on 15/5/01 1:50 pm, Mark Priestley at [log in to unmask] wrote:
[snip]
>
> This wording was partially adopted in the 1993 United Nations Rules on the
> Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (Resolution
> 48/96, 20 December 1993) as follows...
>
> "The term 'handicap' means the loss or limitation of opportunities to take
> part in the life of the community on an equal level with others. It
> describes the encounter between the person with a disability (sic!) and the
> environment. The purpose of this term is to emphasize the focus on the
> shortcomings in the environment and in many organized activities in society,
> for example, information, communication and education, which prevent persons
> with disabilities (sic!) from participating on equal terms."
>
> (NB: the examples used are information, communication and education - not
> steps and raised curbs!)
>
> Yet, every month or so for the past few years, it seems that people ask why
> the 'social model' of disability doesn't include people with the label of
> learning difficulties.
I work primarily in a discipline that has had well developed social accounts
of learning and learning difficulty for many years - it is also a discipline
that very few in British disability studies (or feminism or sociology) want
to know about. (So I very much agree with Vanmala's comments about 'buying
in to the dominant paradigm') I'm not surprised at these people's concerns,
and, for what it's worth, this is how I read the difficulty from a
cross-disciplinary perspective.
There are many different definitions of 'social', 'communication',
'information' and 'education'. Some of these definitions are more
accommodative of a social interpretation of learning difficulty (or any kind
of 'social' interpretation for that matter) than others. The *dominant*
social model in Britain uses definitions that:
1. see language as either subordinate to or a distraction from structures of
political and economic domination, and it is not possible to look at
learning without looking at language;
2. conflate the physical and the social within structural schemata; and
3. assume a clear distinction between the person and their environment, and
between language and action.
True, there has recently been an attempt to add in 'culture' (which is at
variance with UPIAS' original articulation of disability, which refers to
'social organization', but not 'social practice' or 'culture'). However,
'culture' is then viewed according to an outdated systemic model, and the
individual is seen as an 'essential self'. How then can such a model,
conceived in this way, include 'learning difficulty' *in anything other than
a structuralist way*?
To make another related point. I read recently that the Disability Rights
Commission (Britain) has recommended to the Government that they seek to
ratify British Sign Language as a minority language. Given that 'language' -
minority or otherwise - can only arise out of collectives, this seems to be
an interesting exception to the DRC's/government's apparent inability to
recognise disability as a collective and institutionalised phenomenon (cf.
the recent discussion in Colin Lowe's paper). I think BSL should be
recognised (though I don't think that recognition in itself will change
anything, on the basis of research carried out in relation to other
linguistic minorities), but this feels like double standards to me.
Best wishes
Mairian
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