Capabilities,human value and profound disability: capability theory and its application to theatre,music and the use of humour

According to capability theory, we can identify everything that is of fundamental importance in the lives of people with profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities if we take full account of their human capabilities. In this paper I both acknowledge the contribution of capability theory to our understanding of the condition of profoundly disabled people and express some scepticism about the extent of that contribution, suggesting that there is more to the value of a human being than an audit of their capabilities might reveal. I explore human capabilities as discussed by Martha Nussbaum, and in connection with theatre, music and the use of humour.     

Perceived Freedom and its Sociological Effects: An Inquiry into the Relationship Between Liberalism and Inequality

Abstract:  Individual freedom has been regarded as one of the most important criteria for a desirable society and life. Recently, the theories of liberalism and distributive justice have received increasing attention as a theoretical basis for tackling problems pertaining to socioeconomic inequality and poverty. However, few quantitative analyses focus on the meaning of freedom in the context of socioeconomic inequality and political order in an existing liberal-democratic society. In this paper, I construct a self-rated measure of freedom—the overall perceived freedom scale—and examine (1) whether socioeconomic inequality is related to inequality of freedom, (2) whether freedom is related to subjective well-being, and (3) whether freedom affects people's political attitude toward inequalities. Analyses using data from a 2005 Japanese national survey ( N  = 1320) reveal the following results: (1) people with higher personal income (not household income), higher education, and better health tend to perceive greater freedom, (2) people with higher perceived freedom are more likely to be satisfied with their life, and (3) individuals with higher perceived freedom are more likely to oppose the government's egalitarian policy, and their opposition is based on the liberal principle of freedom and self-responsibility. On the basis of these findings, the double-edged possibility of individual freedom and liberalism as an "enhancer" and "moderator" of socioeconomic inequalities and political conflicts is suggested.     

A Question of Friendship: Community Care and the Relationships of People with Learning Difficulties

There is evidence that a number of people with learning difficulties living in the community do not enjoy a range of satisfactory social relationships. This paper will examine the way that the issue of the apparent loneliness of people with learning difficulties has been approached in the community care literature. I will argue that there is a clear assumption in much of the literature that friendships between disabled and non-disabled people are of greater value than those relationships between disabled people. The low value accorded to friendships between disabled people is very damaging to their individual self-esteem, as well as to the possibility of political action based on a sense of solidarity. The paper will point also to the constraints that many people with learning difficulties face which render it difficult for them to form friendships and, therefore, reinforce their isolation.     

Support and Access in Sports and Leisure Provision

This paper will look at different ways of enabling people with learning difficulties to engage in leisure opportunities: the Support Model and the Access Model. These models will be put in their social context and then critiqued.

The support model will be be contextualised in the theory of normalisation, access in disability theory. The support worker role will be shown to be useful in motivating people with learning difficlties into new activities, as well as having a protecting element, and unwittingly, disguise the level of discrimination people with learning difficulties are subject to.

The access worker role will be shown to have strengths in understanding discrimi nation. With this analysis, it has the potential to dismantle disabling practices. However, the needs of people with learning difficulties have ramifications for disability theory. In practice, that means that ideas of self-advocacy need to be taken on board.

Through interviews with sports personnel, social workers and people with learning difficulties, the implications of creating fully comprehensive access will be examined. I will conclude that both effective support and comprehensive access must be in place before people with learning difficulties are able to make a meaningful choice as to how they are enabled to participate in sports. It is only at that point of choice that the two models become complementary rather than competing discourses of provision.     

