Towards Enabling Geographies

'Disabled' Bodies and Minds in Society and Space

Edward Hall, Vera Chouinard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754675617
• eBook ISBN: 9781317009009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Over the past 15 years, geography has made many significant contributions to our understanding of disabled people's identities, lives, and place in society and space. 'Towards Enabling Geographies' brings together leading scholars to showcase the 'second wave' of geographical studies concerned with disability and embodied differences. This area has broadened and challenged conventional boundaries of 'disability', expanding the kinds of embodied differences considered, while continuing to grapple with important challenges such as policy relevance and the use of more inclusionary research approaches. This book demonstrates the value of a spatial conceptualization of disability and disablement to a broader social science audience, whilst examining how this conceptualization can be further developed and refined.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Towards Enabling Geographies

Vera Chouinard, Edward Hall and Robert Wilton

Introduction

This collection captures a vibrant and dynamic ‘second wave’ of geographical studies of disability, which builds on and expands an established sub-disciplinary field of inquiry. It is a field of inquiry, however, with a relatively short history. Despite the prevalence of disability, and the spatial expression of social exclusion and discrimination experienced by many disabled people, geography’s interest was marginal until the mid to late 1990s, a ‘first wave’ of research gathered in Butler and Parr’s (1999) edited collection. In this introductory chapter, we trace the development of the geographical study of disability, identifying the distinctive contributions of a spatial interpretation. We then discuss four themes that characterize the second wave of disability research in geography. The chapter ends with consideration of possible directions for future geographic research on disability.

There have been several comprehensive reviews of geographic research on disability, which we have no intention of repeating here (e.g., Chouinard 1997, Park, Radford and Vickers 1998, Imrie and Edwards 2007). However, it is important to reflect briefly on the development and contribution of a spatial interpretation of disability. Prior to the first wave of critical research, geography’s interest fell into three camps. First, the positivistic tools of epidemiology, adopted by medical geographers, were applied to the incidence and distribution of disabling conditions, such as multiple sclerosis (Mayer 1981) and spina bifida (Lovett and Gatrell 1988), with the intention of understanding causal factors. Here, ‘disability’ is an individual diseased body, and ‘geography’, a non-defined background within which bodies are located.

A second set of studies began to examine these contexts, concerned with access and mobility for disabled people within, in particular, urban environments, focused on barriers presented by poorly designed transport systems and urban landscapes (Hahn 1986, Gant and Smith 1988). Golledge approached this in a different way, adopting a behavioural interpretation to examine how people with visual impairments understand (what he termed ‘spatial cognition’) and engage with urban environments, and how technical devices such as GPS and GIS can be applied to allow people to move around the hazards of a city (Golledge et al. 1991, Golledge 1993). These studies did not examine the underlying structural and institutional production of the barriers people encounter, yet their descriptions revealed in great detail the extensive spatial exclusion that many disabled people experienced in city spaces.

The third distinct set of studies was concerned with mental health, again adopting medical geography’s approach with dual interests in the spatial distribution of mental health problems and the location of mental healthcare services. For example, Giggs (1973, 1986) attempted to explain the incidence of schizophrenia in Nottingham, UK, making connections between mental health problems and poor inner city living conditions, while other work (e.g., Dean and James 1981) began to explore the broader links between mental health and socio-spatial contexts. The deinstitutionalization of people with mental health problems out of large scale hospitals and asylums into community environments stimulated a large number of studies concerned with the location of and (lack of) support for people in urban communities, the rise of homelessness and poverty among former ‘mental patients’, and the response of mainstream communities to the housing and facilities for people with mental health problems (e.g., Dear and Taylor 1982, Dear and Wolch 1987). In these studies there is a powerful capturing of the sense of ‘difference’ experienced as people with mental health problems entered spaces that they had played no part in shaping, and the consequential discrimination and exclusion.

