>Mark wrote:
>>
>>Agency has been most useful for me as a relational concept - in
>>relation to structures (it seems fairly meaningless in isolation?).
>>Disability is, in a sense, exactly what happens when people try to
>>exercise agency within a disabling environment. There are many
>>useful questions arising from this relation (both research questions
>>and political questions). In general terms...
>>
>>'When people try to do X what barriers do they come up against?'
>>
>>But then, I suppose then you end up back where we started - with
>>our old friend the social model
>
>I agree with Mark though I think the reason that we come back to our old
>friend is because of power and because of a focus on macro-level analysis.
>I think so far as children are concerned, I would say that I have seen
>disabled children exercise what I would call agency, but the outcome of
>this agency often depends on the social level at which it is pitched.
>Children's agency can be very effective locally at both individual and
>collective levels, but it has very little impact on the big picture e.g.
>of educational policy. I suppose the same is true of disability activism.
>I mean by that that we have developed our old friend the social model and
>we have succeeeded in spreading its message far and wide, but we have not
>yet achieved its integration into the main domains of social reproduction
>(society's institutions if you like).
>
>As Mark himself has written " It's not sufficient to identify disabling
>values - we have to understand how they become disabling" or something to
>that effect. So, sometimes we have to make a distinction between the
>vision and the practice. I think multi-level analysis is very useful, but
>I'm not sure that analysis that is structure (i.e. barriers)-focused can
>do justice to the analysis of agency, nor is it meant to. I would also say
>that current analysis is very biased towards collective agency and assumes
>that that option, like reflexivity and agency itself, is evenly
>distributed.
>
>Best wishes
>
>
>Mairian
>
>
>
>
>
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow
Department of Education and Social Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
Deafsearch
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]20 7359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
*********
"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
*********
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|