Social Psychology Disability

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Social PsychologyDisability

• Tutor Paul Duckett
• Room E48
• ext. 2552
• p.duckett_at_mmu.ac.uk

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• Prime Minister Harold Wilson
• President Ronald Reagan
• President Frankelin D. Roosevelt
• What have they got in common?

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Defining disability

• What is disability?
• Massive investment of time, energy and money to
  define it (Meyerson, 1988)
• How we define it determines how we intervene
  (Oliver, 1994)
• Most people remain confused about it, including
  psychologists! (Finkelstein and French, 1994)
• Researchers have made little progress, disability
  movement has made much progress (Glendinning,
  1991)

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Naming disability

• Confusing terminology
• Contested and transient
• (Berthoud et al. 1993)
• Culturally specific
• Learning difficulty, learning disability,
  intellectual impairment, mental retardation etc.
• Hidden codes
• People with disabilities? (Hasler, 1994)
• Disabled people? (Dalley, 1991)
• Able bodied or non disabled

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Disability in its socio-economic political
context

• Genome project
• remove the "disabled gene
• 85 of impairment occurs after age of 13
• 90 of impairment is caused by socio-economic
  factors (ie. poverty) not genetic factors
• 1 in 5 impairments are caused directly by the
  effects of malnutrition (Boylan, 1991).

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Cures

• 'Social attention and resources are being
  deflected into medical technology and
  professional salaries when they could be
  providing nutrition, social support and other
  low-technology strategies to minimise disability
  or to cushion its impact
• (Baird, 19926).
• Up to half of the world's disabled population
  have impairments that can be prevented or
  remedied for the price of a few pounds per head
• (New Internationalist, 1992).
• An economic rather than a uniquely medical
  intervention is needed.

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Causes

• Very few impairments nowadays are of the genetic
  kind, but have been "manufactured" as an effect
  of our means of production - they have a
  socio-economic, not a uniquely medical origin.
• Traffic accidents
• Thalidomide drug
• Chenobyl, Bhopal, Chuandongbei natural gas field,
  Bam (Iran)
• Largactil
• Amniocentesis

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Causes of impairment

• 'As far the majority of the world's disabled
  people are concerned, impairment is very clearly
  primarily the consequence of social and political
  factors, not an unavoidable "fact of nature"
• (Abberley, 198711).
• The medical profession has not only given us a
  language we can use to talk about impairment, but
  has often created impairment - a stark reminder
  of the importance of a socio-economic and
  socio-political perspective on impairment
• (Duckett, 1998)

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Impairment, Stigma the Media

• Dr. Frankenstein's organ transplant and Dr. No's
  iron fist quite naturally generate a special
  propensity for monstrous behaviour. Of course,
  the symbolic properties of disability are not
  exclusively lurid, though they often are. ... The
  point is that physical deformity in literature
  and art is almost never unencumbered by the
  trappings of metaphor. There are almost no
  average or ordinary and "by the way" physically
  aberrant characters.
• (Thurer, 198012 author's emphasis)

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Stigma in context

• Disability associated with villainy in classical
  drama, children's books and cartoons, and modern
  film (Thurer, 1980 Longmore, 1985 Shakespeare,
  1994, Hevey (1994)
• Cinderella (Hahn, 1988b)
• Children do not find abnormal appearance
  uncomfortable to look at until the age of 11 (New
  Society, 1985)

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Medical Model

• Impairment - any loss or abnormality of
  psychological, physiological or anatomical
  structure or function.
• Disability - any restriction or lack (resulting
  from an impairment) of ability to perform an
  activity in the manner or within the range
  considered normal for a human being.
• WHO definition (Wood, 1981)
• 'cure or care (Finkelstein, 1991)

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• ...there has been an expansion of the influence
  of science in general and in particular of
  "medical science," until they have in some ways
  replaced religion and law. Where once a social
  rhetoric made reference to good and evil, legal
  and illicit, now it is to "healthy" and "sick".
  (Zola, 1979455)
• In the last decade we have seen a significant and
  increasing turn toward science and medicine to
  solve problems that are socially and economically
  based. Medicine is presented as the healer and
  science as the truth. This new ideology
  proposes that science is neutral and value free
  Few ask who funds the research and sets the
  priorities. Instead, the public are asked to
  embrace new technological fixes for human
  behaviour issues. (Orbach, 1978184)

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• Medical Model Question
• What complaint causes you difficulty holding,
  gripping/turning things?
• Have you attended a special school because of
  your impairment?

• Social Model Question
• What defects in the design of everyday equipment
  cause you difficulty in holding, gripping/
  turning them?
• Have you attended a special school because of
  your education authority's policy of sending
  people with your impairment to such places?

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• Medical Model Question
• Does your impairment affect your work in any way
  at present?
• Abberley (1992140)

• Social Model Question
• Do you have problems at work as a result of the
  physical environment or the attitudes of others?

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Social Model

• The present forms of architectural structures and
  social institutions exist because statutes,
  ordinances, and codes either required or
  permitted them to be constructed in that manner.
  These public policies imply values, expectations,
  and assumptions about the physical and
  behavioural attributes that people ought to
  possess in order to survive or to participate in
  community life.
• (Hahn, 1988a40)

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Disabled People International (DPI) Definition

• Impairment is the functional limitation within
  the individual caused by physical, mental or
  sensory impairment.
• Disability is the loss or limitation of
  opportunities to take part in the normal life of
  the community on an equal level with others due
  to physical and social barriers.

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Social Model

• The removal of social, economic and physical
  barriers, barriers that make the social economic
  and physical environment hostile to the disabled
  person, rather than rehabilitating the disabled
  person to the hostile environment
• (Barnes, 1991 Sapey Hewitt, 1991).

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Warning for Social Psychology

• Victim Blaming (Ryan, 1971)
• Fetish for deviance (Liazos, 1972)
• Making people responsible for their social
  exclusion
• Obscuring socio-structural causes of and
  corporate responsibilities for the barriers
  disabled people face