In summary, geography was active in its examination of disability prior to the so-called first wave of studies. Whilst a stinging critique of this early work was soon to emerge – centred on an individualistic conception of disability and a lack of concern with broader socially and spatially produced causes of exclusion – it is important to emphasize that clear spatial insights were achieved, most notably into the prevalence of disabling conditions, the significance of social and cultural environments in shaping the lives of disabled people, and the embedded discrimination in mainstream communities and in welfare services. Such insights were highly significant for the subsequent ‘critical’ geographies of disability.

The juncture at which these new critical or interpretative studies arguably began to emerge was an exchange in the pages of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers in the mid-1990s, centred on the conceptualization of ‘disability’ and the ways in which geographers should approach the issue. Influenced by broader societal changes – in particular the increasing political activism of some disabled people and the associated theoretical developments inspired by disabled academics – geographers began to critique earlier geographical studies of disability and lay out an agenda for research. Butler (1994), Gleeson (1996) and Imrie (1996a) were sharp in their critique of Golledge (1993), claiming that he – and by extension the majority of the research done in the preceding years – failed to address the inherently ‘disabling’ nature of the socio-spatial environment, focusing instead on the impairments of the individual and consequent difficulties faced in these ‘distorted’ and ‘transformed’ spaces (Golledge 1993: 64). In addition, the critique of Golledge focused on the ‘ableist’ nature of the research, noting the lack of presence of the voices and experiences of disabled people in the data, advocating instead a geography with rather than for disabled people (Gleeson 1996). Rethinking disability as a socially and spatially produced form of exclusion and oppression, and recognizing the capacity of disabled people to challenge or transform such disabling social relations and spatial structures, formed the conceptual core of the first wave of disability studies in geography (see Environment and Planning D 1997, Butler and Parr 1999).

Developing the concern with barriers to mobility in urban locations, new critical geographical studies of disability shifted the focus from individual ‘inability’ to navigate, to the socio-political construction of disability within, and through, the built environment (Laws 1994, Imrie 1996b). Gleeson (1999a), from a historical materialist perspective, stressed the manner in which disability was produced by ‘disabling’ environments – expressed by Butler (1994: 368) in the phrase ‘the blind live in a world built by and for the sighted’ – and economic and care systems. Butler and Bowlby (1997), arguably revisiting the concerns of Golledge in their work on people with visual impairments in public space, connected a critique of environments imbued with disablist attitudes with the experiences and embodied feelings of people of being in such environments (and indeed their reactions, responses and resistance). The focus on the disabled body, on the experiences of impairment within particular spaces, was a central theme of the first wave (Parr and Butler 1999). Drawing on postmodern interests in the body and individual subjectivity and identity, many studies refocused the spatial concern to microgeographies, including Hall (1999) who considered embodied experiences and identities of disabled people in employment, and Dyck (1995) on the ‘lifeworlds’ of women with multiple sclerosis, and their renegotiation of their identities within the spaces of the home. These studies reflected a concern with the overly social constructionist nature of the social model, which risked denying the material, embodied realities of impairment (Hall 2000). In this sense, the continued assertion of the material, of the lived experiences of impaired bodies in particular places, has also been a major theme and contribution of a geographical perspective.

A final theme which defined the first wave of studies was an increasing concern with the relations of research, in particular the ‘ableism’of the discipline itself which through its research practices and broader social relations ‘constructed disabled people as marginalized, oppressed, and largely invisible, others’ (Chouinard 1997: 380). Such assumptions and conceptualizations combine with, and are a reflection of, research that treats disabled people as objects for research.

Geography has broadened and deepened its interest in disability in the second wave of research, represented in this collection. Whilst research has continued on the still significant material exclusion and discrimination experienced by disabled people in public and private spaces (e.g., Wilton 2004, Driedger, Crooks and Bennett 2004), the appreciation of the relationship between disability and space has become more nuanced and complex. The following sections set out what we consider to be the central themes of the second wave of research, drawing on the chapters in the collection: first, a broadening of the meaning of ‘disability’ to encompass other bodies and experiences; second, a deepening concern with the embodied experiences of disability and chronic illness; third, the possibilities and challenges of the increasing interaction between disabled people and technology; and fourth, an interest in shaping policy agendas and the ‘place’ of disabled people in contemporary society.

