I was really interested to read the postings about the
limitations of the social model when it comes to
cognitive disabilities.
I am a brain injury survivor, studying brain injury
and I too have many concerns about the social model.
These concerns include:
1. The whole negative tone of discussions of
impairment.... a big part of the struggles of brain
injury survivors is developing a positive image of
themselves, post-injury, and it seems to me that the
social model has implicitly accepted many of the
medical model's negative assumptions about impairment.
Many brain injury survivors would not like to have
their post-injury brains described as 'defective'. But
so often in the social model, any impairment is seen
as a defect. That sort of description of the changes,
post-injury, is not good for your self-esteem! (And
your brain plays such a big part in your self-esteem).
2. I think that people with various impairments,
including brain injury survivors, have been excluded
from many of the debates of the social model and that
needs to be acknowledged and redressed. I am not sure
that it can be automatically assumed that the model
applies to us unproblematically.
3. I think its really important to discuss the
subjective experience of disability... this is
particularly important for survivors of brain injury,
because our subjective experiences are quite different
from many other disabilities. For instance, the level
of absolute social isolation that so many survivors
experience seems to be quite extreme. Many don't have
friends, and don't even have service providers in
their lives... I am talking about fundamental
isolation... having no-one in your life. This is a
qualitatively different experience from many other
people with disabilities.
4. The social model has an ambiguous attitude towards
advocacy. But some people can't speak for
themselves... and advocacy is so important in this
context... and yet advocacy can have many problems
too... so in order to be more relevant to brain injury
survivors, I would like to see more discussion of the
advantages and perils of advocacy.
5.I have a number of concerns about the "materialist
theory of disability". My concerns include
a) Often the materialist theory is presented in terms
of a dichotomy.... either you have an idealist
conception of disability, or a materialist one. I
think this is a false dichotomy.
b) Next, I am concerned that there is a tendency
within the materialist approach to ascribe the way
disability has developed to "the needs of
capiatalism". This sort of generalised conception of
capitalism, having clearly identifiable systemic
needs, is under-theorised. In this respect, I think
many leading "materialist" thinkers, including Oliver,
Finkelstein and even Gleeson, suffer from an
inadequate theorising of class, capitalism and the
state. In many ways, it reminds me of the
Miliband-Poulantzas debate on the nature of the state
about 20 years ago!... and one of the things that
arose out of that debate was a reluctance on the part
of many other theorists to use generalisations like
"the needs of capitalism".
Now while I have been very critical here, I don't want
to fail to recognise the important contribution that
the social model has made to the lives of many
disabled people.
The social model has important strengths, of course...
a) its critique of the medical model can be so
empowering for a person struggling against it.
b) the social model has been so usfeul for activists
who use it to enhance and defend the rights of
disabled people. (Mind you, I think that a lot of this
has happened in Britain.... and I'm not sure how
international this trend has been amongst disability
activists).
c) The social model focusses our attention on things
like barriers in education, in housing, in the labour
market, etc. These barriers are real, for many
disabled people, and they do need to be broken down.
This is one of the real attractions of the social
model to me.
Sorry if this post has been too long, but I have been
wanting an opportunity to express these feelings for
some time now.
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