Disability, Culture and Identity

Sheila Riddell, Nick Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780130894403
• eBook ISBN: 9781317904458
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Disabilities, Culture and Identity is a succinct and accessible presentation of current research on disability, culture and identity. It is an ideal text for students and lecturers alike studying and working in the areas of Disability Studies and Social Policy. Disabilities, Culture and Identity provides a comprehensive and well-structured introduction to an area of growing importance. The authors provide up-to-date and extensive coverage of the development of thinking on cultures of disability, including those relating to people with learning difficulties, people with mental health problems and people with learning difficulties Also covered in detail are critical areas in disability studies including:

• Development of the social model of disability
• Disability and the politics of social justice
• Disability and theories of culture and media
• Disability, ethnicity and generation
• The policy options for empowering disabled people, and how the disabled are empowering themselves
• The disability arts movement
• Media treatment of disability

CHAPTER 1

Disability, Culture and Identity: Introduction

Sheila Riddell and Nick Watson

Introduction

The aim of this book is to explore disability and impairment through the lens of culture. The socially dominant culture shapes the way in which disability and impairment are viewed, and has contributed to the oppression of disabled people. At the same time disabled people have forged their own cultures as acts of resistance. Culture, therefore, is both a source of oppression and of liberation for disabled people, and is therefore central to the politics of disability. Acknowledging the importance of culture in shaping social structures is seen by some in the disability movement as potentially dangerous or threatening, in that it may throw up unwanted complexities which distract attention away from the political struggle against oppression. However, in producing this book we do not feel that we have launched into a self-indulgent and diversionary ‘cultural turn’. Rather, we seek to contribute to the vibrancy of the disability movement and disability studies by recognising the centrality of culture in shaping social relationships. By unearthing and pursuing some of the tensions and debates between social modellists and cultural theorists, we believe that the field of disability studies will be enriched and the disability movement in general will become more sensitive to difference, ultimately contributing to its resilience and effectiveness.

Throughout this book, we explore disability and culture from a sociological standpoint. Sociology, as Brian Turner and Chris Rojeck (2001) have recently argued, starts with an investigation of everyday life and the relationships and conditions that shape it, which are themselves imbued with elements of culture. As Mike Oliver and colleagues (in press) have noted, sociology has a crucial role to play in disability studies because of its emphasis on issues of equality, justice and power. We hope that this book illustrates the political relevance, rather than sterility, of studying disability and culture from a sociological perspective.

In contrast with earlier writing which focused on disability as social and economic oppression, disabled people have recently come to see cultural revaluation as central to their political struggle. Writers such as Anne Karpf (1988), Tom Shakespeare (1994), David Hevey (1992) Martin Norden (1994) and Lois Keith (2000) have sought to show how images of disabled people are used to in the media and in literature. They point to the media fondness for cure stories; the role of charity appeals; the invisibility of disabled people on television; the stereotyped portrayal of disabled characters in screen drama; the under-employment of disabled people in broadcasting; the representation of disabled people as flawed or damaged. As noted above, this emphasis on representation of disabled people still causes concern for some within the disabled people’s movement (Barnes and Mercer 2001). The criticism is that if disability studies abandons an agenda of redistribution and equality in favour of an emphasis on difference and diversity it could potentially lead to an uncritical acceptance of structural inequality as an expression of cultural difference. Some have argued that the politics of cultural recognition and the politics of economic redistribution may be complementary rather than at odds with each other. A central theme of this book is to consider, with regard to disability, whether economic and cultural struggles are mutually supportive or contradictory.

The social model of disability and culture

In order to understand the origins of the tensions between disability studies and cultural studies, we need to look at the early writing of the disability movement. As Thomas (1999) has noted, the social model of disability was generated as a result of the efforts of disability activists to identify some fundamental principles to inform their actions. The Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) produced a document in 1976 entitled Fundamental Principles of Disability. This document set out the following definitions of impairment and disability:

Impairment: ‘lacking all or part of a limb, or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.’

Disability: ‘the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of social activities.’

