Dialogues with Benetton and Latour: possibilities for an understanding of social insertion

Abstract

Contemporary intersectional perspectives discuss that the recognition of difference and economic redistribution are sides of the same coin and call for integrated models to achieve social justice (Fraser, 2007). Working with individuals who were unable to perform activities in their life, from the simplest to the most complex, Benetton observed that this characteristic marked a certain position that excluded them from participating in social life, leaving them on the margins of countless decisions about the conduct of their lives. Doing nothing, being locked up, attacking and destroying, mobilizes the system that s/he belongs with such force that no one close is immune (Benetton, 1994, p. 7). [...]Benetton (1994, 2010) determines a purpose for care "[...] the maintenance or the very social insertion" (Benetton, 1994, p. 64). In the clinic, the singularity only allows us to reflect and elaborate under relative values (Benetton, 1994, p. 64). [...]moving away from previous judgments or classifications, the author proposes to understand what is at stake in the person's current situation, paralyzing him/her and establishing such a position of exclusion.

Headnote

Abstract

This essay aims to weave reflections around the theme of social insertion, walking through the construction of knowledge in occupational therapy, in its deal with persons immersed in issues related to social exclusion. These reflections are based on the Bruno Latour's work, a French sociologist, in particular his Actor-Network Theory, which seeks to unveil the action of human and non-human beings that leads others to act in the world; and on the propositions of the Dynamic Occupational Therapy Method, developed by Jô Benetton, a Brazilian occupational therapist, in her methodological framework to help people to act in the world. This essay aims to reveal points in which these two theoreticalmethodological proposals approach and can offer new possibilities to understand social insertion in construction, in the dynamic, fluid and unstable movement of the social, in processes that favor people's participation in the construction of the collective, based on their way of being, doing and relating.

Keywords: Occupational Therapy, Social Participation, Professional Practice, Social Environment.

Resumo

Este ensaio busca tecer reflexões em torno da temática da inserção social, caminhando pela construção de conhecimento em terapia ocupacional, em sua lida com sujeitos imersos em problemáticas ligadas à exclusão social. Tais reflexões sustentam-se no trabalho desenvolvido por Bruno Latour, sociólogo francês, em especial em seu trabalho metodológico sobre a Teoria Ator-Rede, que busca desvelar a ação de seres humanos e nao humanos que leva outros a agirem no mundo; e nas proposições do Método Terapia Ocupacional Dinâmica, desenvolvido por Jô Benetton, terapeuta ocupacional brasileira, em seu arcabouço metodológico para ajudar pessoas a agirem no mundo. Assim, este ensaio busca desvelar pontos nos quais essas duas propostas teórico-metodológicas se aproximam e podem oferecer novas possibilidades para compreender a inserção social em construção, no movimento dinámico, fluido e instável do social, em processos que favoreçam a participação dos sujeitos na construção do coletivo, com base em seu modo de ser, de fazer e de se relacionar.

Palavras-chave: Terapia Ocupacional, Participação Social, Prática Professional, Meio Social.

1 Introduction

The terms social insertion and participation have been gaining space in recent discussions of Brazilian occupational therapy. Although, since the 1970s, this idea has been gestated as critical to a functionalist perspective, a perspective of adapting people to society (Galheigo et al., 2018). Such criticism bases the practice centered on the desire that the people with whom occupational therapy works and through this work can participate in a less unequal society (objectively and subjectively).

The concept of social exclusion known as ambiguous, multidimensional, and immersed in complex social issues is more explored in the literature than the complementary concepts of social inclusion and insertion (Fisher, 2008). Contemporary intersectional perspectives discuss that the recognition of difference and economic redistribution are sides of the same coin and call for integrated models to achieve social justice (Fraser, 2007).

In this essay, we propose to walk through the construction of knowledge in occupational therapy, dealing with individuals immersed in issues related to social exclusion, highlighting elements that can contribute to this debate. Although our focus is not on the discussion of social issues, we are based on the premise of a practice that seeks qualified life, and which stands as resistance to contemporary necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003; Lima, 2006).

For this reflection, we chose two authors whose works we can find elements to expand our understanding: the Brazilian occupational therapist Jô Benetton and the French sociologist Bruno Latour. We will show the central ideas of each author and later, weave relationships aimed at an understanding of social insertion, fertile for professionals and researchers.

