Geographies of Disability

Brendan Gleeson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134681976
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This book explains how space, place and mobility have shaped the experiences of disabled people both in the past and in contemporary societies. The key features of this insightful study include:
* a critical appraisal of theories of disability and a new disability model
* case studies to explore how the transition to capitalism disadvantaged disabled people
* an exploration of the Western city and the policies of community care and accessibility regulation.

Brendan Gleeson presents an important contribution to the major policy debates on disability in Western societies and offers new considerations for the broader debates on embodiment and space within Geography.

1Introduction

The Purpose of This Book

This book is about the relationship between space and disability. In particular, the book explores how social and spatial processes can be used to disable rather than enable people with physical impairments. The topic is important for at least two reasons: first, space, and related concepts such as mobility and accessibility, are profoundly important to the lived experience of disability; second, this fact has been given relatively little attention in the past by most Western social scientists, including those in the spatial disciplines, Urban Planning, Geography and Architecture. In Geography, the long disciplinary silence on this profound dimension of human experience is especially perplexing. According to the United Nations, there are approximately 500 million persons in the world with physical impairments (Campbell and Oliver, 1996). Moreover, at any given time, disability probably affects 10 to 15 per cent of national populations (Golledge, 1993). Disability is, simply put, a vitally important human experience that Geography cannot afford to ignore. A failure to embrace disability as a core concern can only impoverish the discipline, both theoretically and empirically.

While disability has, until recently, been neglected in the main disciplinary fora – journals, books, study groups, conferences, etc. – there has been a small, but important, tradition of geographic work that, since the early 1970s, has focused on the needs and social experiences of disabled people. I refer here especially to the pioneering work of Reg Golledge, and also to the many unpublished research projects on disability, often undertaken by postgraduates in departments spread across Europe, North America and Australasia. If one widens the conceptual lens for a moment, then the important early work of North American geographers, such as Julian Wolpert, Michael Dear, Jennifer Wolch and Martin Taylor, on mental illness and social dependency also counts as part of this genealogy of disability studies within Anglophone Geography. None the less, these few voices were the exception to the long entrenched disciplinary rule that disability was not a valid geographical concern.

Also, there have been broader social consequences of this disciplinary silence, though this fact is rarely acknowledged. Doubtless the recent undermining of progressive-modernist forms of social science has discouraged open declarations on how academic knowledge can improve people’s daily lives, especially those lived in the shadows of injustice or prejudice. Indeed, this, and any other social scientific analysis of disability, can begin from the premise that disabled people throughout the world endure social oppression and spatial marginalisation, facts that will be central concerns in this book. As the United Nations puts it, disabled people:

frequently live in deplorable conditions, owing to the presence of physical and social barriers which prevent their integration and full participation in the community. As a result, millions of disabled people throughout the world are segregated and deprived of virtually all their rights, and lead a wretched, marginal life.

(cited in Campbell and Oliver, 1996: 169)

Given the extent of need in disadvantaged communities, it may seem strange that academics, and geographers among them, sometimes seem reluctant to explore certain marginal domains of human experience. To an extent, this reticence is a product of recent critiques that have, quite rightly, questioned the authority of academics who in the past have claimed to speak for the ‘subjects’, or even ‘objects’, of their research. There remains in the social sciences, a vigorous, and by no means resolved, debate on the tendency of research to colonise, appropriate, and generally misconstrue, the experiences of individuals and groups, especially those whose voices are usually unheard in the discourses of power (e.g., Harding, 1992; Roof and Weigman, 1995). However, this reticence is a relatively recent phenomenon in the social sciences, and therefore does not entirely explain Geography’s long avoidance of disability issues. To a large extent, this disciplinary silence reflects the exclusion of disabled people and their concerns from the realms of authoritative knowledge

I would argue that the long failure of geographers to engage with disability issues has denied to disabled people a valuable conceptual, professional and practical resource that might have aided them in their relations – very often, their struggles– with the various professional and institutional agencies that have shaped their environments, often in oppressive ways. As many geographers themselves have come to realise, space is a social artefact that is shaped by the interplay of structures, institutions and people in real historical settings. The historical production of space is a contested process where the exercise of power largely determines who benefits and who loses from the creation of new places and landscapes. Knowledge about how space is produced, and for whom, is, of course, a vital element in this constant power struggle. That disabled people in Western societies have largely been oppressed by the production of space is due in part to their exclusion from the discourses and practices that shape the physical layout of societies. Geography, as Imrie notes (1996a), is one such spatial discourse of power that has marginalised disabled people.

Thus, I begin this book by recording my own hope in the emancipatory potential for new spatial studies of disability – what I term here geographies of disability. I argue that new geographic work on disability needs to do more than simply describe the spatial patterns of disadvantage – it must contribute in a variety of ways to a broader political campaign that disabled people, and advocates, are waging in various struggles against the construction of oppressive environments. As Chouinard has put it, there is a need for new spatial research on disability that

not only unsettles ableist [i.e., oppressive] explanations of social processes and outcomes, but also considers how such knowledge can be used to further political struggles against environments that exclude and marginalize disabled people.