(reprinted in Oliver 1996, p. 22)

This socio-political definition of disability was subsequently broadened to accommodate people with a range of impairments, including those with physical and sensory impairments, learning difficulties and mental health problems (Barnes 1996). It has been suggested that early writers within the field of disability studies had very little to say about the personal experience of disability, its cultural elements and the impact these had on individual identities (Thomas 1999; Shakespeare 1996; Shakespeare et al. 1996). Looking back at Mike Oliver’s seminal book The Politics of Disablement (Oliver 1990), it is evident that culture was not ignored, but it was construed in a relatively uncomplicated way. According to Oliver, the oppression of disabled people was at root economic, but ideologies about disabled people played a part in maintaining existing inequalities. Thus in art and literature, disabled people were presented as either super-heroes, villains or tragic individuals, but never as ordinary people trying to carve out meaningful lives, like everybody else. The remedy for this cultural oppression was for disabled people to challenge these ideologies, forging new identities which challenged outworn stereotypes. The disability arts movement features in Oliver’s later writing (Oliver 1996; Campbell and Oliver 1996), its work construed as acts of political resistance. The Politics of Disablement, however, contains a crushing attack on medical and psychological approaches to disability which emphasise the need for the disabled individual to adjust to the conditions of impairment. Since there is no theoretical or empirical grounding for such an approach, Oliver concluded that it must be rooted in the dominant cultural paradigm of disability as personal tragedy:

… professionals are clearly influenced by cultural images and ideological constructions of disability as an individual, medical and tragic problem. The issue of adjustment, therefore, became the focus for professional intervention and reinforced these very images and constructions by rooting them in practice.

(Oliver 1990, p. 64)

Reluctance to draw on cultural studies, with its emphasis on the negotiation of multiple and shifting identities, may well stem from ongoing suspicion of traditional medical and psychological approaches which pathologise disabled individuals.

Proponents of the social model of disability, therefore, argued that disabled people should concentrate on developing a shared cultural politics which focused on the material causes of oppression. Reflection on the individual meaning of disability was seen as potentially dangerous since it might fragment, rather than unite, the movement. However, criticisms of the social model of disability have been expressed by those who argue the case for investigating the complexity of disability, culture and identity. Writers like Crow (1996), for example, maintained that the personal experience of impairment had been downplayed because acknowledging individual pain and oppression did not necessarily accord with the view that disability was entirely a product of social barriers. Comparing the struggles for equality in the areas of ‘race’, gender and disability, she noted:

There is nothing inherently unpleasant or difficult about other people’s embodiment: sexuality, sex or colour are neutral facts. In contrast, our experience of impairment means our experiences of our bodies can be unpleasant or difficult. This does not mean our campaigns against disability are any less vital than those against heterosexism, sexism or racism; it does mean that for many disabled people personal struggle related to impairment will remain even when disabling barriers no longer exist.

(Crow 1996, p. 58)

Similarly, Shakespeare (1996) argued for the importance of exploring disability and sexuality in order to forge links between the personal and the political domains:

In general, with the exception of the feminist literature on disabled women, there has been little emphasis in disability studies on the realm of identity, personal experience and private life. For us, the personal is political and, while we understood that the priority had been to explore structural relations and social barriers in the public spheres of life, we felt it was high time to redress the balance.

(Shakespeare 1996, p. 179)

Challenges to the social model of disability have also come from those who argue that disability studies has paid insufficient attention to the cultural politics of ‘race’, gender and age (see, for example, chapters in this book by Atkin et al., Jakubowicz and Meekosha, and Priestley). Thomas (1999) suggests that such challenges have certainly put the social model of disability, as the rallying point for the movement, under strain. Yet the overall impact of such debates has been to enrich the emerging field of disability studies.

What is culture?

