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The paradox of disability culture: the need to combine versus the imperative to let go
- Author:
- GAVIN Rose
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(5), August 2003, pp.675-690.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article seeks to demonstrate that, to function as a truly emancipatory phenomenon, disability culture must be relieved of the paradox that keeps it trapped in modernist assumptions that serve to reinforce its marginalised status. The paradox of disability culture may be stated as follows. How can disabled people claim unity without falling into the same exclusionary practices that have served to create their divisive identifications in the first place? Conversely, how can they relinquish the practices of identification that are based on binary oppositions without losing the ability to claim identities at all? The author argues that, by extricating it from its origins in essentialist assumptions, disability culture can be reinvigorated as a truly emancipatory device, which is capable of devising positive identities which, rather than celebrating the 'disabled identity', rely on its dissolution.
The government of disability: economics and power in welfare and work
- Author:
- JOLLY Debbie
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(4), June 2003, pp.509-522.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The term government of disability refers to the ways that the lived experiences of people with accredited impairments are contextualised by economics and power in welfare and work. This paper explores how far a multiple perspective that develops a framework of the government of disability and the ontological ambiguity of impairment can take us towards contemporary understandings of disability, impairment and change in the UK. The term the ontological ambiguity of impairment describes the ways that understandings of impairment have become more ambiguous, contributing to greater insecurities and fragmentation because of key changes in the government of disability. However, the author argues that wider explanations of economic and power relationships are also necessary to develop a critical perspective of the contemporary government of disability, economics, and power in welfare and work.
Bringing difference into deliberation? Disabled people survivors and local governance
- Author:
- BARNES Marian
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 30(3), July 2002, pp.319-331.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article discusses the engagement of disabled people and mental health service users/survivors in the process of participatory democracy. The article considers how notions of "legitimate participants" are constructed within official discourse, and how those can be challenged by autonomous groups of disabled people. It also explores assumptions about appropriate forms of deliberation within participation forums and how an appeal to rational debate can exclude the emotional content of the experience of living with mental health problems from deliberation about mental health policy.
Policy politics and the silencing of 'voice'
- Author:
- SCOTT-HILL Mairian
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 30(3), July 2002, pp.397-409.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article argues that socio-political understandings of disability have not impacted on legal discourse, this article asks two questions. The author questions why a substantive solution, framed by rights discourse, to the problems of disabled people 's oppression and how perceptions of struggle, representation and participation in disability politics influence the way in which it engages with matters of policy. The article suggests that both questions ultimately concern discourse in situations where struggle and contest are highlighted. It argues that, in the search for solutions to social oppression, disabled people would gain much from developing a deeper understanding of "relational politics" that moves beyond perceptions of disability as power and dominance.
Whose voices? Representing the claims of older disabled people under New Labour
- Author:
- PRIESTLEY Mark
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 30(3), July 2002, pp.361-372.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article highlights some significant similarities and differences in the social claims made by groups representing older people and disabled people in policy debates under New Labour. Using recent policy examples, the analysis focuses on the claims being made by older and disabled people and the discourses, representations and strategies used to make them. The article suggests that there are considerable areas of common ground on which political alliances and common voice could be built, but there is also evidence of a tactical or discursive distancing between the two groups. These difficulties are interpreted with reference to the centrality of independence and paid employment within policy debates under New Labour.
The politics of self-advocacy and people with learning difficulties
- Author:
- ARMSTRONG Derrick
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 30(3), July 2002, pp.333-345.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article argues that in considering "self-advocacy" as a policy option through which the citizenship of people with learning difficulties can be asserted, it is necessary to start from an understanding of how "learning difficulties" are themselves socially constructed as a label for managing and controlling a "troublesome" minority. For this reason, significant difficulties are encountered by people with learning difficulties in their attempts to advance their civil rights through self-advocacy. This is particularly the case where self-advocacy is represented as part of a policy agenda for "empowerment" within service settings.
Negotiating psycho-emotional dimensions of disability and their influence on identity constructions
- Author:
- REEVE Donna
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 17(5), August 2002, pp.493-508.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article 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. 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'.
Well, I know this is going to sound very strange to you, but I don't see myself as a disabled person: identity and disability
- Author:
- WATSON Nick
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 17(5), August 2002, pp.509-527.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article focuses on issues of disabled people's notions of self-identity and is grounded in their accounts around their own self and identity. It explores the embodied nature of self, and then investigates the place of identity in disability studies. Disabled people's accounts around self-identification are then presented. The analysis of the data suggests that many of the informants do not see themselves as disabled and do not identify as disabled people. The political consequences of this are examined.
Completing the story: connecting relational and psychological processes of exclusion
- Author:
- VECK Wayne
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 17(5), August 2002, pp.529-540.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article describes how the author's approach to investigating youth transitions and social exclusion, shifted when conducting a case study about a mature student in transition from a further education college. Having relayed the findings of a study about his experiences of social exclusion, the author reveals how he began to know the client in his own right, to grasp his feelings and views about his life, and to show how this caused his client to become a participator in and not merely the subject of the study about his life.
Valuing diversity: the disability agenda: we've only just begun
- Author:
- CAMPBELL Jane
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 17(4), June 2002, pp.471-478.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
If society is to value all its disabled people, it needs to find ways of making this collective minority powerful enough to influence the future. Shaping the future is something the Disabled People's Movement has been preoccupied with for decades. The key is unlock some of the fundamental principles of the social model of disability. This model has the potential to transform disabled people's lives. It has become the disability movement's tool for social inclusion.