Empower,inspire, achieve: (dis)empowerment and the Paralympic Games

This paper undertakes a critical examination of the International Paralympic Committee’s desire to use the Paralympic Games as a vehicle to empower individuals with a disability. We achieve this by applying Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts of habitus and capital to semi-structured interviews conducted with Paralympic stakeholders. Interviewees included current and former Paralympians, active and retired disability sport administrators, social researchers of disability and disability sport, and disability rights advocates. The paper starts by highlighting the distinctive cultural context of the Paralympic Movement, before exploring the potential for the Paralympic Games to act as a source of empowerment, through the creation of sporting and lifestyle role-models. Findings suggest Paralympians are considered most likely to gain empowerment from the Paralympic Games, yet their specific impairment, athletic lifestyles and failure to identify as ‘disabled’ were identified as potentially limiting the ability of the Paralympic Games to empower others.     

Exploring normativity in disability studies

Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused normative judgments focusing in particular on agency, responsibility and moral status. The article argues that disability research should carefully consider the use of theories and empirical knowledge in the light of their ethical implications as well as the lived experiences of disability.     

Hahn versus Guttmann: revisiting ‘Sports and the Political Movement of Disabled Persons’

Ludwig Guttmann, who pioneered the use of sport in the physical, psychological and social rehabilitation of paraplegic patients, argued that sport facilitates social reintegration, even asserting that: ‘an employer will not hesitate… to employ a paralysed man… when he realizes that [he] is an accomplished sportsman’ (Guttmann, 1976: 13). Disability activist Harlan Hahn, on the other hand, argued that participation by people with disabilities in sport is: an emulation of non-disabled standards; over-emphasises physicality in the assessment of humans; and diverts attention from the struggle for equality. Focusing on the Paralympics, this paper shows that disability sport is neither a panacea for social exclusion, as Guttmann would have it, nor a monolithic disabling institution, as Hahn would suggest—but rather an incredibly complex phenomena politically, socially and historically. It is argued that, whether essentially disablist or not, the Paralympics may make an excellent political platform for the disability rights movement.     

‘A mockery of equality’: an exploratory investigation into disabled activists’ views of the Paralympic Games

This article offers an exploratory analysis of the opinions of disabled activists towards the Paralympic Games. With the use of a qualitative online survey, the work focuses on the perceptions of disabled individuals (n = 32) who are not Paralympic athletes but are affiliated to the disability rights group, the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council. Working on the premise that the views of disabled activists have been excluded from Paralympic sports discourse to date, the results illustrate a nuanced yet negative view of the Games to contrast with an existing, yet overly positive, academic narrative. Participants were particularly cynical of the portrayal and production of the Games and its Paralympic athletes as they perceived that the wider population of disabled people is misrepresented. The overwhelming perception in this preliminary analysis suggests that the Paralympic Games can be counterproductive to disability rights beyond sport.     

A part of,yet apart from the team: Substantive membership and belonging of trans and nonbinary athletes

Increasingly, bills and policies prohibit the participation of trans women in competitive sport. The current sociopolitical moment begs the following question: how do interpersonal interactional moments function alongside formal policies and rules to shape trans athletes’ experiences of belonging in sport? Although formal institutional rules govern trans athletes’ ability to compete in sport, informal social sanctioning also denies these athletes equitable, or even de facto, membership in sport. I draw upon two case studies to explore trans athletes’ experiences of membership in elite “women's” sport. I apply Evelyn Nakano Glenn's work on citizenship to consider how trans athletes’ experiences of belonging are influenced by both formal rules imposed by organizations as well as informal social interactions with members of their sporting communities. Inclusion is not synonymous with membership. Trans athletes render visible the ways in which this system functions to contain the diversity of humanity's gender expression.     