(1997: 380)

To eliminate oppressive spatial practices and knowledges, it is first necessary to explain how and why they occur. Accordingly, the geographies that constitute this volume will seek to explain why the production of space has disadvantaged disabled people, both in the past and in contemporary societies. From this understanding, one can envisage a broad political-theoretical project that would both resist the sources of spatial oppression and articulate new ways of creating inclusionary landscapes and places. This book will not contribute directly to that broader political-theoretical process, as this is properly the task of social movements rather than academic observers. I will, however, speculate in the book’s conclusion on the sorts of shifts in theoretical and practical research agendas that are necessary if Geography is to contribute to that broader social movement. Thus, I hope that the historical and contemporary studies here will play some indirect role in the larger emancipatory struggles of disabled people. As Harvey observes, ‘A renewed capacity to reread the production of historical-geographical difference is a crucial preliminary step towards emancipating the possibilities for future place construction’ (1996: 326). Accordingly, the aims of this book are:

• to theorise the broad historical-geographical relationships that have conditioned the social experience of disabled people in Western societies; and
• to describe and explain the social experiences of disabled people in specific historical-geographical settings.

Glimpses of Disability

A Contribution to Theory and Politics

In writing this book, I acknowledge, and welcome, the fact that I am participating, if indirectly, in the process that I am seeking to explain: the historical and contemporary production of spaces that have shaped the lives of disabled people. I offer my studies of this process as matters for debate, contributions to a newly politicised production of spaces and places for disabled people and not as canonical statements of how things have been or are now. At this point I think it necessary to record a few remarks on two profound and inescapable limitations on my contributions.

First, I could not, and do not, hope to produce an exhaustive explanation of the relationship between disability and space. The case against this sort of fixed, totalising theoretical account has been well made by other geographers (e.g., Harvey, 1996) and I do not intend to rehearse it here. Simply put, such static, global explanations are not possible, and nor are they politically desirable. Instead, I offer in this book a partial account of the disability–space relation, within a specific set of social and spatio-temporal frames; namely, geographies that focus on the experience of physically disabled people in historical and contemporary Western societies. (This theoretical and empirical specification is elaborated below.) I do propose here a broad theorisation of how space informs the experience of disability, but this is a self-consciously open and flexible schema that can only be improved through subsequent critical debate, both within and outside academia. I do offer detailed studies of certain historical and contemporary spaces of disability, but these, again, are crafted as explorations whose findings will be sharpened, and perhaps in some instances refuted, by subsequent empirical work.

Given the inevitably partial nature of my theoretical and empirical studies, I acknowledge that the work in this volume offers not much more than a set of glimpses of the range of geographical experiences that shape disabled people’s lives. My own view is that a broader, though never complete, appreciation of specific social experiences can only be achieved through a vigorous, reflexive and inter-disciplinary enquiry. While, as I have noted, Geography has been absent without leave from the broad intellectual campaign that in recent decades has sought to explain disability experiences, there are now very encouraging signs within the discipline that things are changing.

Within English-speaking Geography, a small, but growing, community of geographers are arguing that disability must be a critical disciplinary concern (e.g., Butler, 1994; Chouinard, 1997; Cook, 1991; Dorn, 1994; Dyck, 1995; Golledge, 1990, 1991, 1993; Hall, 1994; Imrie, 1996a; Imrie and Wells, 1993a, 1993b; Kitchin, 1998; Parr, 1997a; Vujakovic and Matthews, 1994). A stream of recent disability related sessions at major national Geography conferences attests to the emergent interest in this topic among a stratum of younger geographers.¹ The growing, if still relatively minor, attention given to disability is further confirmed by a recent major text (Imrie, 1996a) and a range of articles in the main learned journals (e.g., Chouinard, 1994; Golledge, 1993; Imrie, 1996b; Imrie and Wells, 1993a, 1993b; Vujakovic and Matthews, 1994). Another milestone was a special issue of the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space in 1997 that was devoted to the topic of disability.² Perhaps the most significant development has been the formation in 1997 of the Disability and Geography International Network (DAGIN) whose main fora have been an electronic mailing list (GEOGABLE) and a web site.³ By 1998, the GEOGABLE list counted 70 members drawn from a wide range of countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Germany.⁴

The Constraints and Privileges of Authorship

The second source of partiality in this work is the constraint that authorship and identity bring to bear on any individual piece of scholarship (cf. England, 1994). I am not disabled, and, as a white, middle-class male, neither do I directly experience the other major types of social discrimination or disadvantage that bear down upon various oppressed forms of identity. This fact inevitably limits my ability to understand and explain the experience of disablement, in ways that I cannot myself fully appreciate (cf. Drake, 1997). While I have spent many years working with disabled people in a variety of ways (mainly, care services and research), this in no way equates to having lived with a disability. In attempting to ‘draw near’ the real (i.e., lived) experience of disability, I have over the years practised a strategy – not always successfully – of listening with care and empathy, though never uncritically, to the voices of disabled colleagues and friends. It therefore struck me as good sense when one of the referees who commented upon the written proposal for this book suggested that I consciously weave the spoken and recorded voices of disabled people throughout the analyses. However, upon reflection I could not arrive at a way of consistently doing this that was not somehow rather contrived and gestural, especially in light of the historiographical constraints that shape the different studies. For example, there are very few surviving records of everyday peasant life in feudalism, and I was not able to trace any voices of disabled people for this era. The problem is largely repeated for the industrial capitalist era, though some records survive from this time of disabled people’s spoken views. Invariably, these accounts of everyday life are non-autobiographical and their accuracy may be doubted in some instances. I have analysed with some care a few of the more reliable of these recordings in Chapter 6.