2 Jô Benetton: Expanding Health Spaces in Everyday Life

Gathering evidence and identifying relationships around occupational therapy clinic phenomena have been Jô Benetton's project since 1970 (Benetton, 1994). Her way of investigating was based on the observation and description of the practice to identify its phenomena and then search for explanatory theories or the construction of new theoretical contributions - the process of construction of the Dynamic Occupational Therapy Method (DOTM).

Working with individuals who were unable to perform activities in their life, from the simplest to the most complex, Benetton observed that this characteristic marked a certain position that excluded them from participating in social life, leaving them on the margins of countless decisions about the conduct of their lives. Such a position, generated by the repercussion of certain situations, kept the individual paralyzed between the social and the personal aspects. For Benetton, when she talks about the critically ill patient, she emphasizes that s/he is not only like this by his/her medical diagnosis, but mainly because of the social repercussions caused by his/her condition. Doing nothing, being locked up, attacking and destroying, mobilizes the system that s/he belongs with such force that no one close is immune (Benetton, 1994, p. 7).

Thus, Benetton (1994, 2010) determines a purpose for care "[...] the maintenance or the very social insertion" (Benetton, 1994, p. 64). A problem of an ambiguous, multiple and complex nature, difficult to be isolated. For this complexity, Benetton (1994) proposes to leave open the various possibilities for qualifying the phenomena triggered in the search for social insertion, considering all the singularity of each situation. Benetton instigates a reasoned criticism to question the normalization without excluding those not normalized. In the clinic, the singularity only allows us to reflect and elaborate under relative values (Benetton, 1994, p. 64).

Thus, moving away from previous judgments or classifications, the author proposes to understand what is at stake in the person's current situation, paralyzing him/her and establishing such a position of exclusion. The aspects to be considered for this analysis are multiple, depending on the particularities of everyday life.

Information about everyday life needs to be mapped and produced in the most varied ways: for what the person talk about him/herself and the people with whom s/he lives; what these people tell and think about him/her; the attitudes of those who live with him/her - including other professionals or the case's reference team; by what is observed of what the person does and how s/he qualifies his/her productions; other diagnoses. This situational diagnosis is more like a map than a puzzle because the connections between the points/pieces do not necessarily connect clearly and perfectly - there are gaps "between" that are more or less filled as new information is incorporated.

With this initial map in mind and to help the target person to get out of his/her paralysis, Benetton (1994) observed that there is a first recipe, that it is necessary to do as a response to this complicated form of demand (Benetton, 1994, p. 5). And "doing activities" as well as the entire arsenal necessary for them to be done causes changes in the relationship between an occupational therapist and the target person, making such a relationship triadic, and not just interpersonal. Doing activities not only generates products, in a unidirectional sense, of the human being for his/her production but they force a relationship with him/her and a relationship of the order of having to do (Benetton & Marcolino, 2013, p. 648).

The experimental field given by the doing activities in a triadic relationship opens space for subjectivity. Choosing, making, building, destroying are actions that are permeated by feelings and emotions and carry expectations and desires. Doing activities is both a gateway to the unusual and an opening for the construction of meanings that can reformulate "[...]inactivity and disbelief' with the person (Benetton, 1994, p. 75). When someone loses the reference of everyday life, it is much easier to resume it with activities than with words, orders, or determinations. Through the activities, we will be able to excavate memories, which will not necessarily have to be redone or rehabilitated, but can be built with objects, and new objects, because then the person has already changed (Benetton, 2002, p. 6).

Benetton (1994, 2010) proposes that the occupational therapist starts to analyze the dynamic movement of the triadic relationship. For the author, the person is free to choose his/her path, so that we can identify what favors his/her creativity, his/her doing.

Acting in the dynamics of the triadic relationship implies being present, as an active occupational therapist who seeks to "[...] induce to feel and to relate" (Benetton, 1994, p. 81) favoring the person in the emergence of the desire to learn, to do, to move on. The proposal is to expand the possibilities that the individuals feel to be mobilized, provoked to act. "The other, patient in his/her own life, needs to be provoked to find a new or better way to live, in principle, the day-to-day" (Benetton, 1994, p. 102).

