation—in an empirical
manifestation—as the merging of the natural and the
social in an area on the Earth’s surface. In one sense,
place is the local, or nearby, situation, and even in
an era of globalization, proximity is a key feature of
relatedness. This is especially true if we consider social relations, practices, and institutions to be important—as they are in habit. Nevertheless, place also
is shaped through situational relations and transactions with other places—economic ties, policy influence, or cultural media. All that goes on in our place
is the basis of our situated experience, but place is
also extensive beyond the area associated with it because of connections to other places. Moreover, place
is durational in that the past is expressed in place.
The place-as-situation, therefore, always includes local (within-place) transactions and transactions that
extend to other places. Because of these and other
53S
Figure 2. Place and landscape in the habit process.
types of dynamism, place problems are always arising and serve as examples of what Dewey termed
“problematic situations” (Cutchin, 2004a).
This concept of place is difficult to understand, in
part, because it suggests an unclearly bounded area
or community. For instance, Houston, Texas, is not
just Houston as we see it on the map. Houston is that
area plus the manifold external influences that help
to transform that area and experience in an ongoing manner, such as oil companies, Mexican immigrants, and Southern Baptist pronouncements. Furthermore, such places are always viewed as scalar.
“Scale” is a corollary concept that denotes how
places are nested within larger places. Humans experience those different scales of places at different
times, or simultaneously, as place-to-place transactions are felt along with local experiences. For example, if you shop at a local Wal-Mart, you will share
that experience with people from your community
who are working and shopping there, but you also
enter into transactions with management in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as with the workers who
originally produced the goods in China, Mexico, or
wherever.
Landscape
Another, related way to consider places and place
processes is through the framework of cultural geography. Cultural geography has traditionally focused
on the bidirectional interaction of culture and environment that makes places. Humans are understood
to have shaped their environments to survive and
flourish, but they also needed to adjust to environmental challenges to try and establish a balance in the
relationship. The outcome of that interaction is called
the “cultural landscape,” the natural world around
us that has transformed and been transformed by
human activity in a continuous fashion. The cultural
landscape is rich with symbolic meaning.
Cultural geography has evolved with time, however, and additional understandings of the cultural
54S
landscape have emerged. Schein’s (1997) work is of
particular interest. He argues that the traditional
view in cultural geography in which landscapes are
interpreted as purely empirical (positivist) sources of
information about a local or broader culture is useful,
but problematic. Schein proposes that the landscape
also provides a materialized discourse among varying
institutions, groups, agents, and other sources of
power, and that this discourse effectively creates a
landscape that is written and overwritten in a fashion similar to a palimpsest.
This more critical interpretation of cultural landscapes as discourse materialized is important to this
argument because it provides a particularly good
way to understand how place mediates the social
conditioning of habit and resultant action (e.g., occupation) that affects the well-being of individuals
and groups. The cultural landscapes of places are the
statements of collective habits that, in many different ways, shape our individual habits and, thus, our
experience in our ongoing transactions with place
(Fig. 2). To use the earlier example, the old Houston
is found in, over, and alongside the current Houston in the cultural landscape, in the form of buildings and neighborhoods, road networks, industrial
zones, and so on. Some more concrete examples
should help to convey this point and its variations
more convincingly.
Empirical Examples of Materialization of the
Habit Process
Several years ago, I conducted research on the role
of community-based places of care for older adults
(adult day centers and assisted living residences,
in particular) in the experience of aging-in-place
(Cutchin, 2003, 2004a; Cutchin, Chang, & Owen,
2005; Cutchin, Owen, & Chang, 2003). Among our
findings from sites in Vermont and Massachusetts,
we noted how each place of care entailed a unique
sociocultural–physical milieu through which experience and habit were shaped. Although much of this
insight was already present in earlier analyses, I am
rethinking and recasting it here in terms of habit and
landscape. In other words, the combined external
and internal dimensions of those places created a
material and symbolic landscape that mediated the
social and individual habit process. The managing
organization and the geographic setting (e.g., bucolic mountainside, town green, and lower-income
urban neighborhood) are external influences on the
place and landscape of each care setting.
In addition, the buildings in which care is provided become an integral part of the habit process.
Symbolism contained in the style of architecture and
OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
the age and quality of buildings in which services
are delivered are results of social customs that communicate meaning to those using them. One resident
told me that she felt disgusted by the 100-year-old
chiseled sign on her assisted living residence that
said ‘‘Home for the Aged.’’ Although the residence
was newly refurbished and plush on the inside, the
old elements that remained on the outside retained a
social custom that was offensive to some. It is plausible that others read this message, even if subconsciously, and in response formed habits of thought or
behavior akin to 19th-century social notions of “the
aged.” Each place of care sends messages—whether
realized consciously and interpreted accurately or
not—about social custom. Those landscape messages symbolize social custom and are taken up as
habits of thought and behavior.
