Search

People with disabilities working together to overcome oppression is a common theme in depictions of disabled people, featuring in works including the films Freaks and X-Men and the song Spasticus A...

Intersectional approaches inquire how identities that represent oppression configure instances of discrimination. Analyzing identities uncovers how these are formed, embraced, changed, and abandone...

The social interpretation of disability (SID) that originated in Britain in the 1970s is a radical attempt to locate the problem of disability in society. SID has been criticised, however, on the g...

People with disabilities share a history and culture of marginalization and oppression. In disability studies, disability has been re-defined as an inability or limitation in performance of the roles and tasks expected of individuals within society which excludes people from becoming full participants in social, cultural, and political affairs. Disability research has traditionally been ‘on’ rather than ‘with’ people with disabilities. This article examines how qualitative sibling disability research has been conducted, with a particular focus on the exclusion of people with disabilities.

This article explores whether it is possible to use a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies to understand experiences of social oppression on the grounds of mental distress. Thomas’ extended social relational theoretisation of disablism was used in a PhD project concerned with experiences of mental distress. The tentative conclusion was that Thomas’ conceptualisation of disablism and impairment could offer a way of improving understanding of mental distress and oppression on the grounds of mental distress. However, Thomas and Reeve’s theorisation of the different forms of disablism was not readily transferred to the field of mental distress. Thus, tentative definitions of the different forms of disablism in relation to the field of mental distress were created. Perceived impairment type and disablism appear to be interconnected, and one has to acknowledge what kind of perceived impairment type one is focusing on when theorising disability and the different types of disablism.

This article explores whether it is fruitful to use a service user/survivor approach to recovery, by seeing recovery as survival of social invalidation. That is survival of the psychosocial forces that were the source of the experience of mental distress, and as survival of social oppression by the psychiatric services and/or wider society. It could be argued that the participants in this study in the United Kingdom and Sweden recovered, and reclaimed and (re)constructed positive identities. They actively resisted experiences of disablism and rebuilt their lives. By approaching recovery from a service user/survivor perspective, one is focusing on the social, structural and political aspects of the recovery process, and one is resisting biomedical, deviant and reductionist notions of recovery.

This article presents a case study focused on the experiences of Rafael, a resilient young musician. The research is based on 180 records made through interviews, focus groups, observations and documentary collection, involving 190 informants. The data analysis shows that social systems create subordinated and stigmatised conditions of experience for people with disabilities which lead to social exclusion and reification. This understanding of disability as oppression (which is the ‘coffin of the dead’) can be combated by means of education, understood as resistance to inequality. This can be effected by questioning the social order and power relationships, thus striving to produce the possibility of being a subject. In this way Rafael has been able to construct his identity relatively autonomously, challenging social mandates that led him to exclusion and denied his existence as a subject. In his own words: ‘I open the coffin and here I am’.

In 2005, K.D. Laird published an abrasive critique of the poem ‘Disabled’ by Wilfred Owen. This iconic trench poet of the First World War was accused of portraying his impaired veteran as a tragic victim of loss. However, 50 years before the modern disability movement, Owen lacked the language to interpret impairment as oppression. What ‘Disabled’ requires is a contextual analysis that integrates its literary qualities with the historical conditions. This article applies such an approach. Firstly, the technical devices used to tell the story are examined: for example, rhyming, verse structure and allusions. Secondly, the experience of impairment represented in the poem is related to early-twentieth-century British society: in particular to the initial patriotic enthusiasm for the War, to the influence of gender roles and to the limitations of state provision. In this way, we see how Owen’s literary image is situated within a historical time frame.

This article explores the possibility of using a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies in the field of mental health, and the study of identity (re)construction in the recovery process. In this PhD project, 33 narratives were analysed using framework analysis. The analysis showed that disablism was present and powerful in the participants’ lives, and also showed how disablism shaped how the participants thought and felt about themselves. As Carol Thomas argues, when analysing disablism one should also focus on who we are and are prevented from being, as disabled people. The conclusion is that processes of oppression were central when it comes to understanding the (re)construction of identities. A disability studies perspective is thus relevant in the field of mental distress, and can be used to enhance the understanding of the process of identity (re)construction.

