Michael wrote:
>
>Could our biased experts be uninterested in the Social Model because the
>model is not coherent? What I mean to say is that it's basic rtheme is that
>disability is oppression. So far so good. After that, there are so many
>different types of social models - some see it as almost simply a Marxist/
>Disability critique of society, oppression through Politics and Economics of
>the situations.
>
>Others see it wider, multi-faceted not just Politics and Economics but the
>whole culture and not view culture as simply a by-product of capitalism.
>
>With so many different definitions how could they read it the social model
>properly.
>
I want to say first that I absolutely agree with Alexa's response to this,
when she says that the confusion is mainly within academia. But I'd also
want to say that I think the variety of theoretical strands being developed
- which I see to be healthy - signifies the importance of disability. Her
assessment of how people use particular aspects in relation to policy is
spot on, and I think Alden was saying something very similar in relation to
UK policy. When she writes:
>I don't know about the UK, but I do know that the ADA,
>the WHO and the UN have all relied on some form of thesocial model to
>create standing definitions from which to produce policy. In no way am I
>protecting these organization's definitions of disability, but i do want
>to point out that these definitions were produced in part from a social
>model understanding of disability.
Obviously there are differences in both definition and where we are at. The
UK's social model is, in a way, a critique of the WHO model. What it
attempts to do is to lose the focus on impairment and 'health' problems,
changing it to a focus on how disability is created. I think the ADA, from
the persepctive of definitions, retains much of the WHO model and certainly
the DDA has done the same, only worse in it's focus on defining impairment.
The operative word in all of this is FOCUS, not exclusionary 'truths'. I
can't think of one disability theorist in the UK who has ever said that
health or impairment is NOT an issue for disabled people - what we argue
about is how these things should be conceptualised in relation to
disability e.g. should they be conceptualised and looked at separately or
in terms of social relations. This is a useful debate because it helps to
refine our understanding of disability further, and I think there are
already policy implications in this debate which may not have been obvious
at the start.
Certainly coherence does help at the level of policy and I doubt very much
whether any of our representatives on the Task Force attempt to take all of
this richness that is disability, however we view it, into the policy
making machinery. Here 'the' social model serves us well. I think our
biased 'experts' suffer from a dearth in listening skills and have a huge
problem with questioning their own positions.
At the level of theory, and in relation to exploring or understanding
disability, the problem is not the diversity but when theorists and
pragmatists alike start to insist that there is only ONE right way. That is
a different debate, and I think it is something that is at the heart of
much of what is written on this listserve.
Best wishes
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
Department of Education Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
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U.K.
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