The internal dimensions of care and residence
places—the more proximal, micro-scale aspects of
the landscape—also influence habit. A staff member
at an adult day center explained her care place as
a “non-institutional” environment that suffers from
overcrowding:
The physical setting just simply being less stainless steel
and marble hallways. I think here, even though we’re
a little crowded, if you look at the inside of the building it’s furnished pretty nicely, you know, we have nice
wallpaper and nice woodwork.
There are two points about this observation to
note. One is about crowding—that people, their
number, their characteristics, and their behavior are
elements of the landscape, resulting from social processes and affecting habits. Crowding often leads to
distractions and discomforts for older adults and
challenges for staff, both of which direct habit formation and expression. The second point is that such
interior landscapes can communicate “institutional”
or homelike values and expectations that shape both
care receivers’ and care providers’ habits. It probably
needs no explanation, but in the same way that our
homes differ from our workplaces, the difference
in such landscapes of care communicate the social
customs of that place and suggest different habits of
feeling, thinking, and behaving.
On a larger scale, places of great interest in current
public health research—neighborhoods—can also be
readily understood as landscapes that influence habit
through the material manifestation of social institutions, customs, and resources. That is not to say that
current researchers understand or use habit as important to their work—they do not. However, considering landscape and habit processes could be valuable.
Two popular (and related) issues within the
Fall 2007, Volume 27, Supplement
neighborhoods and health literature, diet and obesity, can help illustrate this point. The primary premises of research on these issues are that neighborhood resources for a better diet (e.g., higher-quality
groceries and less fast food) and more opportunities
for exercise (e.g., sidewalks and lower crime rates)
improve health and well-being. Research is finding
such associations (Alter & Eny, 2005; Doyle, KellySchwartz, Schlossberg, & Stockard, 2006; GordonLarsen, Nelson, & Popkin, 2002; Morland, Wing, &
Diez-Roux, 2006), but the “mechanisms” by which
the associations occur are not yet understood.
If we think of neighborhoods as landscapes that
communicate social norms and thereby influence
habit development and use, however, we can begin
to fill this gap in understanding. It is not just that
access to opportunities for a better diet and more exercise will make people in a neighborhood healthier;
the habits of seeing, thinking about, and actually
conducting acts of eating fresh fruits and vegetables
or walking on a path in a park must be developed.
The landscape must offer opportunities and expectations for such behavior, which then becomes habit.
Without an array of interrelated, structured habits,
the health outcomes will not follow.
This is a social process that involves people embedded in a place and a landscape, as well as the
extralocal forces that condition the location of such
opportunities in a neighborhood. Local places and
landscapes often are contingent on external forces,
such as corporations or public institutions. Although
we might prefer to be in control of structuring our
places and landscapes to suit our needs, capital in
other places may prevent us from having the landscapes we envision for ourselves.
These landscape and habit processes also apply
to what is perhaps our most common use of place, to
denote a town or city. I would like to briefly illustrate
additional dynamics of landscape and habit at this
scale through my research experience with a stress
and health study in Texas City, Texas (see Cutchin,
2007, for a more detailed explanation of the research
and place). Texas City is an incorporated place along
the Gulf Coast that is most well known for its large
petrochemical refineries and the terrible explosion
and loss of life that occurred in 1947—the worst industrial disaster in U.S. history. The landscape has
largely been shaped by that event and the economic
activity of oil refining. In that respect, like any place,
the landscape becomes an articulation of local identity and thereby personal identity. Because of lack of
space, I cannot go into more detail, but for more on
this particular process, see Proshansky, Fabian, and
Kaminoff (1983) and Rowles (1983).
55S
In Texas City, the landscape is part of this identity—and habit—process in various ways. Several
parks and other sites memorialize the events and
lives lost in 1947. Another dimension of the landscape is the infrastructure of the refineries. They are
visible from almost every part of the city and depict
the productivity and basis for the town’s existence.
That infrastructure also communicates the presence
and connection to global corporations, such as British Petroleum. Other landscape features, such as a
city water storage structure, display symbols to inspire citizens: All-American City status and a high
school football championship. Such symbols of local pride are mixed with state and national patriotism through the display of Texas and U.S. flags seen
throughout the landscape.
What influences on habit do these landscape features have? In addition to influencing how residents
think about their place and their identity as members of that place, the Texas City landscape promotes
local pride—a focus on the good side of Texas City.