The increased variety of social conflicts in the post-1960 years resulted in the extension of the individual’s participation in the state’s activity. This change was mirrored by the emergence of new social movements and the related expansion of the notion of citizenship. New groups of people, including disabled people, have emerged claiming citizenship rights. In order to do this, disabled people started to coalesce into uni-impairment and multi-impairment groups and organisations to denounce social exclusion and legal oppression, as well as to demand rights as citizens. Partially based on my research about social citizenship and the Disabled People’s Movement, this article investigates, firstly, the seeds and development of the Portuguese Disabled People’s Movement, secondly, its aims, demands and action strategies and, finally, its impact in the lives of disabled people in Portugal.

This article examines the experiences of citizens with dementia who campaign for social change, with a particular focus on the effects of campaigning on citizenry identity and psycho-emotional well-being. In diary-interviews, 16 people with dementia recorded and described their experiences of campaigning. Findings revealed that although campaigning can be energising and reaffirming of citizen identity, because it (re)located a person within the realm of work, individuals may experience dementia-related fatigue and oppression linked to normative expectations about what someone with dementia ‘should’ be like. The discussion is linked to critical debates within disability studies about the psycho-emotional aspects of impairment and disability, and concludes that the struggle for citizenship has only just begun for people with dementia.

Recently there has been discussion about the emergence of critical disability studies. In this paper I provide an inevitably partial and selective account of this trans-disciplinary space through reference to a number of emerging insights, including theorizing through materialism, bodies that matter, inter/trans-sectionality, global disability studies, and self and Other. I briefly disentangle these themes and suggest that while we may well start with disability, we often never end with it as we engage with other transformative arenas including feminist, critical race and queer theories. Yet critical disability studies reminds us of the centrality of disability when we consider the politics of life itself. In this sense, then, disability becomes entangled with other forms of oppression and revolutionary responses.

Vulnerability holds a contentious position in critical disability scholarship. Tension surrounding the notion of vulnerability lies primarily in its straddling of two areas of concern: the phenomenological reality of living with impairment, and the idea that vulnerability is a socially constructed entity that oppresses people with disabilities. This paper is an exploration of current and historical understandings of vulnerability, drawing from disability scholarship as well as from the theoretical tenets of Kristeva, Douglas, and Foucault. Tensions within the field are considered, as is the possibility that such debate might serve to enrich and deepen considerations of frailty in disability studies.

This article explores the multiple and shifting ways in which disability intersects with other sources of social disadvantage. Disablism forms part of an intricate web of social conditions that subjugate certain forms of ‘student-subjects' and create compounding forms of oppression and exclusion that need to be addressed through relevant education policy and practice. Intersectional understandings of disability expose the multiple dynamics that impact upon constructing disabled students' identities. These identities should not be regarded as fixed and transcendental entities gauged against varied bodily, mental and psychological differences, but should be understood in conjunction with the ways in which race, gender and socio-economic status intersect with the experience of disability. Intersectional understandings of disability, drawn from intersectional feminism and disability studies, destabilize reductionist accounts of individual pathology and privilege new forms of pedagogical thinking and acting th...

This paper assesses the social policy narrative personalisation, and particularly the implications of the narrative for disability politics. The advantages and disadvantages of positioning specific funding mechanisms within the narrative are explored. It is argued that personalisation is insufficiently aligned with collective aspects of empowerment. More particularly, it disproportionately emphasises improvements in individual autonomy through personalised support, and lacks reference to structural oppression or the need for collective forms of action that bring about structural change. It is further argued that personalisation lack a multi-faceted analysis of disability and disempowerment, and as a result also lacks any vision of a positive alternative society. In assessing personalisation, the positive and negative dimensions of disabled people’s freedom are considered. As a response to the apparent shortcomings of personalisation, the integrated living approach and Centres for Independent Living are co...

In 2001 the UK Government launched its strategy ‘Valuing People’. The strategy, underpinned by the Human Rights Act 1998 (Ministry of Justice 1998), the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (Home Office 1995) and social inclusion claimed to outline ways for services to work, to meet the needs of individuals with learning disabilities . In this qualitative study, interviews were held with five women with learning disabilities, all of whom experienced domestic abuse from intimate partners. Although women sought help from services to leave their abusive partners, it was either denied or inappropriate to their needs. Women internalised the oppression of their partners and the dual abuse from services that failed them. Helpful service provision included advocacy, a domestic abuse therapy programme, and an empowerment group informed by feminist perspectives.