Tales of Hidden Lives: a critical examination of life history research with people who have learning difficulties

This paper explores the use of life history research with people who have learning difficulties. [1] A number of strengths and weaknesses associated with the life history as a method of imparting life experiences are examined. Particular emphasis is given to the dilemmas that researchers may face in explicating the life histories of informants labelled as having learning difficulties. With reference to literature on narrative-based research and by drawing upon my own research experiences, I will argue that life histories reaffirm the personal in social theorising, whilst providing a methodology in which individual and social worlds may be drawn together. In addition, eliciting life histories may promote a vivid sense of the research process, thus demystifying the often over technical and jargonised nature of social scientific study. On the down-side, I will suggest that images of the 'imaginative researcher' and 'articulate informant' portrayed in much life history literature, threaten to stifle researchers' concerns with the inclusion of people with learning difficulties. Furthermore, I will draw attention to dilemmas that arise in making links between an individual's life history and social theory. Finally, problems relating to issues of bias and power are explored. In research involving people with learning difficulties, it is concluded that life histories cogently expose the experiences of people so-labelled and therefore deserve further usage albeit with critical assessment.     

Nothing to give at all

Abstract

Adlerian psychology has been publicly neglected for many years but has been used covertly in many modern psychologies. Social work theory owes much to Adler's philosophy and many social workers probably unknowingly use it — in whatever guise — as their starting-point. But if Individual Psychology is their spring-board, the casework relationship may be their life-raft — to the detriment of creative and therapeutic work with people. Adler's ideas and social work theory are of value only in so far as they are expressed in the relationship of the worker with the client. For the most part, certainly in statutory agencies, other demands make it difficult for workers to operate from anything other than a defensive position. Therapeutic community practice, in contrast, reflects both Adlerian psychology and the best of social work theory: an egalitarian approach springing from a commitment to self-determination for both clients and workers.     

Simmel's Legacy for Contemporary Value Theory: A Critical Assessment

In this essay I critically assess Georg Simmel's legacy for contemporary value theory and provide the rudiments of an alternative approach. My central thesis is that Simmel fails to satisfactorily conceptualize the nature and origin of value because of his devotion to an asocial, Cartesian–Kantian conception of mind, human freedom, and agency. In contrast, I incorporate recent data from neuroscience, social self theory, developmental psychology, and elements of Marx's theory of the commodity form to provide the terms of a postmetaphysical, intersubjective alternative.     

Whither Tocqueville in American Sociology?

This essay addresses the declining influence of Alexis de Tocqueville on contemporary American sociology. While Tocqueville was must reading some decades ago, inspiring several classic sociological studies published in the 1950s and 1960s, and while he remains an authoritative source in other social science disciplines, he has virtually disappeared from present-day sociology. Sociologists, it would seem, have left behind works such as Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution despite Raymond Aron’s (Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. I, Anchor Books, New York, 1968) insistence that Tocqueville be counted among the discipline’s founders. While Meyer (J. Cl. Socio., 3:197–220, 2003) presumed to have addressed this subject, his argument sheds no light on the matter as he ignores the driving concern of Tocqueville’s work, namely, the tensions between the principle of equality and human freedom. I argue that conceptually sociologists today are in no position to reflect critically on equality and its relation to freedom. Since the turbulent 1960s egalitarian commitments have become embedded in the discipline and are thereby shielded from critical inquiry. At the same time, a conceptual fixation on power effectively pushed to the periphery the kinds of questions Tocqueville raised about the problem of authority in democracy and how authority may be encouraging of human freedom. Committed to advancing the principle of equality, however understood, and seeing nothing in authority but power, sociologists espouse faith in egalitarian, mass democracy whereas Tocqueville sought a critical understanding of it. This is much to the detriment of present-day sociologists, so many of whom demonstrate in their own work and professional behavior the democratic dilemmas Tocqueville warned us about.     

Is there a place within academic journals for articles presented in an accessible format?

This article addresses some of the difficulties inherent in disseminating emancipatory research findings in academic journals in a way that is empowering to people with learning difficulties in the UK. It calls for academics to challenge the editorial criteria of academic journals to consider accepting articles written in a more accessible style. It argues that from a social model point of view the products of the research, as well as the process, should be accessible to people with learning difficulties. It looks at what an accessible article is and why it is important, the editorial criteria of some academic journals, different models of presenting emancipatory research and suggests some innovative ways forward that highlight the need to ‘get involved’ in the world of people with learning difficulties and to consider accessible information as a rights‐based issue.     

