Language/SterotypesDefining disability

April 6, 2010Dennis Lang

AgendaI) Continued from 4/1– Readings– Language /Stereotypes– What is Disability Studies?

II) Defining disability- Examining the Body/Mind (INDIVIDUAL MODEL)

- Medical- Moral- Personal Tragedy

- Disability Rights Movement Pushes Back (The Social Model)

What Do I say?

What Do I SayUSE EITHER:

Person with a Disability (PWD)(People 1st Language)

or

Disabled Person; Deaf (Identity Language)

May Also See/Hear

People who experience Disability

The Only Given is That Language Will Change

Language

• YES: Person who has/is….

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What is the Difference

Between:

Deaf & deaf?

Relax• Please don’t be afraid to speak

Stereotypes

• 1. Pitiable and Pathetic• 2. "Super-Crip.“• 3. Sinister, Evil and Criminal.• 4. Better Off Dead.• 5. Maladjusted.• 6. A Burden.• 7. Unable to Live a Successful Life.

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“Super-Crip”“disability as hero by hype:”When not pitied, persons with disabilities are

sometimes seen as “heroes,” or outrageously admired for their “courage. Placing persons with disabilities on a pedestal is another way to denote this social group as “other”. Is often linked to the idea that disability in one area is complimented with superior abilities in another area (for example, the belief that people who are blind have superior hearing)

http://www.trinimex.ca/disabilityinmedia/lesson6.htm

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“I feel the weight of a social obligation to be either healthy or miserable. Nevertheless, I have concluded that I am always sick and often happy, and that this seems very peculiar in my culture.”

Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body

What is Disability Studies? – UK: Primarily Marxist /Materialist (Social-Political)– US: Primarily Socio-Cultural

• Linton: claims “[T]he curriculum reveals…patronizing & distorted representations of disability….” (p. 4) “Claiming Disability”

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Disability Studies

• Society for Disability Studies (SDS) http://www.disstudies.org/

• Disability Studies Quarterly http://www.dsq-sds.org/

• Disability Studies Program at the UW: http://depts.washington.edu/disstudMinor in Disability Studies – Individualized Studies Major

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How do you treat a Person With a Disability?

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“Able To Laugh”

What is

Impairment?

Disability Models

Some Ways to Understand DisabilityTwo Groupings:

1)The problem is the INDIVIDUAL

2)The problem is Society (Social Model)

INDIVIDUAL MODEL(focus on the Individual)

»“You'd the Problem”

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Medicalization of the INDIVIDUAL Body/Mind MEDICAL MODEL

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR)

International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD)

International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF)

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Michel Foucault’s analysis of “biopower”

• Medical-scientific knowledge claims and solutions to the “problem” of disability (e.g. madness diagnoses).

how we conceive of the meaning of "disability“ has enormous practical, social, and legal effects, reframing and urging one conception of disability over another is deeply and fundamentally connected to power structures

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Statistical bell curve (1835) invented in the era of efficiency, progress,

eugenics

• Statistics created “the tyranny of the norm,” really the ideal.

• Statistician Francis Galton founded the eugenics program of eliminating deviations from the norm (in one direction only).

• Before the 1700’s “Normal” did not exist in language

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Sara Baartman, exhibited in Europe as Hottentot Venus, died 1815, dissected & displayed

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IQ testing• 1905 invented by Alfred Binet.

– “abnormal” children can be educated.

• 1910s US psychologists corrupt this goal.– Mental testing industry.– Hereditary / Eugenics– Measure & label & institutionalize.

• “Menace” to society. – Moron – imbecile – idiot scale.

– By 1920, 328 institutions, with 200,000 people labeled mentally impaired.

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From segregation to prevention of “unfit” births = the eugenics movement 1900-1940

• Social costs, burden of supporting the “feebleminded” and their offspring.

• vs. desirable traits = white, middle-class norms…

• US sterilizes 60,000 people in institutions.

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“Ugly Laws” Early 1900's – 1970’s it was illegal to be "found ugly" on the streets of many American cities like Chicago, Illinois Omaha, Nebraska and Columbus, Ohio. Punishment for being caught in public ranged from incarceration to fines.

“No person who is diseased, maimed, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object is to be allowed in or on the public ways or other places in the city. If such a person exposes himself to public view, he shall be subject to a fine for each offense.” Chicago ordinance

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Eugenics1920 “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life,” Germany. Karl Binding , a lawyer, & Alfred Hoche, a psychiatrist.

• 1927 Buck v. Bell United States Supreme Court upheld the concept of eugenic sterilization for people considered genetically "unfit." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., stated: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.“

Upheld Virginia's sterilization statute which provided for similar laws in 30 states, under which an estimated 65,000 Americans were sterilized without their own consent

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US Set the Example• Nazi Germany -between1933-

1939, 375,000 people in Germany sterilized

• 1939 T4 program – Start of Germany’s Euthanasia program ~275,000 Disabled People murdered.

Medical Model?

Americans with Disabilities Act – ADA 1990

– (1) has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity,

– (2) has a record of such an impairment, or

– (3) is regarded as having such an impairment.

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Evaluation of the concept of MENTAL ILLNESS

• Subjective, shifting, contested assumptions/examination?– There are no objective diagnostic tests– “biomedical assumption that there are clear boundaries between

diseases and between the sick and healthy.”

• Psychiatric survivors movement since 1970s.– Argue that their differences are not helpfully categorized or treated as

impairments.

• Insiders’ POV; narratives of living with bodily/mental difference.

• Sick or criminal? Problems of deinstitutionalization.