Persons with disabilities have endured discrimination and live under social apartheid. While enlightened people recognise the role that society has in disabling people with impairments, there remains a struggle to remove the negative stigma associated with this form of social diversity. There is no silver bullet that will enable persons with disabilities to exercise their human rights as full citizens. One strategy to assist in this struggle is the use of language. This paper focuses on how language can be utilised in the struggle against oppression. This paper reconsiders how disability discrimination is conceived and labelled. There is no uniformly accepted label to describe the discrimination and oppression that is explained by the social model or the non-radical social model. This paper explores how the labels of disableism and ableism have emerged to explain this concept. This paper analyses these terms and argues for the adoption of ableist nomenclature.

Drawing upon the thought of Eric Fromm, this paper argues that efforts to understand and counter behaviour that causes difficulties in education should begin in a critical and reflective engagement with both the conditions of human freedom and the character of educational institutions and society as a whole. Fromm’s critique of dominating ideas about good mental health within capitalistic societies is examined in relation to disablement and attention-deficient hyperactivity disorder. A study of a sixth-form college in the south of England elucidates connections between Fromm’s insights into social psychology and disablement as a process of oppression.

Until recently disability studies has ignored questions regarding the psychological nature of oppression. Proponents of the social model have viewed such concerns as diversionary, diluting their emphasis on material and economic barriers to inclusion. This paper argues that the discipline’s role of reflecting and interrogating disablism will remain incomplete and lacking in transformative power without undertaking a psychological conceptualisation of disabled personhood. Some prior attempts at elaborating the social model to include the psychological realm have been presented; these are critiqued, and argued to lack truly psychological conceptualisation. Preliminary ideas regarding a proposed psychology of disablism are presented. The focus of this work will be the exploration of bi-directional links between disablist ideology and disabled subjectivity, operationalised through interpersonal and institutional processes of lifelong socialisation. Reflections towards development of the under-theorised notion...

The links between disability and domestic violence have been under-examined to date, leading to the marginalisation of disabled women affected by domestic violence in theory, politics, and practice. This paper draws on the findings from the first national study in the United Kingdom of the needs of disabled women experiencing domestic violence and of the services available to meet these needs. Utilising the concept of intersectionality to locate abused disabled women along axes of oppression/domination, the paper highlights the complex nature of women’s abuse experiences as well as the inadequacy of professional responses which leave women without support and protection.

This paper explores connections and tensions between psychoanalysis and disability studies. The first part of the paper considers contemporaneous engagements with the psyche by a number of disability studies writers. These scholars have remained accountable to a politicised disability studies but have pushed for critical encounters with the psychoemotional, phenomenological, metaphorical and relational aspects of disablism. Against this critical backdrop, this paper makes a case for a social psychoanalytic disability studies. Whilst vigilant to the pathologising and individualising tendencies of some forms of psychoanalytic theory, the paper explores a social psychoanalytic encounter with disablism in terms of splitting the subject as a key process implicated in the exclusion of disabled people. It is concluded that social psychoanalytic disability studies can play a huge role in understanding and challenging disablism; which Thomas defines as ‘a form of social oppression involving the social imposition o...

Existing historical understandings of disability are dominated by European and American experience and tend to assume Judeo‐Christian ideas of stigma and exclusion are universal norms. This paper emphasises the unique experience of disability in India and the role of poverty, gender, caste and community in compounding the marginalisation felt by people with disabilities. It argues, with Kudlick, that ‘disability’ is as important as ‘race’ or ‘gender’ as an analytic tool in the historical understanding of oppression and disempowerment. Moreover, the paper sees reclaiming history and insisting on inclusion of the experience of disability in the writing of Indian history as a critical factor in affirming the right of Indians with disabilities to full social and economic participation. Finally it emphasises the need for ‘disability history’ to look beyond colonial and post‐colonial welfare paradigms and to investigate disability as an aspect of rights based history.

Discussion concerning the concept of cure has proved contentious within disability studies and the disability movement. This is because the ideology of ‘normalising’ the body has traditionally underpinned ideas about cure. Today, disability is increasingly understood in terms of oppression breaking the link with impairment. Therefore, to discuss cure re‐introduces impairment and an associated rhetoric of tragedy. In this article, I critically explore the UK disability studies perspective. I argue that it is important to understand individual choice. Factors that influence choice are deliberated focusing on perceptions of disability within society, and individual experience. For those who choose the path of cure there are implications associated with identity and where the individual ‘fits in’. It is concluded that a divide need not exist based on categories of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ status and that a blurring in division prevails, because of the shared experience of inequality.

