The Routledge History of Disability

Roy Hanes, Ivan Brown, Nancy E. Hansen, Roy Hanes, Ivan Brown, Nancy E. Hansen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138193574
• eBook ISBN: 9781351774031
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The Routledge History of Disability explores the shifting attitudes towards and representations of disabled people from the age of antiquity to the twenty-first century. Taking an international view of the subject, this wide-ranging collection shows that the history of disability cuts across racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, gender and class divides, highlighting the commonalities and differences between the experiences of disabled persons in global historical context.

The book is arranged in four parts, covering histories of disabilities across various time periods and cultures, histories of national disability policies, programs and services, histories of education and training and the ways in which disabled people have been seen and treated in the last few decades. Within this, the twenty-eight chapters discuss topics such as developments in disability issues during the late Ottoman period, the history of disability in Belgian Congo in the early twentieth century, blind asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland and the systematic killing of disabled children in Nazi Germany.

Illustrated with images and tables and providing an overview of how various countries, cultures and societies have addressed disability over time, this comprehensive volume offers a global perspective on this rapidly growing field and is a valuable resource for scholars of disability studies and histories of disabilities.

PART I

HISTORIES OF DISABILITIES ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES

A brief overview of the Routledge History of Disability

The handbook has four sections and it includes 26 chapters spread across these four thematic categories, including Histories of Disabilities Across Time and Cultures, Histories of National Disability Policies, Programs and Services; Histories of Education and Training; Histories of Spectacle, Science, Services and Civil Rights.

Introduction to Part I: Histories of disabilities across time and cultures

Roy Hanes

The first section of the handbook begins with a generic presentation of disability beginning with the ancient Greek era and it ends with a presentation of national disability programs and policies. The section helps to establish an important theme of this histories of disability handbook in that disability has always been part of humankind and this section’s first two chapters present disability during the age of antiquity as an example of disability issues dating back thousands of years. This section also attempts to establish that disability is moulded by social, cultural and religious roots as represented in the history of disability in Italy as well as the portrayal of disability during the Ottoman era. Additionally, this section includes a chapter which addresses services and programs for disabled people in Israel, and while the chapter provides specific discussions about specific programs, it also discusses the portrayal of disability according to Romantic era. He uses the conceptualization of reason to explore different societal responses to those defined as having an inability to reason and to think, those we would define today as having intellectual impairments. Stainton’s chapter incorporates the works of notable theorists including Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Locke to deconstruct stereotypes of people with intellectual impairment such as “children of God, the holy innocent or the menacing feeble minded” (Stainton).

Similar to Stainton’s examination of disability beginning with ancient Greece and the work of Aristotle, M. Lynne Rose’s chapter “The courage of subordination: Women and intellectual disability in the ancient Greek world” explores the intersection between gender and disability. Rose presents an interesting stand on the social construction of disability in history by examining the role of women in ancient Greece. In particular, she points out that because of gendered stereotypes women were identified as being less intellectually capable than their male counterparts. In this regard, by definition and because of the societal image of women as intellectually backward, they were disabled by what Aristotle referred to as “possessed a bouleutikon” (Rose, abstract) which affected women’s leadership abilities. In short, Rose’s chapter provides an interesting case study of the construction of disability, gender and social control.

In the chapter entitled “Jane Austen and me: Tales from the couch” Dianne Driedger explores the social construction of disability through a historical lens by examining some of the works of Jane Austen. Driedger notes her own location in the re-reading of Jane Austen’s novels and what they meant to her as a young teenager and then what these novels meant to her as an adult with disabilities wherein she found many characters similar to herself in books such as Mansfield Park, Mansfield Hall, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion. Driedger’s examination of Jane Austen challenges many of the portrayals of some characters as malingerers and the like, and she contends that these characters may have had serious and debilitating impairments ranging from lupus to mental health difficulties such as depression. In today’s parlance, many of the conditions portrayed in the Jane Austen novels would be coined as being “invisible impairments”, and Diane Driedger makes important linkages between the impairments of Austen’s characters and contemporary societal attitudes toward invisible impairments such as chronic pain, and she shows that significant stigma is still assigned to many invisible impairments.

Diane Driedger’s chapter is followed by M. Erkilic’s investigation of disability during the Ottoman Empire. Her chapter, entitled “Developments in disability issues during the late Ottoman period of Turkish history from 1876 to 1909”, primarily focuses on disability during the late 19th and early 20th centuries but the chapter does provide some insight into the plight of disabled people during earlier periods of the empire’s existence. M. Erkilic’s chapter incorporates both primary and secondary sources from the era, and she includes material not only from Turkish authors of the time but also primary source accounts of people who visited Turkey during the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. An interesting element of this chapter is the manner in which Erkilic examines the influence of Islamic values and beliefs over the development of programs and services for disabled people. Included in this chapter is not only a depiction of attitudes toward disabled people but also a detailed discussion as to the manner in which support services programs were built around Islamic principles of charity. In addition to the examination of the influences of Islam, Erkilic provides a detailed discussion of “secular” influences over the development of programs for disabled youth, especially educational and training programs. Erkilic points out that Turkey’s programs and services for blind youth were influenced by similar programs being developed throughout Europe at the time.