• Newly invented disabilities (and treatments)– Social anxiety disorder

WHO, ICF 2001WHO, ICF 2001

Disability :

outcome or result of a complex relationship between an individual’s:

health condition personal factors external factors

“…retains individualistic medical notionsof disability and its causes.” P15 Disability: A Choice of Models; Barnes & Mercer

Example

• Forrest Gump

Moralizing the INDIVIDUAL Body/Mind

MORAL MODEL

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Moral Model• Two Parts

I)Religious and Spiritual origin• Punishment from God (ie: due to displeasure)

• Evil spirits (possessed)• Witchcraft

• Bad Karma (did something evil in the past)• Gift from God (cross to bear, angelic)

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Moral Model (cont.)• II) Character weakness:

• Examples: villains in movies, refrigerator mothers, lazy, faking, unmotivated

• Medicine tends to blame individual character when cause is unknown.

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Tragedy of the INDIVIDUAL Body/ Mind PERSONAL TRAGEDY MODEL

• Disability is considered a tragedy

• Society needs to take care of / protect persons with disabilities

• Examples: inspiration news story, telethons, charities

Example

• Blondie Brings Up Baby (1939)

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SOCIAL MODEL Examining Society

• Instead of disability originating within the person, disability originates from society

• Disability results from society, (Ableism), and the environment:– Physical barriers– Attitudinal barriers– Political/Policy barriers

Social Model – Origins (Britain) Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation

UPIAS definitions of impairment and disability, 1976:• • Impairment: Lacking part or all of a limb, or having a

defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.

• • Disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activitycaused by a contemporary social organization whichtakes no or little account of people who have physicalimpairments and thus excludes them from participationin the mainstream of social activities

SOCIAL MODEL

Many Ways to “Emphasize” what it is about Society that Creates Disability

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Social Model Variants – UK Marxist and materialist

interpretation of Society

The historical convergence of industrialization and capitalism as restricting impaired people’s access to material and social goods, which results in their economic dependency and creates the category of disability

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Social Model Variants – USSociety’s Culture & Attitudes

Assumes that inappropriate and discriminatory social attitudes and cultural phenomena are the central problem for people with impairments

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Social Model Variants - Minority

• Political based used to counter discrimination and advocate for Civil Rights – Primarily US

• disABILITY identity / Pride / Culture

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Social Model Variants – Independent Living Model (ILM)

• States that current sociopolitical structures produce access barriers for and dependency in impaired people resulting in disability

• is based on a consumer driven movement that fosters autonomy, self-help and the removal of societal barriers and disincentives

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Social Model Variants – Human Variation

• Universal Design– re-think design= The built environment;

economic, social, cultural, and political entities including organizations that provide employment, education, health care, transportation, communication, and the full range of public services.

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Social Model Variants – Dismodern Theory

• L. Davis– Sees imperfection as the norm– Normal is a fairly new term…

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Social Model – Summary

1.disability is restricted activity (caused by social barriers)

• 2. disability is a form of social oppression

• 3. disability is created by categorizing bodies/minds as normal or abnormal

Example

• Gig Harbor Wheelchair Dancer

ContinuedGig Harbor dancer incorporates her wheelchair into her routine Gig Harbor dancer Andrea Jerabek incorporates her wheelchair into her routine and encourages the disabled to become dancers Integrate<! dance has grown tremendously""", 20 years, say dancers By Nancy BartleySeattle Times staff reporter March 31st, 2010GIG HARBOR -She warms up in the studio, body lithe, elastic as she stretches before the wall of mirrors_ Then the music heats up and she's balanced on one leg, the other extended_ An arm forms an arc above her head before she sweeps low, touching her wheelchair_ Then she's spinning and flying, incorporating the wheels into her pattern of dance_Andrea Jerabek's passion for the art began long ago when she was a little girl in pink tights pattering across the polished wood floor of the dance studio in New York, where she could almost forget the deformed foot that in the future would be both a curse and a blessing. She decided 10 have it amputated in 2005 eliminate the constant pain, and now uses a wheelchair or a prosthetic Ieg_Today, Jerabek, 42, and a social worker, is an ambassador for integrated dance, which often blends disabled people, their support equipment and sometimes able-bodied dancers in performance_It's an art that's grown tremendously since Mary Verdi-Fletcher of Cleveland, created The Dancing Wheels Company, believed to be the nation's first integrated dance company, 30 years ago_ Charlene Curtiss and JoAnne Petrol/founded Seattle's Light Motion Dance Company in the late 1980.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011494188_dance01m.html

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What About Impairment?Initially: Social model tries to breaks the bio-medical chain of causation:

Impairment Disability

Why was this strategically important to DRM (Disability Rights Movement)?

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ISSUES:

While the social model redefines “disability,” it stops short of questioning the status of

“impairment”

Minimizes the experience of impairments(But I am Blind, Have pain, Different!)

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Others: impairment should not be taken as simply a “natural state”

• Some disability studies work challenges whether impairment is just biological. (Disability/Postmodernity, eds. Corker & Shakespeare).

– Carol Thomas: impairments are “shaped by the interaction of biological and social factors, and are bound up with processes of socio-cultural naming.”

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WHY CARE?

How Disability Is Defined

Determines What Is Measured

= Allocation Of Resources

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EXAMPLES• Social Security Disability Insurance• University of Washington Accomodations• World Bank • Oregon

In 1989, passed legislation rationing health care to all state residents who were on Medicaid.

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Models – Summary

• Problem is the Individual– Moral– Personal Tragedy– Medical

• Problem is Society– Social Model & its variants

Example

• YouTube – We R Society (UK)