This paper explores the ‘offensive presence’ death has sometimes represented in disability studies. The paper focuses on interviews with three mothers of children with the label of life‐limiting and life‐threatening impairments and positions their experiences within the current policy context for disabled children in England. The narratives are part of a wider on‐going study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council ‘Does Every Child Matter, post‐Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods’ (RES‐062‐23‐1138). Findings include: (i) families experience social isolation and poverty; (ii) support from services is lacking and/or inappropriate; (iii) families worry about the future and the (physical, social and emotional) costs of care. The paper concludes by suggesting that social oppression theories of disability have much to offer in terms of challenging the disadvantage disabled children and their families’ experience during life and in death.

This paper reflects critically on the meaning of play, especially as it relates to disabled children and their experiences. We explore the close alliance of play to cognitive and social development, particularly in the case of psychologies of development, and reveal a dominant discourse of the disabled child as a non-playing object that requires professional therapeutic intervention. We argue that this pathologisation of play on the part of disabled children is closely tied to normalisation of childhood, in which non-normal bodies are increasingly expected to be governed and corrected not only by professionals but also by parents/carers. In order to rescue more enabling visions of the disabled child and their play we turn to three perspectives - the new sociology of childhood; social oppression theories of disability; critical developmental psychology. These resources, we suggest, allow us to reconfigure what we mean by play and disability in a contemporary climate that celebrates competition and marketisation over the intrinsic potentialities of all children. We argue that how we conceive play will per se undermine or promote forms of inclusive research, policy and practice.

Since the late 1990s disabled women’s advocacy organizations have fought against oppression and have made great strides in Korea. This paper aims to describe the accomplishments, challenges and future directions of disabled women’s advocacy organizations in Korea. A qualitative design was employed to explore disabled women’s perspectives. Participants were leaders in disabled women’s advocacy organizations and were recruited from each of the organizations existing in Korea in 2007. Among seven potential participants, five were interviewed. Accomplishments to date include significant gains in the recognition and visibility of disabled women, advances in the use of gender‐sensitive approaches to the development of disability policies and the growth of networks among disabled women’s organizations. Disabled women’s advocacy will continue to become stronger in the future through increased organizational membership, the development of a distinct organizational identity, the articulation of more focused policy ...

The Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in the UK rejects the view that disability is an illness. For the DPM it is the social processes of discrimination and oppression that create the material circumstances out of which solidarity and politicisation arise. The DPM has also been shy about impairment, arguing that it is generally irrelevant to the issue of disability and that a clear distinction between impairment and disability is necessary if disability is to be understood as a basis for identity politics. The biological citizens that support embodied health movements use impairment, genetic status, biomedical diagnosis and classification as calling cards that signal their claims to identity. Whilst the DPM has challenged medical hegemony and scientific ideas, many ‘biosocial’ groups embrace the specialised medical and scientific knowledge associated with their ‘condition’, particularly where it might be used to enhance their claims to citizenship. This paper argues that disability activism in the UK is bi...

Recent feminist critics of the social model of disability have pointed towards a danger that disability studies may give relatively little attention to personal and emotional aspects of disablist oppression and impairment. We argue for consideration of the centrality of the distortion of personal and psychic boundaries as a key aspect of oppressive relational dynamics surrounding disability. Within the observer the disturbing psychic evocations of disability, and related defences, are connected to the maintenance of dynamics of unreal, collusory and alienating modes of relating, which may deprive disabled people of the recognition of subjective experience and personhood. Skewed socialisation of disabled people, involving inter alia the protection of the emotional lives of others, as well as the reality of inaccessible material resources, contributes to the internalisation of disablism and the ideological recruitment of disabled people as complicit in their marginalisation.

Through examining the case of people with epilepsy (which, as we demonstrate, has an ambiguous status in relation to both popular and academic conceptions of disability) we explore the fluid, negotiable and contingent nature of identity and, in particular, the identification as ‘disabled’. Disability, we argue, cannot be reduced to either biology or social oppression, or even primarily to biological or social factors: it is the outcome of a complex interaction between a multiplicity of factors – biological, environmental, social, psychological, cultural and political – which will interact and be experienced differently by different people, at different times and in different situations. Rather than conceiving of disability in ‘all or nothing’ terms and of differing explanations as competing and mutually exclusive, it would be more productive to see them as partial and potentially complementary contributions to the better understanding of a complex and multifarious reality.