In this way, we seek that the person gets to know him/herself, chooses what to experience and qualifies these experiences, assuming such values for him/herself, recognizing what is good for him/her. As we try to keep the person's possibilities open to qualify what has been experienced, what is qualified as healthy become a health space, in a health perspective that is dynamic and that regulates the possibilities of action (Maximino et al., 2012).

However, Benetton (1994) observes that just doing activities is not enough. There is a need for integration between thinking and doing, both for the person and for the people with whom he/she lives. For this, the author proposes that the occupational therapist memorize observable and embodied information (thoughts from the interaction, emotions, and feelings experienced in the body). Benetton (1994) advocates the development of a searching look, whose focus is not on understanding (activities, gestures or emotions), but on observing and recording to compose a case information collection (Benetton, 1994, p. 97).

Using the set of activities performed and the associative memory (supported by the records), it is possible to propose to the person an evaluation of what was done. The Associative Path technique, with greater focus, favors the integration between thinking and doing.

This technique consists of bringing together all the activities done and grouping them according to any proposition that the target person understands that makes sense to him/her, and then names such groups and explains them. The occupational therapist can endorse such groupings, making comments, or even proposing new groups that may reveal him/her hypotheses and associations built over time. This dialogue continues until both are satisfied. In this way, isolated phenomena can, over time, be compared to their meanings (Benetton, 1994, p. 36) and what has never been seen or thought surprises, expanding, even more, the possibilities of searching for new associations and a new value system is being built (Benetton, 1994, p. 106). First of all, an associative process aims at showing those who do nothing for society, how much has already been done for themselves, and for the interlocutor who qualifies them. There is history here! (Benetton, 1994, p. 105).

The expansion of health spaces, as the activities become routine, and the meanings that the person builds for his/her everyday life are the foundations for social insertion. Once s/he actively participates, this participation creates changes in society (Benetton, 2002). Finally, through this meaning that the target person as a citizen takes in his or her way of being to impose on society that receives him/her in this same way and that s/he does not need to wait for social change to enter it. In that sense, s/he becomes an agent of this change (Benetton, 2010, p. 39).

Benetton (1994, 2010) clarifies that this process is not linear. Seeking for the construction of meanings is to approach the risk of the new, the unusual and not always of the success, and failure is also an instrument for new searches based on reformulations of our work (Benetton, 1994, p. 110). Also, sustaining health spaces demands thinking about singularities under relative values and keeping open to all possible qualifications - paradoxes and controversies in the lives of the target persons need to come to the fore and be considered together to move forward (Benetton, 1994).

Thus, the construction of what is now called the Dynamic Occupational Therapy Method was based on the observation of the phenomena of care practice in occupational therapy. Thus, any theoretical and methodological construction would respond directly to the needs of a practice aimed at social insertion. Along this path, unusual elements were called upon to compose this framework, with an emphasis on activities, the meanings that are built on them, and the entire arsenal that they mobilize for them to be made.

These elements have a direct connection with the avant-garde propositions of Bruno Latour, a contemporary French sociologist, who will be better detailed below.

3Bruno Latour: Expanding Connections and Associations That lead to Action

Bruno Latour (2012) is the author of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), one of the most fruitful productions of his work, presented in the book Reassembling the Social: An introduction to the Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2012), a work that will be presented and discussed in this essay. ANT was developed after his ethnographic work in the laboratories of scientists, and this ethnographic immersion enabled him to study above, in the sense that its practitioners, with a status above the researcher, did not let sociologists cross his field and destroy his objects with 'social explanations' without protesting vehemently (Latour, 2012, p. 149).

The study in the laboratory of scientists, a space used to risky experiments based on the falsifiability of the theory, tensioned the social sciences to carry out experiments also open to risk. Social explanations such as Capitalism, Empire, Norms, Individualism, Fields (Latour, 2012, p. 200-201) and its inherent invisibility can reduce and obscure possible new occurrences that demand other associations and explanations than those previously available.

Latour respects sociology that helps to shape certain stable social aspects, but how can we know what is already stabilized in the contemporary world? For complex phenomena, Latour (2012) agrees with Stengers (2002) in stating that it is necessary to invent reckless devices to make the observer sensitive to new types of connections (Latour, 2012, p. 336). The new order assumed was not to work with invisibility, with what is behind human actions, not to try to fill gaps, but to cultivate descriptions of what exists or, at the very least, of what offers some indication of its existence even if indirect, vague, complicated (Latour, 2012, p. 217-218).

