This paper reexamines the need to discuss social change within occupational science and explores the potential of co-production and empowerment in creating occupation-rich places and conducting participatory research. The meaning of occupation is shaped by social and cultural contexts and has significant implications for individual health and well-being. In particular, consideration of the social determinants of health (SDH) and an interpretive approach highlights the importance of occupational therapists and occupational scientists engaging with social structures. This paper presents the Community Sheds initiative, which is closely linked to the concept of social prescribing, and discusses the role of participatory action research (PAR) in promoting empowerment through a co-creative approach. It also incorporates the perspective of epistemic injustice and examines the importance of participatory research as a means of ensuring equity in knowledge production. Through these discussions, the paper emphasizes the significance of embracing "generative disruption" and proposes the perspective of "designing the context of occupation" as a critical theoretical and practical framework for advancing social transformation.

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Occupational scientists and occupational therapists have historically been interested in justice and social well-being. In more recent decades, occupational scientists and therapists have begun examining the application of occupation-based frameworks to promote social and community-level change. Researchers have approached this topic from varying theoretical and cultural perspectives. In this lecture, we will position one such framework– pragmatism （Cutchin et al., 2017; Lavalley, 2017） – in dialogue with others that have been used to develop occupation-based perspectives on collective doing. We will then demonstrate the framework's pragmatic and concrete implications for research design in studying communities and collectives. In conversation with critical theoretical perspectives, we will also examine the role this framework can play in community program development and intervention planning at the structural level. Leveraging a critical, yet optimistic and pragmatic, approach to imagining social transformation processes and interventions that mobilize occupation will inform practical interventions and community change in pursuit of justice and social well-being.

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