Hi
I think perhaps an important point is being missed in this debate.
Some of the discussion on the list seems to assume that social model ideas
originated in particular documents or formal texts. This seems to me to
over-emphasise the significance of particular artefacts at the expense of
the personal and political processes that led to their existence (not to
mention the subsequent processes that have increased their political
currency).
It seems to me that the UPIAS document is a good example. I would be quite
surprised if very many people with impairments in the UK, even people in the
movement, had ever really read Fundamental Principles (the 'little red
book', for those who have seen the original).
It's significance, it seems to me is not simply as text but that it offers
one of the few contemporary accounts of the process through which some
disabled people began to explain their experiences in a political way
(within a particular time and place). Clearly, I wasn't there at the time
but I get the impression that the 'big idea' (as Hasler calls it) is much
more connected to the whole process of coming together (being forced
together), sharing experiences, discussions, 'teach-ins', magazine articles,
etc. that resulted in people coming to understand their previously
individual experiences in a collective way.
The following quote from my own research gives a flavour...
'...the Union may have itself narrowed down to a rather small number of
highly intellectually active people, but I could see at a local level that
youcouldn't move in that way...I mean to get a mass movement you had to be
much more open, able to engage people where they were in their own situation
and somehow give them a feeling, a reason, you know, to want to come
together. All sorts of peopel came into contact with the Coalition, took
part in the early discussion groups and teach-ins as we called them. And
releasing things for the first time and having the opportunity to do this on
common ground, and growing in understanding as they went along. it wasn't
about imposing your own political ideas on people, because you couldn't do
that. People were isolated anyway...and yet we did move on in ideas fairly
rapidly.' (interview with UPIAS member quoted in Disability Politics and
Community Care, p63)
It would, I think, be wrong to try to reify, or fix, the text itself in
quite the way that some people seem keen to do. The retrosepctive
significance of the UPIAS document *as text* is probably the degree to which
the actual wording became incorporated over time into the formal
international political arena (see for example, ICIDH2). For those
interested in text and the development of discourse, an archaeology of this
process (through DPI, BCODP, UN, and WHO documents) might illustrate quite
neatly some of the channels of influence, connection and lobbying that went
on.
It's also interesting to read Vic's contribution to this list over the DPI
definitions a few years back. Edited highlights available ont he old site
at...
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/disability-research/files/topic-dpi-defs
Best Wishes
Mark Priestley
Centre for Disability Studies
University of Leeds
LEEDS
LS2 9JT
UK
tel: +44 113 233 4417
fax: +44 113 233 4415
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies
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