Latour (2012, p. 337) proposes an empirical sociology, in the sense of respecting the strange nature of what is "given to existence" in a game of non-reductive - the more elements in the description, the more connections traced between the elements, the more contradictions and controversies can be observed. By eliminating the invisible from the social, the objects emerged as new elements, jumping from the restricted place of being part of the context to stand out in the explanations about the multiplicity of the social landscape as they made a difference, modifying the situation.

What makes us do? is a guiding question to understand the society that gains dynamism and fluidity in the associations between what makes the difference, whether human or non-human actors. This characteristic ends up creating tensions with ways of producing overly human knowledge, focused on the intentionality and significance of human actions. If the action is limited to what humans do in an 'intentional' or 'meaningful' way, it is not conceived as a thing can do. We need to start from the controversy about actors and agencies, any thing that changes a situation making a difference is an actor - or if you don't have a figuration yet, an actant (Latour, 2012, p. 108, emphasis added).

ANT proposes that the social, especially in complex and contemporary problems, does not need to be explained. The social demands explanations as we follow the actors and pay attention to their marks and what associations about the social world can be made.

In this sense, the author proposes to follow the actors without explanatory leaps, identifying what leads them to act (as a mediator, open to new associations) or who is stiff, stabilized, from which there are no possibilities for new connections (as an intermediary). The actor of the Actor-Network is what many others make to do, which cannot be clear of who or what is doing when people do (Latour, 2012, p. 75).

When affirming that neither society nor the social exist, Latour (2012, p. 61) points out that the social is closer to a movement that links things. Thus, for ANT, the social is not a place, a thing, a domain or a type of matter, but a provisional movement of new associations (Latour, 2012, p. 341). In this sense, society is not the cause of such associations, but a consequence of them.

To identify what makes to do, the author proposes to identify the entities in circulation (Latour, 2012, p. 339), limiting nothing and expanding the range of agents able to participate in the course of action (Latour, 2012, p. 115). For this, he works with information such as maps, forcing connections between entities to live in a flat space, because when we start to better locate what circulates, we can perceive many other entities whose displacement was barely visible before (Latour, 2012, p. 295).

Thus, the action starts to be considered as an event, as a surprise that needs to be demonstrated by what is observable, and that carries controversies and uncertainties about who or what is making to do. When working with information on a map, such controversies are allowed to be explored in-depth, even when they are difficult (Latour, 2012, p. 80), favoring the removal of any under-determination of action (Latour, 2012, p. 74, highlighted by the author), as a biological (like the specific abilities of individuals), psychological (like the power of the unconscious) or social determination (like society).

This process is open to the unexpected, elements that favor the identification of new positions and associations. However, to make objects seen and described in their actions, Latour (2012) uses some strategies: (a) to study innovations, given their intense activity in places used to new projects; (b) to take distance, spatial or temporal since when interrupting the normal course of action, other actors are called to enter the scene, and objects become more easily mediators; (c) to describe situations in which accidents or ruptures occur, as objects, from intermediaries, start to act intensely - as in an earthquake; (d) to bring the objects to the surface again, as documents, because they carry history. To be considered, objects need to be included in the accounts. When they leave no trace, they provide no information to the observer and do not have a visible effect on other agents (Latour, 2012, p. 118-119).

By giving objects a voice, Latour offers a new place for interobjectivity, tensioning it beyond the local context, introducing multiple temporal displacements, thus someone, from another place and another time, is still acting through indirect connections, but fully traceable (Latour, 2012, p. 283-284). Latour also points out that intersubjectivity occurs in connection with interobjectivity since what is internal (subjective) and external (objective) are no longer considered in exclusivity but through connections.

The author recognizes the difficulty in tracking the circulation of subject-carrying mediators but points out that the possibility of producing and apprehending subjects and interiorities rests in this circulation. Tone of voice, unusual expression, a wave of the hand, way of walking, posture - can that also be traced (Latour, 2012, p. 301).