‘I’m not an activist’: an exploratory investigation into retired British Paralympic athletes’ views on the relationship between the Paralympic games and disability equality in the United Kingdom

One claim of the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport is that the London 2012 Paralympic Games ‘improved attitudes to disability and provided new opportunities for disabled people to participate in society’. In addition, the International Paralympic Committee’s strategic plan suggests that the Paralympic Games is a vehicle for achieving ‘a more equitable society’. The aim of this study was to examine the reflections of a group of retired British Paralympic athletes on the relationship between the Paralympic Games and disability equality in the United Kingdom. Narrative interviews were conducted with five male retired British Paralympians and one female retired British Paralympian who had participated in a total of 22 Summer Paralympic Games events. I will argue that some Paralympic athletes who are not obvious ‘activists’ can still contribute to equality for disabled people.     

Gender,technology and the ablenational Paralympic body politic

ABSTRACT

The Paralympic games is a pedagogic, pervasive, political, powerful, and ‘popular’ cultural site where the heightened visibility of disability bring into being specific forms of disability as they articulate within cultures, institutions and practices. Regarded as a ‘positive charge’ by Stuart Hall, the Paralympics intends to challenge the devalued disabled body politic of typical disability representation. This has been stimulated by the entry of Channel 4 as the UK Paralympic rights holders in 2012 which has seen greater media coverage of certain technologically enhanced cyborgian parasport bodies and an emerging celebrity / sexualized disability culture. This contemporary moment in disability representation provides a compelling space in which to (re-)address the gendered nature of hyper-visible Parasport hybrids, their potential to disrupt ‘normative’ relations of power, and, the wider impact on disability politics in a neoliberalised culture of widening and affective circuits of bodily inclusion and control. Drawing on an integrated content and textual analysis of 90?h of Paralympic programming from the Rio 2016 Games we highlight two emblematic segments so as to enhance our appreciation of contemporary disabled politics as it intersects with gender, technology and nation. We analyse these emblematic segments at the intersection of critical disability studies, cultural studies and sport, using concept of ablenationalism to highlight the extent certain technological capacitated parasport bodies perform gendered representational work as part of the seductive apparatus of neoliberal micro-governance suggestive of an emerging ecology of disability-gender relations. In doing so, we highlight the Paralympic contradictions and interrogate the assumed ‘positive charge’ of the contemporary (re-)presentation of disability.     

High-risk drinking characteristics in collegiate athletes

OBJECTIVE: The authors aimed to further describe the relationship of alcohol use by college athletes to variables, such as sport participation, time of year, and level of competition. PARTICIPANTS: There were 720 participants from Divisions I, II, and III who participated in either a team sport or an individual sport. METHODS: The authors measured characteristics of alcohol use by college athletes at 9 colleges and universities. RESULTS: Participants reported a high rate of consuming 5 or more drinks per occasion in the past 2 weeks. There were greater percentages of team sport athletes reporting this behavior than athletes of individual sports, and there were significant differences according to level of competition. CONCLUSIONS: The college athletes in this study reported high-risk alcohol use at percentages much higher than previously reported. The findings and practical application of the results are discussed.     

Understanding Social Movements: theorising the disability movement in conditions of late modernity

This article draws upon qualitative research carried out by the author and funded by the ESRC. One of the central aims of this research was to investigate the nature of the UK disability movement's ‘struggle’ and to evaluate critically the idea that it is a ‘new’ social movement. Consideration of the disability movement in relation to both ‘new’ social movements and to wider social movement theorising has suggested that it may not be possible to understand this movement, entirely, by using any of the existing models. This article concludes by outlining the possible starting point for a new approach to understanding the disability movement based upon forging a closer link between citizenship and social movement theory and upon a focus on the nature of engagement. Empirical evidence from the research is included in this article in the form of quotations from respondents, all of whom are/were members of organisations that are run by disabled people. All respondents' names have been removed to maintain their anonymity.     

Reading European football,critiquing China: Chinese urban middle class fans as reflexive audience

ABSTRACT

This essay explores European football’s cross-cultural appeals in China by focusing on Chinese fans’ active readings of this globalized cultural text. Using analytical tools from both sport sociology and transnational reception studies, I understand Chinese urban middle-class supporters as a reflexive audience whose meaning-making of European football is contextualized in their local urban experience. The in-depth interviewing reveals that these fans’ interpretations of their favourite European football teams as symbols of ‘collective cooperation’ and ‘beautiful football’ produce critical reflections on the discourses of ‘competitive individualism’ and ‘utilitarian commercialism’ which are part of the rising ideology during China’s neoliberal reform. Through the comparison among European football, Chinese football, and popular ‘national’ sports in China, the participants further contest the prevalence of these discourses in China’s broader economic and social arrangements over which they are engaged in constant material struggles. I further discuss how the transnational consumption of European football offers the Chinese urban middle-class a symbolic space to project their reflexivity on the reforming process.     

