Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability

In this paper we argue that a new model of disability is emerging within the literature by disabled people and within disability culture, expressed most clearly by the Disability Arts Movement. For the purposes of discussion we call it the affirmative model. It is essentially a non-tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective, for disabled people grounded in the benefits of lifestyle and life experience of being impaired and disabled. This view has arisen in direct opposition to the dominant personal tragedy model of disability and impairment, and builds on the liberatory imperative of the social model. Critiques of the latter have been consistently expressed as, or interpreted as, re-affirmations of personal tragedy, particularly in relation to impairment. In this analysis the affirmation model addresses the limitations of the social model through the realisation of positive identity encompassing impairment, as well as disability.     

The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability

In this paper it is argued that a social theory of disability can best be developed through the use of the concept of oppression. This concept is outlined, and special emphasis is placed on the importance of the social origins of impairment in such an analysis. The ways in which this approach would utilise data gathered from other theoretical perspectives is indicated. General features of a theory of disability as oppression are specified.     

The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: towards a sociology of impairment

What is the case for and how would one begin to construct a sociology of impairment? This paper argues that the realignment of the disability/impairment distinction is vital for the identity politics of the disability movement. The body is at the heart of contemporary political and theoretical debate, yet the social model of disability makes it an exile. The transformation of the body from a reactionary to an emancipatory concept implies a sociology of impairment. This paper explores the contribution that post-structuralism and phenomenology might make to this end.     

Family Therapy: A Phenomenological and Active Directive Approach

Because the most popular forms of family therapy, psychodynamic and systems-oriented therapy, appreciably fail to consider family members as individuals in their own right, a phenomenological-humanistic view of families who come for therapy would serve to correct this oversight. The particular phenomenological view espoused by those who do client-centered family therapy, however, is too passive and neglects some of the realities of human disturbance. A "third force" in family therapy is therefore outlined in this paper, which combines a phenomenological-humanistic approach with a highly active-directive attempt to help family members surrender their misperceptions of themselves and others and to make profound philosophic changes in their intrapersonal and interpersonal attitudes and behaviors. As an example of this kind of phenomenological and active-directive approach, some of the principles and practices of rational-emotive therapy (RET) are outlined and applied to family counseling.     

Disability in the news: a reconsideration of reading

By making use of a disability studies perspective informed by phenomenology, this paper interrogates the social process of reading news articles that depict disability as if it is only limit. The paper begins from my experience of reading an article that assumes reader-willingness to imagine disability as a kind of limit without possibility, without life. I go on to consider how the meaning of disability is actually produced by normative forms of cultural perception that recognize certain bodies as a kind of negation. Reading, a common mode of perception within literate western cultures, is used to problematize how mainstream media configures embodiment. Finally, the paper raises the ever present possibility that the ways in which impaired bodies are typically limited may contain the possibility of alternatives that disturb and re-make the everyday modes of perceiving disability.     

The quality of manhood: masculinity and embodiment in the sociological tradition

This paper argues for the need to revisit classical sociological texts with a view to excavating the masculinity that inheres in these texts and saturates the concept of the social. Primarily through an examination of Durkheim and Simmel, it explores the strategies whereby masculine individuals could be released from corporeality and granted the sort of embodiment that allowed them to transcend their particularity and become social agents. It is argued that male embodiment is deeply sedimented in the sociological imaginary as the very condition of social action and the constituent of social agency. Thinking through the conceptual lenses of corporeality, embodiment and agency exposes some of the ways in which the analytical scaffolding of ‘the social’ rests on a deeply gendered ontological foundation. While the sociological tradition may indeed have continued salience for contemporary sociologies of the body, a relatively unreflexive recuperation of these texts is problematic. This paper challenges those who seek to rehabilitate the classics in the service of an embodied sociology to produce a much fuller accounting of the truncated corporeal terrain upon which classical sociology developed, and one which explicitly recognizes its gender.     

Contesting Practices, Challenging Codes: self advocacy, disability politics and the social model

This paper examines the relationship between Self Advocacy and the disability movement in Britain in the light of social movement theory. Using the concept of 'collective identity' as it is explored in social movement theory, the analysis examines why the disability movement's promotion of a strong disabled identity may be difficult to achieve for all its constituents, particularly people with learning difficulties. Additionally the concept of symbolic production within social movement theory is used to explore how the movement uses the social model of disability as its 'collective action frame'. It is argued realignment of this frame is taking place within the movement and is reflected in debates within Disability Studies about the role of impairment. The voices of people with learning difficulties remain silent in this debate. The paper concludes by arguing for the recognition of social, psychological and cognitive difference as pre-requisite to an inclusive theory and politics of disability.     

Common frailty,constructed oppression: tensions and debates on the subject of vulnerability

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.     

(Visual) Disability – from exclusive perspectives to inclusive differences

By introducing the concept ‘inclusive differences’ of disability this paper suggests that disability is the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non‐human configurations fabricated within the conduct of everyday life. Inclusive differences question the attempt given by exclusive perspectives that try to divide analytically, conceptually or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio‐cultural attributed disability. Applying the concept of inclusive differences, neither the domain of ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self‐explanatory force. Rather, inclusive differences highlight the connection between human and non‐human relations that make up the different enabling and/or disabling scenarios of societal realities. Drawing on the practices of blind people in a visual culture this paper discusses related specificities of inclusive differences.     

Disability activisms: social model stalwarts and biological citizens

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 bifurcating. It addresses the difference in perspective and action between the ‘social model stalwarts’ of the DPM and biological citizens that organise politically around particular diagnostic labels.     