This qualitative study explores the educational experiences of an African‐American adult woman with disabilities. The intersections of gender, race and disability are theorized through the lenses of disability, feminist and critical theory. Specifically, I address the following three questions. What are the experiences of an African‐American woman with disabilities in schools? How might these experiences be theorized? Do these experiences offer new ways of understanding oppression that may contribute to empowering individuals labeled with multiple, intersecting identities?

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability.

This article offers a comparative evaluation of two approaches to the organisation of learning disability services and individualised support for people with learning difficulties – Social Role Valorization (SRV) and the Social Model of Disability. Brief descriptive accounts of each approach are given, together with reference to critiques of SRV from UK academics, including those writing from a Social Model perspective. The applicability of the Social Model to people with learning difficulties, and critiques of their marginalization by it, are also discussed. The paper goes on to argue that whilst the analysis of devaluation is similar between the two approaches, academic debates have focussed more on ideological differences, thus losing the opportunity for a sharing of their respective contributions to addressing oppression. The possibility of a ‘dialogue for practice’ is raised.

People with learning difficulties, like all disabled people, face social oppression. Much recent policy and practice are underpinned by at least some understanding of this oppression, and the social model of disability has been influential in discussions of services and supports for people with learning difficulties. However, in the area of mental health, the picture is somewhat different. This paper argues that the medical model has predominated in discussions of mental health support for people with learning difficulties, and that a social model approach could have much to offer. The paper draws on an ongoing action research study in which service providers, families and young people with learning difficulties are working together to articulate what is needed, in order to find routes to improve the support offered to young people with learning difficulties and mental health support needs.

Previous research on work after stroke has used quantitative methods and a medical model approach to identify factors that influence return to work. This study uses an inclusive, qualitative methodology (focus groups) to begin to explore stroke survivors’ own perspectives about what helps and hinders paid or voluntary work after stroke. The research was conducted in partnership with Different Strokes, a British organisation of stroke survivors. Five focus group discussions were held with 37 stroke survivors and 12 of their supporters. Data was analysed using an adapted Framework approach to identify themes within and across individuals and groups. Factors representing barriers to or enablers of work were identified in four key themes: rehabilitation process, employer agency, social structural and personal. The study found evidence of social oppression via infrastructure, institutional structures and practices, and some individuals’ attitudes. Alongside this, some supportive individuals, practices and strategies were identified.

This paper draws on the researcher's experiences as a countryside access advisor in exploring some of the ways that social model ideas can influence the development of organizational policy and practice in mainstream settings. It argues that, in seeking to influence the development of more inclusive policies and practices, disability studies needs to look for new ways of engaging with diverse audiences of practitioners who are used to operating within an individual model of disability, and who may therefore see no immediate organizational advantages to adopting social model principles in their work. This evolutionary process demands in particular that we work constantly towards finding new, more accessible, ways of explaining social model ideas to mainstream audiences. Thus, in a social climate that continues to tolerate disabled people's oppression, disability studies has a key role to play in demonstrating to theorists, policy-makers and practitioners why and how social model ideas can support the move ...

A review of the literature exploring self‐harm highlights variations in the way it is understood. A marked difference in approach appears to relate to the presence of a learning difficulty in the person utilizing self‐harm. Linkage with abuse has been given credence as one possible explanation for self‐harming behaviour in the general population and yet has received little consideration within literature regarding people with learning difficulties. This paper proposes that it is oppression and abuse which provide the context in which self‐harm is used by many people with learning difficulties. Continually ignoring the ‘message’ in self‐harm is to further traumatize individuals. Therefore a challenge is posed to look beyond existing responses to the use of self‐harm by people with learning difficulties.

Women with disabilities face simultaneous oppression in employment due to discrimination with regard to disability and gender. This article investigates the potential disparity in participation in employment for women, particularly women with disabilities. We analysed weighted data from disability surveillance programs and the Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) on over 47,000 respondents. The disability BRFSS was a telephone survey in 11 states and Washington DC. Logistic regression analyses produced adjusted models of the association between gender and employment. Compared with people without disabilities, there were disparities found for people with disabilities, and women with and without disabilities, with the larger discrepancy for women without disabilities. Additional detail about level of employment is needed to make conclusive statements; however, it is clear that disparities in employment continue to exist for women, regardless of their disability status.