Disability, identity and the management of normality

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Disability, identity and the management of
normality

• Nick Watson
• Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research
• Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied
  Social Sciences
• University of Glasgow
• n.watson_at_socsci.gla.ac.uk

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• (i) the presence of an impairment
• (ii) the experience of externally imposed
  restrictions
• and (iii) self identification as a disabled
  person. (Oliver 19965)

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• cultural identity - which locates identity in a
  shared collective experience
• personal identity, one which identity is located
  in the material and social relations of
  individuals.

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• Identities claimed either as the result of
  sameness or difference

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• Identities, as Goffman (1969) argues, can only be
  maintained if people can persuade others to also
  accept that identity on these terms, or persuade
  themselves that others have accepted their own
  definition of themselves.

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•  
• I'm tidy and smart. I dress to impress, I dress
  because I like dressing, I like clothes ... I
  always have a suit ... I think appearance is very
  very important when I'm going to meetings and sit
  round a table with professionals. A sweater will
  not do for me, I'm competing with others and I
  will be as smart as them because that is the way
  I've always been I'm not saying I feel superior,
  but maybe I do feel superior because I have taken
  that trouble, but it is not everybody that wants
  to go out looking as ponced-up as I do. Stephan

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• I absolutely detest going to meetings where I see
  people who have been dependent on help coming out
  of sometimes hostels ... all dishevelled,
  sweaters all twisted round, and they have come to
  expect that is all they are going to get.

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• They the occupational therapist wants to make
  the kitchen with curtains in front of the sink so
  that you can go underneath the sink so you can go
  under there. But not everybody wants curtains.
  People want their house to be normal, for you to
  walk in, you being an able-bodied person, to walk
  in and your house to be normal. You wouldn't
  have a curtain on the front of your sink, would
  you? No. Roz

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• Well I think in a way its because Im a stubborn
  sod and I think maybe because I saw what the
  assumption was, what I could do and could not do
  and I felt well Im not going to have this, I
  don't want that particular route. Keith

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• I was let loose. I was able to go out and work,
  I wasnae under the hospital chains, I wasn't
  under the family's, I wouldna say their thumb
  but, I went out and worked. I got my own very
  first job and that to me was independence, going
  out there and asking somebody for a job. Ok, I'm
  not saying that my employer's didna think of me
  as disabled because they did, but they never
  actually let me see, or never treated me as a
  disabled person. I suppose in the early 60s that
  was something strange.

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• When I'm around family and that, they don't see
  the wheelchair, family and friends, an awful lot
  of them don't see the wheelchair, they just see
  you, and they expect you to be able to do things
  the way they do it, they don't think that, oh,
  it takes you double the time to do a thing, or,
  you can still do it but it'll take you double the
  time to do it, they think you should be able to
  do it the same as them. Tilly

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Reducing the Struggle and Affirming Identity

• Firstly, by discrediting those who attempt to
  discredit them by writing off their comments as
  the product of ignorance.
• Secondly through the image they present to
  others.
• Thirdly, they build up a group of loyal,
  supportive friends.

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• I think I am very conscious, I am aware
  throughout this whole interview, that
  relationships play a key part. I might not have
  predicted that, but it does make sense
• Susan

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• Ive actually spoken to some. this girl once,
  right, my wifes cousin's wife and we were at
  this party and she was sitting across the room
  and never spoke to me and my wife went upstairs
  and she came across and we were talking away and
  10 minutes later she said Archie, I wish Id
  talked to you earlier and I said How, she said
  I was feared to talk to you. I said You
  shouldn't be scared, I am just a normal person,
  she goes, I see that now.

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• And once they understand I am just a regular guy
  to them like anybody else then the chair aspect
  goes away, it is just a one to one sort of thing.
  Everyone is curious about anybody, you see a
  black person, a disabled person, whatever, they
  are always curious, they are scared to offend,
  it is actually breaking the barriers.

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• When I first moved here to a disabled housing
  complex, I had MS, it was diagnosed but I was
  walking about and it was then that I felt, oh I
  couldn't bring myself to know anyone disabled
  because there was here, actually staying, from a
  university or a college a few people staying in
  the guest room in the complex and they had -
  thalidomide, poor souls were here they had really
  badly thalidomide and I went out of my way not to
  speak, put it this way if I was near them I would
  smile but I wouldn't go out of my way to think
  oh, go out and befriend them or talk to them, I
  feel ashamed of myself now.

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• I dont really think that you should be speaking
  to me, Im not like all the others that youre
  talking to. You see, Im going to get better,
  Im not gong to be in this chair for the rest of
  my life, Im not like them. Im different, what
  I have to say isnt the same. What I have to say
  doesnt matter, cos Im going to get better.