Although the author abandons the idea of hidden explanatory structures, he recognizes the existence of structuring templates (Latour, 2012, p. 283, highlighted by the author), which circulate both through materialized channels, such as graphic techniques, gears, levers, and chemical connections (Latour, 2012, p. 283-284) as well as in intellectual technologies. Such standards provide information about the collective and need to be incorporated into the description, as elements that help to unfold the place. Coherent and complete reports can become blinder, more local, and more partial points of view. These panoramas must be studied carefully because they provide the only opportunity to see the 'total story' as a whole. Their totalizing visions should not be discarded, but added to the multiplicity of locations that we want to unfold (Latour, 2012, p. 273)

Thus, what is formed by following the actors is characterized as a network of connections. This is precisely the definition of network adopted by Latour, it is the traces left behind by an agent on its move (Latour, 2012, p. 194). Given that such a connection is established point by point, it is possible to trace and record it empirically, moving away from the risk of presenting only the context. Thus, actors end up constituted as the elements that act in the world and are connected in networks by different vehicles, traces, trails, types of information (Latour, 2012, p. 260), in which something is transported, transferred.

For Latour (2012, p. 193), the emptiness left between the layout is what we do not know about the social, the emptiness is the key to traverse the rare conduits in which the social circulates. The social world is unstable and fluid, open to risk, and the new, as long as a new association occurs. In this direction, Latour highlights: Does this mean that we must take seriously the palpable and, at times, strangely small differences between the many ways in which people 'do the social'? I'm afraid so (Latour, 2012, p. 62), assuming the plurality of possible regimes of existence in the world.

Thus, terms such as society, politics and collective life gain new definitions. Society assumes the definition of a set of entities already assembled - made of social material (Latour, 2012, p. 112), as a collective is characterized as a project of bringing together new entities that have not yet been brought together and that, for this reason, are not made of social material (Latour, 2012, p. 112).

Thus, collective life is under construction, and politics is the progressive composition of collective life (Latour, 2012, p. 68), occurring to a greater or lesser extent as long as there is a greater or lesser network of connections that lead to action. In which direction? For those who seek to expand participation in the world, in the direction of freedom, it is a question of escape from a perverse subjection, not in the absence of subjections (Latour, 2012, p. 329).

Latour (2012) proposes that understanding what makes to act can reveal elements that subject/ subdued (perversely) people. However, the decision on this qualification is under the actors. Thus, any perspective of emancipation would be far from the idea of freeing people from what chains them, but close to the idea of building and expanding links that favor the person to participate in common life, because for him, emancipation does not means freeing from bonds, but well-connected (Latour, 2012, p. 313).

For this, Latour (2012) bets on the freedom of the actors to define and order the social, to live their world. Analysts/researchers then have the task of tracking the connections between controversies, without seeking solutions but investigating how the world of actors is established. The search for order, rigor, and the pattern is by no means abandoned, only a step forward in the form of abstraction, so that actors can unfold their own and diverse cosmos, no matter how irrational they seem (Latour, 2012, p. 44).

4Dialogues

We chose two points to dialogue with Benetton and Latour for a proposal to understand social inclusion: a) empiricism as an axis of knowledge production: how to know about social insertion? and b) strategies for building social insertion.

The way of producing knowledge of ANT and DOTM has points of approximation. Both Benetton (2005) and Latour (2012) adopt Stengers (2002) as a reference in the Sociology of Sciences and propose to build knowledge step by step, without anticipations and invisible interpretations, collecting evidence that can be gathered for future understandings. They first propose to observe and not understand, mainly because they move through a terrain that is at the same time completely banal - the social world that is used to - and completely exotic (Latour, 2012, p. 38).

For ANT, it is necessary to unfold controversies, by describing what can be captured and the associations between what leads to action; stabilization, which manages to explain what is demanded by the social; and the search for political influence, so that this new set of entities can be brought together to the collective. For DOTM, practice as an object of study enables a way of practicing-investigating to identify new phenomena that demand explanations, opening space for the new to emerge.

Benetton (1994, 2010) kept the social open, particularizing conceptions of what it means to be healthy and what it means to be socially inserted "[...] as a possibility for the individual to be, do and relate to their social way" (Benetton, 1994, p 146). What is social has become dependent on what is around it - her proposal for diagnostic construction is situated.