I believe that my work here satisfies the referee’s suggestion in another way; indeed, through a course that I have always tried to follow in my research on disability. In this book, a specific set of disabled people’s voices resonate with authority and, I believe, a good measure of social authenticity. Put simply, it is the voices of disabled theorists which I have invited to speak loudest in the conceptual discourses throughout this book. The conventions of referencing alone will confirm the foregrounding of disabled theorists’ voices in my work. It is to be hoped that honour is done in this small way to Paul Abberley, Donna-Rose Mackay, Harlan Hahn and Michael Oliver who have each generously contributed to my intellectual development over many years, in a variety of ways. I also wish here to acknowledge a deeper, not always obvious, debt that I have incurred to the other disabled thinkers who have over the years shaped my approach to this topic, and whose influence is not adequately recorded in the text.⁵

Having enunciated the conceptual constraints that my identity imposes upon me with respect to disability issues, I think it important to acknowledge also the privileges that my position confers, and how these may help to make my contribution a meaningful one. As a highly educated academic, who has benefited from support by relatively well-resourced universities in a variety of countries, I have been able to approach the disability issue with a set of investigative skills and with a relatively privileged level of access to information and other forms of expertise. Of course, these privileges are the product, at least in part, of an inequitable social system which artificially renders education and information as exclusive rather than universal ‘goods’. This fact, I believe, imposes a duty upon people such as myself to employ these privileges in the cause of justice; indeed, towards the dismantling of the very systems that unfairly confer social advantages upon a minority. I hope that in these studies, readers, and more particularly disabled people, will find some evidence that I have observed this duty, and through political commitment rather than class guilt.

Inclusions and Exclusions

Having declared what I see as the major conceptual constraints on this book, I want now briefly to elaborate the specific social and spatio-temporal boundaries of the studies. Given that one could spend an entire book explaining the specificities that inevitably frame any study of a major social issue, I will not attempt to justify here at great length the exclusions and inclusions that characterise the book. It is to be hoped that the studies themselves will provide these justifications by conveying a sufficient and explicit sense of purpose.

Geographies of Which Disabilities?

‘Disability’ is a term which has many different uses in various places and is therefore impossible to define objectively. Disability may refer to a considerable range of human differences – including those defined by age, health, physical and mental abilities, and even economic status – that have been associated with some form of social restriction or material deprivation. This book will adopt a rather focused sense of the term which is often used in the social sciences – here ‘disability’ refers to the social experiences of people with some form of physical impairment to a limb, organism or mechanism of the body (Oliver, 1990). Thus, the sense of disability used here encompasses impairments that have an organic basis, including those which manifest themselves as physical and intellectual impairments.

This book is primarily about physical disabilities. However, I believe that my social geographic explorations of physical disability do have relevance to other disabling experiences. The book will not focus on the question of mental illness, a specific set of health-related conditions and socio-spatial experiences that can be distinguished from physical disability. However, in laying out an initial conceptualisation of disability, the book will briefly review the considerable geographic work that has been undertaken on mental illness, much of which has relevance to the spatial consideration of physical impairment.

Also, the studies will not directly consider the question of chronic illness. I cannot hope to explore all disability experiences here, and neither, of course, would this be appropriate in a single, empirically focused work. A range of commentators, including geographers, have rightly pointed to the heterogeneity of physical conditions and social experiences that are commonly lumped under the ‘disability’ rubric (Butler and Bowlby, 1997; Dear et al., 1997; Parr, 1997b; Wendell, 1996). These analysts have opposed approaches that avoid or understate these profound differences. I agree with this criticism to some extent. None the less, there is a political need for inclusive theorisations of disability which try to explain the general social forces that bear down upon all ‘impaired’ bodies. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I A Socio-Apatial Model of Disability
• 2 Social Science and Disability
• 3 The Nature of Disability
• Part II Historical Geographies of Disability
• 4 Historical-Geographical Materialism and Disability
• 5 The Social Space of Disability in Feudal England
• 6 The Social Space of Disability in the Industrial City
• Part III Contemporary Geographies of Disability
• 7 Disability and the Capitalist City
• 8 Community Care The Environment of Justice?
• 9 The Regulation of Urban Accessibility
• 10 Towards an Enabling Geography
• Appendix: Notes on primary sources used
• Notes
• References
• Index