Radicalising ‘disability’ in conflict and post-conflict situations

In this article, a radical social model of disability lens is taken to illustrate what counts as ‘disability’ within a neoliberal mindset. The South African and disabled activist Vic Finkelstein describes both an ‘outside-in approach’ that looks at the material conditions of how ‘disability’ is constructed and an ‘idealist’ ‘inside-out’ approach, or how people describe experiences of inequality and disablement. The ‘outside-in’ approach is where the focus of a social model of disability should be in terms of trying to understand how global capitalism or neoliberalism is (dis)ablest and creating impairment. The ‘inside-out’ approach is ‘idealist’ and where the other ‘components’ of the model such as ‘rights’ are located. This article begins with an overview of the relationship between disability and conflict. The article then moves to an inside-out framework to examine how disability is still viewed and created through a medical humanitarianism. Using an outside-in framework, I illustrate how states become disabled through neoliberalism. Lastly, I discuss how ensuring greater participation and rethinking neoliberalism in terms of sustainability may provide us with a way forward in a humanitarian setting and rethinking of disability.     

Why do able‐bodied people take part in wheelchair sports?

Recently able-bodied people have taken up wheelchair sports. This paper aims to explore why people are taking up a sport which may be considered to 'belong' to disabled people and explore the impact of reverse integration. A questionnaire covering demographic details, experiences of wheelchair sport and perceptions of both able-bodied and disabled wheelchair athletes was distributed by e-mail via elite wheelchair athletic associations in the UK, Canada, The Netherlands and the USA. Twenty participants were recruited (11 disabled athletes, four female, and nine able-bodied athletes, three female). Able-bodied people initially became involved in wheelchair sports in order to share an activity with their disabled friends or family. Continuing participation was reinforced by friendship, challenge, achievement, the opportunity for good competition, development of the sport and to change society's perceptions of disability. Perceptions varied according to the policies relating to inclusion adopted by the sports governing body within the participants' countries.     

Disabled people and dirty work

Based on a longitudinal case study of the work offered by a Swedish sheltered work organization that can be regarded as ‘dirty’, in the sense that it stigmatizes those people that do it, in this paper I analyze how ‘dirty work’ can be seen as an important yet so far neglected source of the social construction of disability. Specifically, the aim of the paper is to suggest how an individual can become a ‘disabled person’ by doing dirty work. By working on ‘tainted tasks’ people (irrespective of their mental or physical condition) may come to be regarded and even officially labeled as ‘disabled’, i.e. incapacitated and impaired for any ‘normal’ and ‘clean’ character of work.     

Men with learning difficulties doing research: challenging views of learning difficulties

This paper explores the views of men with learning difficulties living in a secure environment. Reflecting findings from a doctoral thesis based upon a research project where the participants looked at the processes and concepts of research, the dialogues within the study were analysed using critical discourse analysis. Thesis aims relevant here include investigating given ‘truths’ about the positives of having a learning disability. The men are not only categorised as having a learning difficulty, but also have the added stigma of being offenders, and commonly having mental health issues which expose them to the worst of myths surrounding learning difficulty. Despite this, the findings suggest that the men are very positive about their lives – reporting that they have many attributes and talents – and view having a learning difficulty as an advantage at times. This affirms Foucauldian ideas on the way that dominant knowledge may be challenged.     