In this way, the habit of thinking positively about
the place—and its role in state and national affairs,
as well as the global economy, as one of the largest
producers of gasoline—is encouraged. The landscape also promotes positive thinking about the petrochemical firms that put so much money into the
local treasury. The landscape message is equivalent
to Chamber of Commerce statements, such as, “The
petrochemical industry has been very kind to Texas
City” (Texas City. . ., 2006). These elements of the
landscape turn attention away from the risk associated with living near refineries; they suggest habits
of denial.
The landscape of Texas City communicates those
positive social beliefs and values. Those messages,
however, cannot be clearly separated from more
negative messages that create correspondingly negative habits. Risk associated with living near massive
facilities that are physically imposing, loud, visibly
polluting, foul-smelling, and occasionally explosive
is ever-present in the Texas City landscape. Habits
related to this risk, worry, or fear can have effects
on health and well-being. As one resident who has
lived near the petrochemical plants for 32 years stated, “I think we’re sitting on a time bomb. . . . I think
living here, next to this. . .It’s very dangerous. With
those chemicals, you just don’t know what you’re
around” (McDonald, 2007). A woman who lives in
public housing near the plants in Texas City told a
reporter, “I pray I can give this up. I want to move
out of Texas City” (Timms, 2000). Another resident
explained the experience of living in such a place
(near the plants) this way:
56S
They [refiners] say their flares [large towers that burn
off excess combustibles from petrochemical processing]. . .can prevent accidents. Well, they sure do make
a lot of noise, and I call the police and say they are disturbing the peace by having those flares rumbling and
all that noise. . . . [M]y cyclone fence is all rusted from
the chemical pollution. A lot of times the pollution is
so bad, I have to turn the air conditioner off because of
the smell that comes from the refineries. (Gross, 2005,
p. 66)
Habits of worry, fear, frustration, and complaining are types of coping behaviors, but stress and its
sequelae are still likely. Other residents, particularly
older adults, seem to be too attached to their place
to leave. Rowles’ (1983) research on older adults in
an Appalachian community is suggestive of how
and why this process of attachment outweighs other
rational reasons to move. The habit of staying in
place, or believing that you have no other option,
compounds the situation. One habit of thought in
this context was alluded to by a resident: “At our
age, where can you start over? What would you do?
Where would we move? This house is paid for” (McDonald, 2007).
It is difficult to disentangle more tangible barriers
to action caused by habitual ways of thinking from
other obstacles, but the problem in such a case is that
the place has not created the social institution or custom that would encourage sufficient means (including habits) of response. The result is a population
trapped in “landscapes of despair” (Dear & Wolch,
1987).
It is no coincidence that racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, dominate these
landscapes of despair near the petrochemical plants.
Social customs of the past—segregation, location of
public housing in undesirable areas, and location
of working-class housing near the factories—play a
large role in the Texas City landscape and in minority lives. Resulting habits of distrust, hopelessness,
poverty, and so on are common in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Texas City.
Bourdieu’s theory of habitus as generative of social
hierarchies and self-fulfilling prophecies (Swartz,
2002) is pertinent in the context in which lower-class
minority experience is structured this way. Similar
to most other American towns and cities, however,
collective habits or social customs push the rest of
us to form the habit of accepting such situations as
given and unchangeable. I think Dewey would agree
that such landscapes or situations pose particularly
vital moral problems. I will conclude this article by
extending the argument to the concepts of rehabilitation and participation.
OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
Rethinking Rehabilitation and Participation
Places and landscapes are laden with past habits that provide the matter for current habits, but as
with individual habits themselves, places and landscapes also are continually in the making—they are
a central part of the ongoing transactions that bind
people, society, and nature. Places and landscapes
cannot be taken out of the equation; individuals or
societies cannot exist without place, nor can we usefully consider them without considering place. If
habits are the “ground-pattern” for all action and
feeling, as Dewey suggested (Dewey, 1976), then the
pattern on the ground—landscape—is the bedrock
of the ground pattern.2 Such consideration, as Dewey argued, should include moral thinking.
This logic leads us to the conclusion that the individual, the social, and place are fully implicated
in habit and ethics. Because place is essential to an
understanding of habit, place becomes moral by
default. Although Dewey did not often write about
place, he came to a similar conclusion:
The best we can accomplish for posterity is to transmit unimpaired and with some increment of meaning
the environment that makes it possible to maintain the
habits of decent and refined life. Our individual habits are links in forming the endless chain of humanity.
Their significance depends upon the environment inherited from our forerunners, and it is enhanced as we
foresee the fruits of our labors in the world in which
our successors live (Dewey, 1922/1957, p. 23).