However, there is a clear distinction at stake. Bruno Latour builds Sociology of Associations to understand what makes to do that constitutes such a dynamic and fluid movement that is social. Jô Benetton, interested in how to make individuals paralyzed in the social life act, builds a method. Both propose to follow the actors, discover that the non-human elements do and that movement (dynamic, fluid, but traceable) takes place in the connections that are established by what is doing.

All the information obtained by different means is organized and mapped descriptively or graphically - Latour's flattened landscape, Benetton's situational diagnosis. This map allows a better understanding of the connections between the different actors.

For Latour, this map enables us to identify what is leading to action, what it is constituted as a mediator or intermediary, what may be being transported by the different means that connect the actors, and from which network it is being formed. For Benetton, this map allows us to analyze, always in a hypothetical way, what favors the individual's action or what prevents him/her from acting - to nurture a reasoning that is analytical and associative.

If we assume that the goal of occupational therapy is social insertion, Benetton proposes that it happens through the expansion of health spaces, activities under the status of being "healthy". Latour seems to follow similar paths when addressing social emancipation (Latour, 2012, p. 80) as the expansion of the network of connections that makes to do and that moves away from perverse subjections, maintaining the qualification given by the actors.

Thus, could we take processes of social insertion by identifying how a collective would be being built, as the map receives new connections that include elements, until then non-social (not yet gathered in society), that begin to participate in the everyday lives of individuals and force a relationship with what is already formatted?

Also, the dialogue between Benetton and Latour can advance, as there are social insertions that demand professional actions - occupational therapists act!

Also the activities! Benetton has always noted the potential of activities to get persons to do. The dynamic movement between the three terms of the triadic relationship is the focus of analysis by the occupational therapist to favor what the target person can do. Is this dynamic movement traceable?

The occupational therapist works in the triadic relationship managing the activities (when teaching, talking, and reflecting on the activities) and the affections/emotions of the relationship. The analysis of the circulating affects in the triadic relationship allows actions that can transform them, so that emotions and feelings are transported - from the therapist to the target person as an affection that believe in the development of the targest person; and from the target person to the occupational therapist as the affection of those who want to learn and develop (Benetton, 1994).

In this process, the experimentations in the triadic relationship favor the target person to get to know him/herself: his/her skills, limitations, likes, dislikes, his/her way of relating, what helps him/her to act in the world, and what paralyzes him/her.

Benetton (1994) understood the need for greater integration between thinking and doing and found that the analysis of the activities carried out favored the emergence of associations about doing (lived facts and constructed meanings), opening space for dialogue. In this conversation, the occupational therapist shows aspects, often not perceived, about the singular way of being, doing, and relating to the target person, aiming at the construction of new meanings.

In the Associative Path (Benetton, 1994), several of the tricks suggested by Latour (2012) are used to make the objects speak: 1) to bring the objects back when organizing all the activitie done; 2) to analyze the activities over a temporal distance, allowing the person to scale a set of activities in an idea that unites them; 3) to make use of accidents, ruptures and blows (Latour, 2012, p. 121) and also of what appears/appeared as new, not yet understood, activating what it was not seen before (Latour, 2012, p. 298).

The composition of the Associative Path also leaves a path that integrates interobjectivities and intersubjectivities - a phenomenon that can also be better investigated based in the idea of the network, as proposed by Latour, of the path left by an agent in motion (Latour, 2012, p. 194)? Could the map provide us with more information about what is driving us to do or not to do?

For DOTM, it is essential that the meaning can be constructed by the persons and that the hypotheses of the occupational therapist can be endorsed or reformulated, so that one can continue, finalize or review failures. The measure has to do with the expansion of health spaces in everyday life, which demonstrate greater social insertion of the target person.

In this process, self-recognition opens the way for social insertion, in a movement that demands the person to be active, to move in the direction of the social. Connections with things and people are being expanded in the direction of what is good, composing what Benetton (1994) calls potential health spaces.