Making Sense of Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes*

Using ethnographic research, this paper explores the experiences of elite women athletes on a Division‐I college soccer team. I draw on existing literature in the sociology of sport, sociology of the body, and interactionism to inform my analysis. With this approach, I illustrate the complicated relationship women athletes have with their bodies in relation to physical competition and dominant notions of femininity today. Key reference groups influenced the players’ self‐perceptions and encouraged the women to closely monitor their own appearances and actions. While undoubtedly affected by these inter‐actions as well as their place in the gender hierarchy, many women athletes subtly resisted notions of idealized bodies and constructed their own meanings about their bodies and experiences. Investigating the day‐to‐day body awareness and negotiations of women athletes reveals the gendered nuances of sport and the complicated relationship between cultural ideals and female embodiment.     

De-individualising autobiography: a reconsideration of the role of autobiographical life writing within disability studies

This article pursues a reconsideration of the role of autobiographical life writing within the context of disability studies. I respond to concerns that this genre tends toward a problematic and politically limiting individualism that undermines the consideration of disability as a social phenomenon, reproduces the depiction of disabled people as isolated outcasts, and replicates the meritocratic myths of personal achievement that dominate contemporary western capitalism. While not rejecting these concerns in their entirety, I attempt to develop a particular set of reading practices that may be productively employed to strategically work against the individualising tendencies of autobiographical life writing. These strategies include a commitment to seeing the realm of the ‘private’ as social, reading auto/biographically, and seeking to deconstruct the narrative myth of the liberal humanist ‘choosing’ subject. In conclusion, I offer a brief discussion of the particular ethical and methodological opportunities created by the greater consideration of these texts within disability studies.     

‘It’s like having another job’: the invisible work of self-managing attendant services

Abstract

This reflexive ethnographic study examines the work disabled people do to ‘self-manage’ attendant services. The data reveal diverse facets of work reported by ‘self-managers’, their support networks and program administrators. The analysis found that self-managers’ work is often represented as ‘something other than work’, if and when it is represented at all. In this paper, disability studies and feminist perspectives on work inform a discussion of factors that may be seen to render self-managers’ work ‘invisible’, and implications of self-managed models that require contributions of invisible work.     

Title IX: Consequences for Gender Relations in Sport

Legal interventions have succeeded in creating new opportunities for female athletes, but some argue that this is at the expense of opportunities for male athletes. In this review, we examine the consequences of a particular legal intervention in sport, the US education law Title IX, for female athletes, male athletes, and the construction of gender. Research indicates that sport participation is linked to important attainment outcomes, such as completing education and receiving higher salaries, for both male and female athletes. In addition, playing sports has several protective effects for women’s and girls’ mental and physical health. While positive effects for male athletes are important, courts’ interpretations of Title IX do not require the elimination of men’s opportunities but also do not protect those opportunities in current enforcement. Legal interventions that assure female sports participation also challenge the ways sport is used to create and reproduce definitions of masculinity, exposing dangerous emphases on toughness, aggressiveness, and heterosexual conquest that are damaging to both female and male athletes.     

The Social Model of Disability as a Threshold Concept: Troublesome Knowledge and Liminal Spaces in Social Work Education

This paper draws on the notion of threshold concepts to consider the way in which disability studies has the capacity to transform social work students' understandings of disability and therefore influence their practice. Most students enter social work programmes with the professed aim of ‘helping’ and so to be confronted by an approach (the social model of disability) and a body of research and theorising (disability studies) that challenges their taken-for-granted assumption that social work practice is ‘helpful’ is unsettling and can lead to resistance. The purpose of this article is to interrogate practice on a social work programme where a commitment to social model practice is explicated and embedded with the purpose of identifying what it is we want students to ‘get’, whether they find this troubling and how they can be effectively supported as they move through liminal spaces in social work education.     

The blurred edges of intellectual disability

The label of ‘intellectual disability’ can be a very blurred concept, because for those on the borders their label often arises from the interaction of the individual with their environment, from their socio-economic status, and from the social role which they choose to undertake. This paper explores the contested notion of intellectual disability in the context of people who have been in trouble with the law in England, and contrasts their situation with that of people who have been protected by best interests decisions under the Mental Capacity Act (England and Wales). People who are on the ‘borderline’ of having an intellectual disability, like any citizens, have a range of intersecting identities. Drawing on the notions of ‘interactional’ disability theory, we reflect on the shifting, relative nature of intellectual disability, and the need for the law to focus on support needs, rather than on impairment.