Groce, Di Cosimo and Lombardi’s chapter entitled “A short history of disability in Italy” provides a broad overview of disability in Italy from the Roman era to the late 19th century. This broad retrospective of history highlights the manner in which disability and disabled people were defined and treated over time. The chapter falls in line with the book’s focus pertaining to the social construction of disability by exploring social influences toward disability during the Roman period, the influences of superstition (disability as punishment) during the Middle Ages and the shifts toward more humane attitudes with the rising influence of the Catholic church. The chapter ends with an examination of disability toward the end of the 19th century when there was a greater influence of secularism, particularly in the areas of education, trades training and health support.

Merrick, Tenenbaum, Morad and Carmeli’s “A short history of disability aspects from Israel” rounds out the section on broader histories of disabilities. Since the chapter pertains to the history of the state of Israel, the history of disability is relatively new and dates back to the creation of Israel in 1948, but these authors provide an interesting review of Judaic, Islamic and Christian influences over the the development and delivery of supports and services for disabled peoples and in particular people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Having stated this, however, it should be noted that the primary focus of this chapter is on the development of health care facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities since 1948. The authors end their chapter by drawing attention to the need for multi-services health care centres wherein people with intellectual and developmental disabilities receive services that could be provided to the broader population.

1

REASON, VALUE AND PERSONS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY IN WESTERN THOUGHT FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE ROMANTIC AGE

Tim Stainton

Introduction

The discourse of reason has been central to western thought since the time of antiquity. The role of reason in defining what constitutes a person, or a citizen, and the relationship between reason and the value of a person has, not surprisingly, been a key determinant of the social response to people with intellectual disabilities.¹ The “children of God”, the “holy innocent”, the “mass of flesh”, the “menacing feebleminded”, or the deconstructionist dialogue of the present all reflect to a greater or lesser degree this discourse of reason, value and persons and consequently, the prevailing social attitude towards intellectual disability.

The concept of social response is used here in a broad sense, encompassing daily life, public, academic and political attitudes and explicit policy responses. There is of course no absolute unanimity of social response. At any given time a variety of attitudes and responses can be identified. While it is tempting to argue for a dominant ideology, this strikes me as a rather stronger claim than is warranted in most cases. In the foregoing I want to focus less on the actual conditions, although this will enter into the work, and more on the relationship between ideas about reason, persons and value, and how these affected general social attitudes and ideas about intellectual disability both in the contemporary history and in subsequent periods. I will focus primarily on the work of Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Locke. The approaches each of these thinkers take to the relationship between reason, persons and value are to a large degree paradigmatic of dominant western ideas, which have, and continue to have, a critical impact on the construction of and response to intellectual disability. I will deal with both the general impact of their thought as well as specific textual references. In order to contextualize these main concerns of this chapter, I will also consider specific social responses, which are either contemporary with, or ontologically related to, the central ideas of these thinkers.

Reason, persons and value in classical thought

The classical age provides a useful starting point for considering the role of reason in defining the nature and value of persons. Socrates’ belief in the importance of knowledge and the development of the mind set the stage for ideas about the domination of those with superior intellect over those with lesser endowments. Plato’s doctrine of “the three parts of the soul” set out in The Republic (206–17) clearly indicates the primacy of reason over the passions.² Plato’s Philosopher King’s where the naturally superior by virtue of their superior reason. In the Republic, Plato sets out his eugenics scheme for mating:

“… the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and bring up only the offspring of the best …. officers will take the children of the better Guardians to a nursery and put them in the charge of nurses living in a separate part of the city: the children of the inferior Guardians, and any defective offspring of the others, will be quietly and secretly disposed of …. They must be if we are to keep our Guardian stock pure”, he argued. (240–1)

‘Guardians’ is the term used by Plato for his ruling elite (see 122–25), those considered to possess the highest degree of reason. The idea of infanticide would not have been particularly shocking to the Greeks or Plato, as it was widely practiced. Plato’s eugenics programme included the limiting of ages of men and women between whom mating could take place; if infants were conceived at other ages they were to be disposed of either by abortion or infanticide (236–43). Two thousand two hundred years later, similar positive and negati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Histories of disabilities across time and cultures
• Part II: Histories of national disability policies, programs and services
• Part III: Histories of education and training
• Part IV: Spectacle, science, services and civil rights
• Concluding remarks
• Index