Hi. Marlene, Paul, and other list mates.
This is Masakuni. Sorry for too late reply.
First of all, I apologize to Paul for personaly sending this message .
As you pointed out, what I said in previous posting came from my personal
experience. I will not generalize
it to all physically disabled. To say nothing of persons with some
difficulties.
My opinion is that both of commonality and difference are important.
Stress on only one aspect is not good, even harmful for the person
concerned. Specially, emphasis on commonality makes them feel oppressive.
Difference serves as mirrors, which reflect each of them. Gaining other
participant's perspective on the problems leads to deeper understanding one'
s problem. one cannot know oneself without others.?One often insists their
situation more eloquently or enthusiastically, and?one can reflect one's
situation much deeper than usual, for persuasion,?when he/she confronts with
different view, not the same one. But extremely?different view isn't very
good, because one cannot find common ground at?all. Some common grounds are
indispensable to communication or dialogue.
In my fieldwork, one of the research participants(he is different from those
I mentioned before) told me that he had enlarged his meaning of disability
by relation to various people with physical disabilities, like cerebral
palsy, muscular dystrophy, or other more severe disabilities. An article on
his story is now printing, though it is in Japanese. The Stories in previous
my post was discussed in another article under the title the meaning of
disabilities in the narrative by people who acquired disabilities from the
life stories "the former able bodied". It is also in Japanese.
Difference has tendency for them to have discriminatory feeling toward other
members. It is said that disabled need association one another. I admit this
significance however, full association makes another differentiations. If
some disabled persons unite beyond the variety, a new inner group emerges in
spite of distinction in kinds of disability. The inner group, however, will
soon find another distinctive attribution. To give an example, these will be
gender, severity, congenital / acquired, occupation and so on. Some sub
groups will be made a short time being based on these attributions. I do not
think that full or complete unification (if possible) can grasp only some
parts of disabled. Difference and commonality go together.
Maybe this is beside the point, we cannot too careful in the telling
"difference" for our discussion not to advocate discrimination. If
researchers describe the stories mentioned above in academic paper, lots of
people are apt to believe that comparison is a good strategy despite
researchers' intention. Their belief may oppress those who are compared with
at the same time.
We often fallen into double-bind situation where we should not lump people
together as 'disabled', and we cannot understand them without any
categories. Categorizing is double-edged sword.
Thank you.
Masakuni
________________End of message______________________
Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List
are now located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
|