Theorizing the body: conceptions of disability,gender and normality

The present article addresses different perspectives on the body in relation to conceptions of normality. It shows how a body perspective can be taken into account from an individual perspective without losing a structural perspective. This is accomplished using the phenomenological conceptions the lived body and the body as situated. This article is part of a sociological qualitative interview study, focusing on disability, identity, and gender, and specifically on conceptions of the body and gender, as experienced by Swedish young women labeled as having an intellectual impairment.     

Reproductive genetics,gender and the body: 'please doctor,may I have a normal baby?'

This paper's purpose is to highlight key sociological issues, that come to light when 'the body' becomes a theoretical site in reproductive genetics. By positioning the body as a central feature in this analysis, the paper: (1) describes how a mechanistic view of the body continues to be privileged in this discourse and the effects of this view; (2) examines how reproductive limits are practised on the gendered body through a feminised regime of reproductive asceticism and the discourse on shame; and (3) explores the social effects and limitations of reproductive genetics in relation to disability as a cultural representation of impaired bodies. The central assumption concerning reproductive genetics are that it appears within surveillance medicine as a part of a disciplinary process in society's creation of a genetic moral order, that it is mobilised by experts for the management of reproductive bodies and that it constructs a limited view of the body. Thus, the way reproductive genetics operatives tends to hide the fact that what may appear as 'defective genes' is a result of a body's interaction not only with the environment but also gendered social practices valorised by difference as well as rigid definitions of health and illness. The research is from a 1995-96 European study of experts interviewed in four countries.     

Bare Bodies: Nudity,Gender, and the Looking Glass Body1

This article examines the role of nude embodiment as it affects sexuality, intimacy, and pleasure when people seek to align their nude body with cultural values. This research, based on open‐ended and closed‐ended data from 184 young heterosexual adults attending a large Midwestern university, finds the experience of nude embodiment and its effects to be strongly gendered. For example, among both men and women, comfort with one’s nude body is associated with a sexually expansive point of view, but it is only found to be associated with sexual behavior and pleasure among the women. For women, too, feelings of objectification in nude embodiment are shown to be mitigated through positive relationships with their male partner. Throughout we emphasize the “lived experience” of the body, especially as experienced in the body techniques used in the pursuit of sexual intimacy and pleasure. Discussion relates these results to objectification theory and how wider social changes may impinge on sexual embodiment in general.     

Cybersex: Outercourse and the Enselfment of the Body

The increased popularity of the Internet invites the possibility of repackaging familiar activities in a new medium. Sex is one such activity—an age‐old topic with a new cybertwist. The new technologies of computer‐mediated communication allow us to examine the nature of human interaction in a uniquely disembodied environment that potentially transforms the nature of self, body, and situation. Sex—fundamentally a bodily activity—provides an ideal situation for examining these kinds of potential transformations. In the disembodied context of on‐line interaction both bodies and selves are fluid symbolic constructs emergent in communication and are defined by sociocultural standards. Situations such as these are suggestive of issues related to contemporary transgressions of the empirical shell of the body, potentially reshaping body‐to‐self‐to‐social‐world relationships.     

Negotiating Psycho-emotional Dimensions of Disability and their Influence on Identity Constructions

This paper uses Foucault's concept of 'technologies of power' to explore the ways in which the psycho-emotional dimensions of disability are created and maintained within society. The manner in which gaze and self-surveillance operate on the bodies of people with impairments to leave them feeling worthless, unattractive and stressed is considered, and the effects of impairment on these processes are also discussed. However disabled people are not simply passive victims of this form of emotional disablism--many exercise agency and resist. The manner in which disabled people resist the negative stereotypes is described and the process of 'coming out' as a disabled person is offered as an example of a 'technology of the self'. This interplay of dominating and emancipatory forces is shown to contribute to a disability identity, which is fluid and which better represents the diversity of the disability experiences of disabled people than an essentialist disability identity.     

Disability,embodiment and ableism: stories of resistance

Non-disabled responses to visible impairment embody either social invisibility or over-attentiveness. The subjective and inter-subjective experiences of impaired bodies and intersubjective encounters within society are important aspects of disablement and the construction of a disabled identity. Impairment is read by and influences the social structure of ableism. This paper attempts to understand how ableist discourses about impaired bodies have impacted on and been resisted by disabled people and how embodiment is related to identity. In pursuit of these aims, a qualitative study was conducted with seven people who have visible physical impairments. The results indicate that disabled embodiment is produced and experienced within an ableist context that mobilizes the charitable gaze and the medical model to signify impaired bodies at the expense of the recognition of disabled identity. In order to deconstruct ableism and to recognize and respect the value of the disabled identity, a politics of recognition is required.     

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.     

Counselling Disabled People: a counsellor's perspective

For many years professionals have assumed that disability is a problem for impaired individuals and that it is the disability that causes emotional or psychological problems. Whether this is true and whether a specific model of counselling is needed to help disabled people to cope with the emotional effects of their disability has not been widely researched and this is examined in this piece of research. The causes of psychological distress are discussed and the ways in which counsellors work are studied. Using a grounded methodological approach, disabled and able bodied counsellors of disabled people were interviewed as this was considered to be the most sensitive way of exploring this area. The findings show that more often than not it is the client's lack of control over their physical and social environment and not the impairment that causes emotional difficulties. Counsellors indicated that, through the facilitation of counselling, a sense of self empowerment in practical, emotional and social areas could be achieved and this was the central theme emerging as the most distinctive aspect of counselling clients with physical impairments.