Dewey’s statement is profound because it folds
into one process the individual, social, habitual, and
ethical, and it integrates that process with a context
that can be viewed as place or landscape. But what
of crowded, institutional places of care for older
adults? What of neighborhoods devoid of opportunities for exercise or places to buy healthy food? And
what about landscapes of despair in the shadows of
massive oil refineries? These are difficult situations
faced by millions of people the world over. Dewey
suggests that we should care because of the need
for improvement, for growth for us and for others,
but also because the future demands it. He also suggests that we can solve such problematic situations
because “we are active participants in an unfinished
and unfinishable universe” (Garrison, 2005, p. 835).
But what should we do?
The first step is to think more clearly about these
situations as places in need of rehabilitation. Places and
2
I came to this motif of Dewey’s through the excellent
work of Kestenbaum (1997).
Fall 2007, Volume 27, Supplement
Figure 3. Rehabilitation reconstrued using the habit
process.
landscapes are in the making—they are to be made
and remade; we can intervene in places to improve
them, to restore landscapes of despair into landscapes
of hope. Changing place and landscape changes the
social and, through that process, can positively influence habits, both individual and collective. Without rehabilitation of place and landscape, habits will
continue as before, for better or worse—we cannot
escape the social as it presents itself to us every day
in the landscape. Such place rehabilitation, although
difficult, is the most effective route to habit change
and improvement in well-being. However, such action cannot be attempted without an understanding
of habit, its foundations in the social, and the landscape as the product and medium of social custom
and habit (Fig. 3). These concepts, as presented, are
tools for critical thinking as we create new groundmaps for rehabilitation and participation.
Conclusion
The typical way of conceptualizing rehabilitation
is to focus on the individual. Thinking about occupation has also focused primarily on the individual
(Dickie, Cutchin, & Humphry, 2006). A Deweyan
understanding of habit provides a powerful challenge to such thought. In my view, it compels us to
consider that occupation, as complex as it may be,
is constituted of habits that originate first and foremost from the social, and the social is encountered
most significantly in the places and landscapes in
which we live as a materialized discourse. These
are not habits that make us automatons; they are
abilities that are reassembled relative to the situation to act in the best way possible toward moral
ends. This underpins an understanding of occupation as a transaction, where intervention or rehabilitation has new meaning. That meaning is most
fully funded where the transactive individual–so-
57S
cial relationship happens—in places and landscapes of experience. Habit, thus conceived, makes
us moral participants in place processes before we
even know it. The cultural landscape has us before
we have it. Our moral responsibility for our successors is to rehabilitate our places and landscapes to
enhance their occupations and well-being through
the enhancement of their habits. To understand this
is to begin to address our oversight of the power
and importance of habit in life.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Virginia Dickie for feedback on an
earlier draft of this manuscript and Beccy Aldrich, Antoine Bailliard, and Sue Coppola for stimulating seminar
discussion and insights on the concept of habit. Research
reported in this article was funded by the National Institute on Aging (R15 AG17028) and the National Cancer
Institute (P50 CA105631) grant for the UTMB Center for
Population Health and Health Disparities.
References
Alexander, T. (1987). John Dewey’s theory of art, experience and
nature: The horizons of feeling. Albany: State University of New
York Press.
Alter, D. A., & Eny, E. (2005). The relationship between the supply of fast-food chains and cardiovascular outcomes. Canadian
Journal of Public Health, 96, 173-177.
Boisvert, R. (1998). Dewey’s metaphysics: Ground-map of the
prototypically real. In L. A. Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey:
Interpretations for a postmodern generation (pp. 149-165).
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Campbell, J. (1995). Understanding John Dewey: Nature and cooperative intelligence. Chicago: Open Court.
Charmaz, K. (2002). The self as habit: The reconstruction of self
in chronic illness. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research,
22, 31S-41S.
Cutchin, M. P. (2003). The process of mediated aging-in-place: A
theoretically and empirically-based model. Social Science and
Medicine, 57, 1077-1090.
Cutchin, M. P. (2004a). Using Deweyan philosophy to rename
and reframe adaptation-to-environment. American Journal of
Occupational Therapy, 58, 303-312.
Cutchin, M. P. (2004b). A Deweyan case for the study of uncertainty in health geography. Health & Place, 10, 203-213.
Cutchin, M. P. (2007). The need for the “new health geography”
in epidemiologic studies of environment and health. Health &
Place, 13, 725-742.
Cutchin, M. P., Chang, P. F., & Owen, S. V. (2005). Expanding our
understanding of the assisted living experience. Journal of
Housing for the Elderly, 19, 5-22.