The Meaning of Disability

A shift of focus in the second wave to the relationship between embodied selves and a range of spaces has produced an almost unnoticed widening of the concept of ‘disability’ in geography (Crooks, Dorn and Wilton 2008). The insights of a spatially-infused interpretation of disability, as this collection shows, are increasingly being applied to other bodies of difference, including older people (Milligan 2004, Wiles and Allen Chapter 12), ‘fat’ people (Colls 2006, Longhurst Chapter 11), people of small stature (‘little people’) (Kruse Chapter 10), people with intellectual impairment and learning difficulties (Hall 2004, Davidson and Parr Chapter 4, Metzel Chapter 7, Power Chapter 6) and emotional problems (Holt 2004, Chapter 8), and people with chronic illness (Del Casino 2001, Crooks 2007, Chapter 3). This development answers Parr and Butler’s (1999: 10) call for a broadening of the scope of disability geography to encompass the embodied experiences of ‘all sorts of different people, with all sorts of different mind and body characteristics.’ However, a broadening of ‘disability’ is not without difficulties: Parr and Butler recognized that it could dilute the power of the disability concept (and the political movement closely linked to it), especially when some do not claim the disability label; in addition, there is the necessity in particular circumstances to specify impairments and disabilities (for example, in demands for appropriate support); and there remain some, for example, D/deaf people, who assert an identity position distinct to and in tension with the ‘disabled’ identity (Valentine and Skelton Chapter 5).

Crooks (Chapter 3) examines how the onset of a chronic illness, Fibromyalgia Syndrome, transforms the lives of a group of women, in particular the experiences of home spaces, and their roles and relationships within them. Crooks employs the concept of ‘disablement’ to interpret the (re)negotiation of spaces of the home and beyond, by focusing on ‘the interconnections between the mind, the body and lived realities’ (p. 54). For many, the interactions of embodied limitation and social barrier produced what could be termed a ‘disabling’ position of social and spatial isolation within the home. There are consequences to this approach, however: incorporating experiences of chronic illness into a disability frame necessarily means considering matters of illness and medicine, and fluctuations in bodily impairment, questioning the dominant social model of disability (Crooks, Chouinard and Wilton 2008).

The focus on the process of disablement, rather than on a disabled identity, is also present in the contribution by Longhurst (Chapter 11). She argues that mainstream spaces are often disabling, in emotional as well as material ways, for women who identify as ‘fat’, in the confinement and restriction of movement, and the socio-cultural non-acceptability of larger bodies. There are sufficient overlaps of experience – for example, ‘both fat people and people with disabilities are inscribed by medical processes [and] can experience social isolation’ (p. 202) – for fat people to be seen as experiencing disabling processes and environments that venerate normal bodies (thinness and ableness) and see ‘dissident bodies’ (p. 213) as abject. The adoption of a disabled identity by fat people (advocated by Cooper 1997) is complex since in most people’s eyes disabled people are blameless for their situation, whilst fat people are deemed responsible for theirs. The participants in Longhurst’s study were not asked directly if they considered themselves to be disabled, and none claimed such an identity though their experiences were similar (this suggests that the wider use of the ‘disablement’ process to make sense of other bodies of difference is in most cases not accompanied by the affirmation of a politicized disabled identity). A reinterpretation of bodily difference as disability does provide an opening to reconceptualize the ‘problem’; in the case of fatness, geographical studies are at present concerned with individual and group behaviour producing ‘obesity’; rethinking this through the notion of disability allows social and cultural environments to be considered as significant factors in producing fatness.

The issues of applying the label of ‘disabled’ to a group that until now has not been so named are also considered by Wiles and Allen, in their examination of ageing (Chapter 12). They note that whilst a significant proportion of the people who are classified as ‘disabled’ are older people, the disability label is commonly not attached to them. Instead, their impairments are understood as an inherent part of the ageing process. Wiles and Allen argue for a focus on the processes that occur in socio-spatial contexts that exclude older people physically, socially and culturally; though they concede that this has the troubling side-effect of marking out disability as a negative identity. Importantly, Wiles and Allen argue that insights from disability literature can inform studies of ageing; for example, in the recent embracing of an experiential, embodied model of ageing. The reverse is also true: disability geographies can learn from the way in which, with ageing, bodily impairment can be seen as an integral element of self-identity.