论消费主义与当代青年身份建构

消费主义对当代青年的影响应该引起重视。当前,消费主义盛行的原因之一在于消费给人们提供一种身份建构的重要方式。在消费中,人们体验着自由和平等,确定了自身的价值所在,实现被他者认同,并获得了群体归宿感。然而,这种身份构建方式具有极大的不稳定性,它使人为物所役,而自由、平等也成为幻影。当代青年所处的时代在一定程度上催生着消费主义,但是,青年不应该因此而沉沦其中,要清醒认识消费之于人类的本真意义,寻求更为合理的身份建构方式。     

On real economic freedom

Among the various concepts of freedom important for economics, ranking or measuring the freedom of choice provided by budget sets has an important place. The volume ranking has strange properties and cannot be justified by unit invariance and symmetry. The pointed distance (of the budget hyperplane from the origin along some line) provides a measure or ranking that coincides with the standard “purchasing power” or real income. The linear price index is practically unavoidable for measuring or ranking freedom. This is applied to the determination of income distribution and taxation implied by the equal freedom of choice of different domains. Concepts of equal or compared potential freedoms and utility-freedom relate freedom analysis to the basic classical concepts of fair allocation (equity-no-envy, egalitarian equivalence, etc.). The crucial difference between the two opposite concepts of invariance in comparisons is emphasized.     

Philosophy and profound disability: learning from experience

Reflection on profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities raises a series of questions in moral and political philosophy, a claim supported by philosophical argument but also given credence by human testimony, some examples of which are presented here. I introduce three young people with profound learning disabilities, before presenting testimony on their behalf, organised so as to coincide with a series of related philosophical questions about human dignity, respect, citizenship and dependency. I suggest that there are implications that apply to all people and not only to those with profound learning difficulties.     

Is the positional bias an artefact? Distinguishing positional concerns from egalitarian concerns

This paper shows that the positional bias underscored by Solnick and Hemenway, 1998, Solnick and Hemenway, 2005, Solnick and Hemenway, 2007 is an experimental artifact. Quoted authors highlighted the importance of positional concerns by finding that people prefer to earn a fewer absolute amount of income but to earn a higher income than others. Why do people prefer to earn more than others? The proposed explanation is that people have a preference for status. This conclusion might be wrong due to their particular design. We conjecture that subjects, by indicating to prefer a state of the world in which they earn more than others, in reality signal a preference for equality. We replicated the same design as in Solnick and Hemenway, 1998, Solnick and Hemenway, 2005, Solnick and Hemenway, 2007 and added a new option so as to disentangle positional concerns from egalitarian ones. We observe that most subjects express egalitarian preferences rather than positional ones.     

Measuring opportunity inequality with monetary transfers

In this paper I consider the problem of measuring opportunity inequality when monetary transfers are possible. First, I consider the case in which agents have common evaluations (or identical preferences), as in the previous literature. I then propose an extension to the heterogeneous case. In both cases I identify an appropriate egalitarian benchmark relative to which inequality can be measured, and I establish that this yields a theory of measurement analogous to that of income inequality. Consequently, the introduction of money (or an infinitely divisible commodity) avoids the difficulty reported in Ok (J Econ Theory 77:300–329, 1997). The results of the paper are immediately applicable to the measurement of multidimensional economic inequality including economies with indivisible goods.     