Culture, as a concept, is broad and diffuse and it is important to establish some of the things we might mean by the word itself. Cultural Studies is an immensely popular area of study, having its roots in the work of writers such as Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, who, influenced by their working class origins, wished to understand the relationship between the life practices and beliefs of working class people and the dominant culture of the middle class. Writing in the 1950s, these writers maintained that culture and society could not be separated, and that people’s family, social, and recreational lives, the clothes they wore and the newspapers they read, were imbued with political significance. Culture, as Williams (1976/1988, p. 87) has observed, is one of the most complicated words in the English language. It is also one of the key concepts in modern social knowledge. In its early usage it described the process of tending crops or animals. In the sixteenth century the concept was extended to include culture as the process of human development. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the concept of culture as a noun emerged. This understanding places culture, or cultures, as a descriptor of the ‘configuration or generalisation’ of a group of people (Williams 1981, p. 10). The concept served to describe the way of life of particular groups, peoples or eras. Later, with the publication of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, the word came to be associated with the arts, specifically the ‘high arts’ such as classical music, painting, sculpture, theatre and certain types of film. At the end of the nineteenth century what Williams termed the social definition of culture emerged.

The social definition of culture emphasises culture as a ‘signifying system’ as a packet of signs, symbols, tools and beliefs. Through this system ‘a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored’ (Williams 1981, p. 13). This idea originated in the work of the anthropologist Franz Boas, the sociologist Emile Durkheim and the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (Friedman 1994). This notion of culture has dominated much writing on culture throughout the twentieth century.

A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest common meanings. We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life – the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning – the special processes of discovery and creative effort.

(Williams 1989, p. 4)

Culture and disability

Disability is, as writers such as Oliver (1990, 1996), Colin Barnes et al. (2000) and John Swain et al. (1994) point out, linked to notions of inequality of power and human interdependence. While the emphasis in disability studies has, until recently, tended to explore disablement through economic rather than cultural processes, the latter have always been part of the equation. So, for example, Oliver (1990), linked the oppression of disabled people to the material changes associated with capitalist development. However, he also identified ideological changes which were needed to challenge oppression. Disability is not, according to Oliver, ‘defined or culturally produced solely in terms of its relationship to the mode of production’ (1990, p. 22). He argues that disability is culturally produced through the relationship between the mode of production and the central values of society. Capitalist society has resulted in an ideology of individualism, which, coupled with medicalisation and the development of rehabilitation, brought about profound changes in the way that people with impairments are seen and treated. Oliver suggests that the ideologies of both individualism and medicalisation affect the individual experience of disability. In other words, the experience of disability is ‘structured by the discursive practices which stem from these ideologies’ (p. 58). Thus, what Oliver terms a ‘hegemony of disability’ (p. 44) emerges. By employing the Gramscian concept of hegemony, Oliver argues that these ideologies have become dominant and are part of the common sense view of disability as a ‘personal tragedy’.

Oliver asserts the existence of a set of beliefs in British society which give coherence to this hegemony of disability. Norms are set and these norms are used to oppress disabled people:

The hegemony that defines disability in capitalist society is constituted by the organic ideology of individualism, the arbitrary ideologies of medicalisation underpinning medical intervention and personal tragedy theory underpinning much social policy. Incorporated also are ideologies related to concepts of normality, able-bodiedness and able-mindedness.

(1990, p. 44)

This assumption of the presence of a common sense view of disability, that of disability as tragedy, is important not just for Oliver’s theorising, but, as discussed below, for many other writers on disability. This creates what Schutz (1970, pp. 72–76) would term a ‘natural attitude’ for people in their ordinary social existence. In Oliver’s analysis, culture acts very much as structure, popular consciousness is manipulated by the medical profession and others who serve their own interests in presenting disabled people as tragic victims. That is, ‘ord...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER ONE Disability, Culture and Identity: Introduction
• CHAPTER TWO A culture of participation?
• CHAPTER THREE Daily denials: The routinisation of oppression and resistance
• CHAPTER FOUR ‘It’s like your hair going grey’, or is it?: impairment, disability and the habitus of old age
• CHAPTER FIVE Challenging a ‘spoiled identity’: mental health service users, recognition and redistribution
• CHAPTER SIX Deafness/Disability – problematising notions of identity, culture and structure
• CHAPTER SEVEN Against a politics of victimisation: disability culture and self-advocates with learning difficulties
• CHAPTER EIGHT Now I Know Why Disability Art is Drowning in the River Lethe (with thanks to Pierre Bourdieu)
• CHAPTER NINE Mainstreaming disability on Radio 4
• CHAPTER TEN Disability and ethnicity: how young Asian disabled people make sense of their lives
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Can multiculturalism encompass disability?
• Index