However, with the considerations of Latour (2012), there are many entities already assembled that compose society and structural templates that need to be incorporated into the reports, as additional elements that feed the controversies about what makes to do. For Benetton (1994), all descriptions about the person's life are called to offer a dimension of what acts in his/her life, including reports on structural patterns. Benetton (1994) exemplifies this issue when talking about her experience with people in difficult socioeconomic situation, they do not have support from their families, most of the time they are concerned with finding their jobs. For this reason, it even is frequent the acceptance of oddities, passivity, and even crises cured with medicines by this person who has the job, after all, to be locked in the shack, taking care that it is not robbed (Benetton, 1994, p. 111).

The situational diagnosis favors the identification of how humans (people who live with the target person) and non-human (furniture, building structures, laws) mediators (Latour, 2012) act, and if/how they paralyze the person's doing. Mediators are liable to interventions for transformations that lead the other to do.

Thus, the whole person comes forward to think about actions in occupational therapy, in a reality that is not only his/her, it is our reality! If we, as occupational therapists, work to expand health spaces in everyday life, full of mediators that most lead to inactivity, these mediators also need to be the target of our reflection and our actions.

Thus, in addition to knowing oneself, the target person needs to make him/herself known, to be recognized. Although actions in occupational therapy can be directed to the community, from a collectivist perspective (Malfitano et al., 2019), changes in the composition of the collective are guided by the needs of social recognition of this person, of his/her difference. Thus, there is no proposal here to adapt to a degraded society, because it is in the political action of the person that rests the composition of collective life.

Thus, we propose to think about the social insertion under construction, in the dynamic, fluid, and unstable movement of the social, through active processes of persons' participation in the construction of the collective. When considering the issues of recognition of difference and economic distribution as the pillars for thinking about social insertion (Fraser, 2007), we recognize the limitations of occupational therapy in acting directly in economic redistribution. We can agree with Algado (2012) when we assume the commitment of building inclusive and sustainable communities, but our most direct contribution seems to be for social recognition of the difference.

In this sense, the recipe found by Benetton (1994) in which it is necessary to do in response to complicated demands, may perhaps be further explored for expanding life's possibilities.

5Final Considerations

This essay aimed to present reflections for the understanding of phenomena around the theme of social insertion in the dialogue with two authors who walk through the construction of knowledge as an empirical, dynamic, and open to the new process - Jô Benetton and Bruno Latour. The new is what Benetton expected to achieve with people assisted in occupational therapy, in she bets that it is necessary to do and let yourself be guided by what will emerge along this path. Our bet here is that ANT of Latour can help us to refine the possibilities of finding the new, for the clinic and research in occupational therapy.

There were many points of connection between the authors' works, and the text aimed to raise points for discussion that foster reflections and that offer openness for future investigations. However, the guiding principle here was the proposition of DOTM for dynamic, fluid, and in process occupational therapy.

We highlight processes designed in networks of connections: the diagnostic composition (situational and in process); the intervention centered on the dynamic movement of the triadic relationship; and the evaluation by the Associative Path, on the dynamism of the meaning-making process that integrates objectivities and subjectivities. Aspects outlined by empirical research, but always open to new explorations, which can take place in a fruitful partnership with ANT.

Following the actors (human and non-human), leaving them free in their actions, and responsibly assuming reflection, dialogue, and intervention around what limits actions and limits life are aspects that this essay highlights to think about social insertion processes. This concept is assumed in the dynamic, fluid, and unstable movement of the social, through active processes of participation of the individuals in the construction of the collective.

Sidebar

How to cite: Marcolino, T. Q., Benetton, J., Cestari, L. M. Q., Mello, A. C. C., & Araújo, A. S. (2020). Dialogues with Benetton and Latour: possibilities for an understanding of social insertion. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 28(4), 1322-1334. https://doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoARF2032

Author's Contributions

All authors participated in the preparation of the text, and Taís Quevedo Marcolino participated in the conception, design, and writing. Ana Carolina Carreira de Mello, Angélica Araújo Silva, and Leila Maria Quiles Cestari participated in the production of the text. Jô Benetton participated in the conceptual review. All authors approved the final version of the text.

Funding Source

This study was funded by the Coordenaçâo de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES), through the granting of master's scholarships to Ana Carolina Carreira de Mello (2017-2019) and a doctorate scholarship to Angélica da Silva Araújo (2018), and the CAPES financing - Code 001.

Corresponding author

Taís Quevedo Marcolino

e-mail: [email protected]

References

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