Guest Editor's Introduction

Classical social theory in the Western tradition concerned itself with the history of the human condition and sought answers to big questions such as the meaning of change and progress. They were interested in the nature, origins and consequences for human life of modern society, with its new means of organizing production as well as legal and political arrangements. Contrary to the optimism of the Enlightenment with its unbounded faith in the ability of reason and scientific inquiry to liberate humans from domination by both religion and nature, classical social theorists saw the negative side of modern civilization. This can be summarized in terms of the loss of freedom or the enslavement of humans, which each theorist understood as taking different forms. For Marx it was alienation, for Weber confinement in the iron-cage of rationality, and for Durkheim anomie. Although Ibn Khaldun lived centuries before the rise of classical social theory and was by no means a product of the modern world, it is possible to read his work as thematising the absence of freedom or enslavement as well. Bringing out this aspect of Ibn Khaldun shows, to some extent, the modern relevance of his thought. This article elaborates on Ibn Khaldun's theme of enslavement via his discussion on luxury and senility. It is the enslavement of sedentary people to luxury that explains the loss of group feeling or ‘asabiyyah, setting in motion a chain of developments that results in the senility of the dynasty and its eventual demise. In the first section I discuss the Enlightenment promise of freedom. The section that follows discusses classical social theory's critique of modernity or what amounts to a loss of faith in the Enlightenment project. Here the thought of Marx, Weber and Durkheim are presented as examples of Western assessments of the problem of the human condition in modernity. I then turn in the next two sections to Ibn Khaldun, discussing his theory of the rise and decline of states in terms of the role played by luxury.     

When Change Hits the Fan

This case study is based on an actual situation that has been disguised and has had some hypothetical content added. It addresses several problems that may be encountered as an agency struggles with its evolution from a hierarchical bureaucratic organizational structure to an egalitarian consensus model of management. Issues include resistance to change, difficulties with the modification of staff and board roles and responsibilities, and the resultant interpersonal conflict.     

Reinterpreting learning difficulty: a professional and personal challenge?

I want to explore in this article the ways in which people with a learning difficulty are constructed in a number of ways as disabled, as limited, as being special, and so on. Constructions can also be utilised for different purposes – to ensure that they have effective levels of support and to elevate the status of people with a learning difficulty. Positive constructs may articulate an ‘accentuation of the positive’ as Goodley and Armstrong prescribed. However, whilst I agree with this sentiment, one echoed in Swain and French’s important formulation of an affirmative model of disability, and one that I have also espoused, professionally I also feel that my experience of working with people with learning difficulties makes me suspicious of generalised statements about people, even those deemed positive. This may be especially true in a period of financial rationalisation, where such constructs may seem inevitable in the fight for effective support for people with a learning difficulty.     

Arbeitsteilung,Berufsorientierung und Partnerschaftsstabilität – Ehen und nichteheliche Lebensgemeinschaften im Vergleich*

The central finding of this paper is that the link between the division of labour and the risk of separation differs depending on the type of relationship. Marriages tend to be destabilised by the wife’s participation in the labour force and stabilised by the traditional division of labour. Empirical evidence of this is manifest in a positive effect of the wife’s income and a negative effect of the husband’s relative income on the likelihood of separation. In contrast to this, unmarried long-term relationships are stabilised by egalitarian division of labour. This is evident from the absence of negative effects of an employment of the female cohabiter on stability of relationship. Furthermore, in unmarried cohabitations the relative income of the man increases the risk of a separation. In addition to the income ratio, homogamous attitudes have explanatory value. Cohabitations are stable when both partners are career-oriented. This finding points to an egalitarian gender-role-orientation among unmarried men. It also implies that an egalitarian orientation has an impact on the living arrangement which needs to be accepted by both partners – for instance when family planning and timing of marriage are concerned.     

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.     

The poison is the dose

A comparison of the city development of Munich (Germany) and Birmingham (England) shows the adverse consequences of excluding egalitarian‐minded organizations and perspectives from public decision making. Since the Second World War, Munich has become an economically thriving and beautiful city in which people from all walks of life can feel at home. During the same period of time, Birmingham has struggled economically, socially and aesthetically. Their diverging paths, from quite similar starting positions, can be explained with the help of the argument that in Munich a much more pluralistic policy regime has reigned, whereas in Birmingham egalitarian views have been ignored until very recently. Yet, another attempt at urban revitalization—this time in the multi‐ethnic, impoverished Schilderswijk in The Hague, the Netherlands—illustrates that policy making can also become too egalitarian. An in‐depth study of a municipal attempt to revitalize this neighbourhood reveals that this effort floundered, as it was overly infused with egalitarian concerns and values.