Described as a ‘small corpus’ of work within the geographies of disability (Wolch and Philo 2000: 138, cf. Hall and Kearns 2001), studies of learning or intellectual disability are well represented in the second wave, with contributions in this collection from Power (Chapter 6) and Metzel (Chapter 7). Both chapters examine the central role that caring relations play in the lives of people with learning disabilities. Power critiques the dependency/independence discourse in favour of the notion of ‘interdependence’, which better reflects the particular socio-spatial lives of people with learning disabilities. It is the relationships between individuals, family members and carers that generate both barriers to, and possibilities for, living in the community and strengthening self and collective identity. Metzel, starting from personal experience, investigates those who care for people with learning disabilities at a distance. In both of these chapters, the extension of research into the lives of those without disabilities recognizes the mutual constitution of the lives of disabled and non-disabled people, and of the disability category itself.

As we suggested above, studies of mental health have a long history in disability geography. A decade ago, Parr and Butler (1999: 12) argued that the evolving field of disability research should embrace a broad range of mental differences, reflecting ‘the multitude of embodied and behavioural characteristics which are seen as socially stigmatizing and amenable to medical categorization and treatment’. Authors in the second wave have responded to this call, addressing new themes of mental difference that lie outside of what has generally been considered mental health and impairment. Davidson and Parr (Chapter 4), for example, consider individuals on the Autistic Spectrum and those with anxiety disorders, who commonly experience society as emotionally and sensorally challenging, as well as experiencing social stigmatization. People with these conditions can, however, Davidson and Parr argue, assume a positive collective identity as ‘new neurological minorities’ (p. 78) through the medium of the Internet.

Increased interest in other mental differences is also evident in Holt’s (Chapter 8) study of young people in education with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Holt argues directly that models of disability should be ‘reappraised’ to include emotional differences with the intention of strengthening the position of young people with these issues (who are commonly understood through the individual, medical model). She understands disability here as a product of dynamic and ongoing interactions – drawing on notions of ‘performativity’ – between minds/bodies and specific cultural/social configurations. Including children with emotional and behavioural problems within the ‘disability’ frame thus allows the ‘problem’, in the same way as obesity/fatness, to be seen as a product of interaction between the individual and the school, not solely the result of an inherent bodily/emotional inadequacy. This also allows those who have not been medically diagnosed to be identified as ‘disabled’; a tool of strategic essentialism to gain recognition and support, but which runs counter to dominant ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Towards Enabling Geographies
• 2 Disability, Embodiment and the Meaning of the Home
• 3 Women’s Changing Experiences of the Home and Life Inside it after Becoming Chronically Ill
• 4 Enabling Cultures of Dis/order Online
• 5 ‘It’s my umbilical cord to the world…the Internet’: D/deaf and Hard of Hearing People’s Information and Communication Practices
• 6 The Geographies of Interdependence in the Lives of People with Intellectual Disabilities
• 7 563 Miles: A Matter of Distance in Long-Distance Caring by Siblings of Siblings with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
• 8 Young People with Socio-Emotional Differences: Theorising Disability and Destabilising Socio-Emotional Norms
• 9 Evaluating Workfare: Disability, Policy and the Role of Geography
• 10 Placing Little People: Dwarfism and the Geographies of Everyday Life
• 11 The Disabling Affects of Fat: The Emotional and Material Geographies of Some Women Who Live in Hamilton, New Zealand
• 12 Embodied Ageing in Place: What Does it Mean to Grow Old?
• 13 Biometric Geographies, Mobility and Disability: Biologies of Culpability and the Biologised Spaces of (Post)modernity
• 14 Geographies of Disability: Reflections on New Body Knowledges
• Index