I read Mike Oliver as taking a mostly Marxist standpoint on disability so I read Mark (Burton) 's essentially Marxist reading of Oliver as mostly appropriate. However I don't find Mike Oliver or Mark (Burton) persuasive on this issue as I think we have to go beyond Marxist thinking and other grand narratives (including other 'truly panoramic' grand narratives for that matter).

I write 'mostly' because Mike Oliver is a key early exponent of the 'social model of disability' which positions disability as far more complex than the 'real material existence of disability' which ironically is assertively maintained by medical model theorists (though I believe social model theorists admit the medical model back in through the back door via the problematic notion of 'impairment').

I don't disagree that 'disabled people' (I use this term to refer to people whose particular manifestation of human diversity (not impairment!) is turned into disabling disadvantage by societal arrangements) are disproportionately likely to be disadvantaged in terms of their place in the hierarchy of inequality and relative poverty but, for me, the expression "real material existence of oppression" glosses many complex issues. From my standpoint oppression, discrimination, inequality and poverty and constructed and maintained through the everyday apparatuses of interconnected discourses, practises, policies, procedures, etc. which are far more complex than 'plain as the nose on your face' phrases like "real material existence" encourage us to think about. Put another way 'real material existence' is far more complex than 'material reality'?

To go back to Keith's questions, I am less interested in what Mike Oliver actually meant and more interested in community critical psychological ways forward. First I regard oppression, discrimination inequality and poverty in relation to disability are complex, socially constructed and so socially deconstructable. Second, I regard disabled people as often struggling to negotiate minefields of disabling practices, procedures, policies, discourses, social environments which they have to negotiate to survive and often being governmentally transformed in the process. Third, I think it does matter how we 'see' people in relation to disability and that we should refuse to position disability as rooted in the 'material reality' of persons' bodies, including their brains, and relocate it in the practices, procedures, policies, discursive systems etc which we and others enact.

David

From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Burton [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 08 August 2009 23:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Oliver and oppression

He means that for disabled people it is the real material existence of oppression etc that imposes on thier lives and being and that our concerns about language (and talso the way we understand who and what they are) are secondary to this.

I've spent much of today re-reading Enrique Dussel and commentaries on him. He is a philosopher of liberation and his work is truly panoramic. He establishes a system of ethics that combines the material, the discursive and the pragmatic, interrogating each from the standpoint of the excluded, the marginalised, the oppressed. Heady stuff.
I believe his approach shows us a way out of the impass between critical theory (Habermas etc) and the postmodernists (Foucault, Derrida etc) while going beyond all these to affirm the need for an approach that is truly universal (how else could there be an ethical critique) but that does not tie that universalism to the Eurocentric world view of the enlightenment/bourgeois rationality.
What is all this about? Well it helps us see beyond those false opposites that have figured on this list so much and suggests how we might construct an approach that is adequate to combatting the writing out of those excluded within the system (the oppression of workers here and in the sweatshops where golobal capital has moved its sites of extraction of surplus labour), women) and those excluded from it (the oppression of disabled people, peasants and the destitute of the global south or our cities, the old, the inconvenient) including those not yet born (the future generations ignored by dominant economic discourse - the ecological imperative).

The global system of capitalism does indeed threaten the ability to survive of many people. For now we have some degree of welfare support for those with significant disability, but for how long before this gets eroded further still as a result of the squandering of public wealth to shore up the baking sector?

Venables,Keith (Children and Younger Adults) wrote:

What does Oliver mean by ‘oppression, discrimination, inequality and poverty’?

Does he mean that there is a struggle to survive?

Does this quote mean that it doesn’t matter whether we see disabled people as oppressed or not?

Bit baffled.

Keith Venables

-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of richard pemberton
Sent: 07 August 2009 21:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] why does the medical model persist?

Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment. by James I. Charlton; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998

I thought it predates this book but maybe not.

Richard

On 8/7/09, jacqui lovell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks for the quote!

Re your question, I thought it was from the learning disability DoH paper?!

Jacx

> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 23:13:43 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: why does the medical model persist?

> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Hello,
>
> at the risk of being obtuse (which I dont intend to be) I came across this quotation earlier when researching disability issues that made me think upon this recent discussion...
>
> 'if we are not careful we will spend all of our time considering what we mean by the medical model or the social model, or perhaps the psychological or more recently, the administrative or charity models of disability. These semantic discussions will obscure the real issues in disability which are about oppression, discrimination, inequality and poverty.'
> (Oliver, M. 1990)
>
> I find it a useful tool in cutting through our professional jargon to focussing upon the 'real issues'. I thought I'd share.
>
> Elaine
>
> PS. does anyone know who coined the expression 'Nothing About Us Without Us'? Wikipedia suggests its a populist slogan but I thought it originated from the someone in the disability movement...?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List on behalf of Venables,Keith (Children and Younger Adults)
> Sent: Tue 7/28/2009 4:31 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] why does the medical model persist?
>
> I really don't think The Medical Model is about Medicine or Ethics. It
> is about Deficit.
>
> Keith Venables
>
> Dear all, while I am not wanting to exculpate medics too much, for me
> the essence of the medical model is a strong ethical code, adhered to
> with varying degrees of strictness but it is there all the same, with
> journals and the like. So I would just like to balance the equation a
> bit because the other e-mail I think is pure prejudice, though an
> understandable prejudice. My comments are in the text of the e-mail in
> bold:
>
> Picking up on the recent emails to the list by Alison and Emma (both
> Smiths - are they related? Is this the Matrix?), maybe it would be
> helpful for us as a group to specify together some of the many reasons
> we think that the medical model persists? Here are some:
>
> SURELY THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON FOR TE PERSISTENCE OF THE 'MEDICAL
> MODEL' IS THE AGE-OLD DICHOTOMY BETWEEN CATEGORIES AND THE FUNCTIONAL
> PRINCIPLE OF DISTRIBUTION ON A CONTINUUM. WITHOUT THIS NO DIAGNOSIS, AND
> NO 'MEDICAL MODEL'. NOW THERE ARE A LARGE NUMBER OF SITUATIONS WHERE
> CATEGORICAL KNOWLEDGE AND PATERNALISTIC ACTION IN THE BEST INTEREST OF
> THE PATIENT IS ESSENTIAL. FOR INSTANCE ANYONE, INCLUDING PSYCHOLOGISTS
> WILL BE GLAD FOR THE DIAGNOSTIC CAPACITY AND THE TREATMENT COMPETENCE OF
> A DOCTOR IN A LIFE-THREATENING SITUATION. NOW NOT ALL OF MEDICINE IS
> BEST CONEPTUALISED IN SUCH A WAY BUT WHENEVER PEOPLE NEED SOMEONE TO
> ACT, THIS WAY OF CONSTRUCTING PERCEPTIONS AND REALITIES IS ESSENTIAL.
>
> .- it is superficially 'scientific' and so gains some of the authority
> and prestige accorded to scientific explanations generally
> I THINK THAT NO 'MODEL' IS SCIENTIFIC, BUT SCIENCE CAN BE FURTHERED BY A
> MODEL, IE A WAY OF THINKING. THE AUTHOR OF THESE LINES IS CONFUSING
> EPISTEMOLOGY IE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTRIBUTIONS, AND NATURAL SCIENTIFIC
> WORK. OF COURSE DOCTORS AS PEOPLE GET DRAWN INTO THEIR PROFESSION FOR
> SOMETIMES VERY SPECIFIC REASONS, AS DO PSYCHOLOGISTS, AND AS A RESULT
> BOTH GROUPS HAVE THEIR SHARE OF ARROGANT AND POMPOUS REPRESENTATIVES.
>
> - it accords with our culture's ready preference for technological
> solutions to problems of various kinds
> THIS MIGHT BE TRUE BUT IS A GENERAL STATEMENT WHICH WOULD BE FASCINATING
> TO PICK APART.
>
> - it thus appears within an optimistic arc of possible future progress,
> so offering (misplaced) hope
> IT WILL ONLY BE A QUESTION OF TIME WHEN WE MOSTLY WORRY ABOUT WHETHER OR
> NOT WE CAN AFFORD THE NEWER TECHNOLOGIES JUST LIKE IN DENTISTRY. AS SUCH
> THIS IS AGAIN AN OVERGENERALISATION. HOPE IN GENERAL IN MY MIND IS A
> GOOD THING THAT WE NEED FOR SURVIVAL. DOES MISPLACED MEAN 'FALSE'?
>
> - it promises a quick, simple, expert solution to people's problems.
> MY MEDICINE DOES NOT BUT MAYBE SOME PEOPLE DO OR HAVE SUCH AN
> EXPECTATION. HOWEVER THAT IS WISHFUL THINKING AND A PROJECTION, NOT A
> FACT OF MEDICAL LIFE.
>
> - it minimises the blame, guilt, and shame of individuals by presenting
> their difficulties as purely technical 'hardware faults'.