Cutchin, M. P., Owen, S. V., & Chang, P. F. (2003). Becoming
“at-home” in assisted living residences: Exploring place integration processes. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 58B,
S234-S243.
Dear, M., & Wolch, J. (1987). Landscapes of despair: From deinstitutionalization to homelessness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
58S
Dewey, J. (1957). Human nature and conduct: An introduction to
social psychology. New York: The Modern Library. (Original
work published in 1922).
Dewey, J. (1976). Interpretation of savage mind. In J. A. Boydston
(Ed.), John Dewey, The middle works, 1899-1924 (vol. 2, pp.
39-52). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
(Original work published in 1902).
Dewey, J. (1984). The inclusive philosophic idea. In J. A. Boydston
(Ed.), John Dewey, The later works, 1925-1953 (vol. 3, pp. 41-54).
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original
work published in 1928).
Dewey, J. (1986). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In J. A. Boydston
(Ed.), John Dewey, The later works, 1925-1953 (vol. 12, pp. 1-529).
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original
work published in 1938).
Dewey, J. (1989). Experience and nature (2nd ed.). LaSalle, IL: Open
Court. (Original work published in 1929).
Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Dickie, V., Cutchin, M. P., & Humphry, R. (2006). Occupation as
transactional experience: A critique of individualism in occupational science. Journal of Occupational Science, 13, 83-93.
Doyle, S., Kelly-Schwartz, A., Schlossberg, M., & Stockard, J.
(2006). Active community environments and health. Journal of
the American Planning Association, 72, 19-31.
Garrison, J. (2001). An introduction to Dewey’s theory of functional “trans-action”: An alternative paradigm for activity
theory. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 8, 275-296.
Garrison, J. (2002). Habits as social tools in context. The Occupational
Therapy Journal of Research, 22, 11S-17S.
Garrison, J. (2005). Dewey on metaphysics, meaning making, and
maps. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 41, 818-844.
Gordon-Larsen, P., Nelson, M. C., Page, P., & Popkin, B. M.
(2006). Inequality in the built environment underlies key
health disparities in physical activity and obesity. Pediatrics,
117, 417-424.
Gross, Neal R. & Co. (2005). United States of America Chemical
Safety and Hazard Investigation Board Public Meeting
on BP Texas City Refinery Investigation, Thursday, October
27, 2005. Transcript accessed June 12, 2006, from http://
www.csb.gov/completed_investigations/docs/10.27.
2005CSBBPCommunityMeetingTranscript.pdf.
Hickman, L. A. (1998). Introduction. In L. A. Hickman (Ed.),
Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a postmodern generation (pp.
ix-xxi). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kestenbaum, V. (1977). The phenomenological sense of John Dewey:
Habit and meaning. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
McDermott, J. J. (1973). John Dewey: A biographical sketch. In J.
J. McDermott (Ed.), The philosophy of John Dewey (Vol. 1). New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
McDonald, S. (2007, January 17). BP’s neighbors aware of danger.
Galveston Daily News.
Meyer, A. (1922). The philosophy of occupation therapy. Archives
of Occupational Therapy, 1, 1-10.
Morland, K., Wing, S., & Diez-Roux, A. (2002). The contextual
effect of the local food environment on residents’ diets: The
atherosclerosis risk in communities study. American Journal of
Public Health, 92, 1761-1767.
Pappas, G. F. (1998). Dewey’s ethics: Morality as experience.
OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
In L. A. Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a
postmodern generation (pp. 100-123). Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Seamon, D. (2002). Physical comminglings: Body, habit, and
space transformed into place. The Occupational Therapy Journal
of Research, 22, 42S-51S.
Proshansky, H. M., Fabian, A. K., & Kaminoff, R. (1983). Placeidentity: Physical world socialization of the self. Journal of
Environmental Psychology, 3, 57-83.
Sullivan, S. (2001). Living across and through skins: Transactional
bodies, pragmatism and feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Rowles, G. D. (1983). Place and personal identity in old age:
Observations from Appalachia. Journal of Environmental
Psychology, 3, 299-313.
Swartz, D. L. (2002). The sociology of habit: The perspective of
Pierre Bourdieu. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research,
22, 61S-69S.
Rowles, G. D. (2000). Habituation and being in place. The
Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, 20, 52S-67S.
Texas City shrugs off refining risks after 15 die at BP plant. (2006,
April 27). Retrieved June 4, 2006, from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news.
Schein, R. (1997). The place of landscape: A conceptual framework
for interpreting an American scene. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 87, 660–680.
Fall 2007, Volume 27, Supplement
Timms, E. (2000, October 3). Toxic traps: The Texas problem
(series). Racial patterns. Dallas Morning News, A1.
59S