> YES, THAT IS SO, AND SOMETIMES IT PREVENTS PROGRESS OF PEOPLE BUT
> SOMETIMES IT ALSO ENABLES IT. SO LIKE ANY EXPLANATORY SYSTEM IT NEEDS TO
> BE USED WISELY AND IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PATIENT.
>
> - it reduces potential conflict between those distressed and those
> working with them, by generating an (illusory, inappropriate) focus for
> consultations and interventions.
> IT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE SITUATION. IF THE AUTHOR WERE A PATIENT IN
> INTENSIVE CARE FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL THIS STATEMENT WOULD PROBABLY NOT
> SEEM AS RIGHT. IN MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEMS, IF AN EXCULPATION ALLOWS PEOPLE
> TO UNFREEZE AND MOVE ON MAYBE IT IS NOT SUCH A BAD THING AFTER ALL.
>
> - it similarly allows families and relatives to more readily absolve
> themselves of responsibility.
> MY MAIN EXPERIENCE OF FAMILIES IN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES IS THAT THEY
> END UP FEELING BLAMED NO MATTER WHAT THE PROFESSIONAL INTENDED. THE
> RESULTING GUILT IS MAKING IT OFTEN VERY DIFFICULT FOR THER FAMILY
> MEMBERS TO TAKE EFFECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTION.
>
> - it is shored up by the immense resources of powerful institutions,
> whose various interests it serves. PROVIDED WE HAVE AN AGREEABLE
> DEFINITION OF WHAT THE EVIL IS WE WISH TO ATTACK I MIGHT BE ABLE TO
> WHOLEHEARTEDLY UNDERWRITE THIS STATEMENT, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS DIRECTED
> AT HTE CORRUPTING INFLUENCES OF SOME BIG PGARMA COMPANIES.
>
>
> And I'm sure there's much more than can be said than this...
> THAT IS ALMOST CERTAINLY TRUE AND I HOPE THAT MY CONTRIBUTIONS HAVE
> STIRRED THE POT A BIT. I AM NOT CLAIMING TRUTH THOUGH.
>
> MICHAEL.
> J.
> ********************************************************
> John Cromby
> School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
> Loughborough University
> Loughborough, Leics
> LE11 3TU England
> Tel: 01509 223000
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Personal webpage: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~hujc4/
> Co-Editor, "Subjectivity": www.palgrave-journals.com/sub
> ********************************************************
>
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Think before you print! Save energy and paper. Do you really need to print this email?
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You can find out more about us by visiting 'www.derbyshire.gov.uk'. If you want to work for us go to our job pages on 'www.derbyshire.gov.uk/jobs'. You can register for e-mail alerts, download job packs and apply on-line.

Please Note
This email is confidential, may be legally privileged and may contain personal views that are not the views of Derbyshire County Council. It is intended solely for the addressee. If this email was sent to you in error please notify us by replying to the email. Once you have done this please delete the email and do not disclose, copy, distribute, or rely on it.
Under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 the contents of this email may be disclosed.

Derbyshire County Council reserves the right to monitor both sent and received emails.

___________________________________ This discussion list for Community Psychology has a new website at: http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/ To post on the website blog, contact Grant or David at the email addresses below. To unsubscribe or to change your details on this COMMUNITYPSYCHUK list, visit the website: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=COMMUNITYPSYCHUK For any problems or queries, contact a list moderator: David Fryer ([log in to unmask]) or Grant Jeffrey ([log in to unmask])

___________________________________ This discussion list for Community Psychology has a new website at: http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/ To post on the website blog, contact Grant or David at the email addresses below. To unsubscribe or to change your details on this COMMUNITYPSYCHUK list, visit the website: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=COMMUNITYPSYCHUK For any problems or queries, contact a list moderator: David Fryer ([log in to unmask]) or Grant Jeffrey ([log in to unmask])