" Your ability to mediate the degree of impairment depends of course on
whether it is either possible to re-engineer the biological environment, the
physical environment and the social environment, all of which require there
to be judgement that it should be done, hence it all still fits within a
social model."
However much those environments are re-engineered, I will still be
restricted in my ability to participate in "normal" (in inverted commas this
time) life by the effects of my impairment. I am, therefore, disabled by my
impairment. Impairment effects must be brought into the equation. I am not
denying the empowering effects of the social model as a political and
campaigning tool, but we must consider why so many disabled people
(particularly older people) do not identify as such. Part of the reason, I
believe, is that the social model ignores the very real and often
distressing effects of individual impairments, which can be just as
disabling as anything society can come up with.
Margo
-----Original Message-----
From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Larry Arnold
Sent: 09 August 2008 10:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Neurodiversity, neurological disability and the public sector:
notes on the autism spectrum
No, you have a neurological "impairment" following the social model, or to
consider it yet another
way a neurological difference which has a negative impact on your bodily
condition.
It is only from particular perspectives that you are "disabled" because that
implies a judgement of
what a normal range of function should be. All that impairment is, is sub
optimal performance in a
given situation, the situation determining the degree to which a difference
is sub optimal.
In other words I am positing an environmental or engineering model of
"impairment" which gives rise
to a social model of disability and leaving the medical out of it entirely.
Your ability to mediate
the degree of impairment depends of course on whether it is either possible
to re-engineer the
biological environment, the physical environment and the social environment,
all of which require
there to be judgement that it should be done, hence it all still fits within
a social model.
A town divided by a river is "impaired", the necessity of a bridge or the
abiltiy to build one is
dependent not so much upon whether it can be done, but whether it will be
done.
As for what the self is? I have as many selves as there are people to give
selfhood to me, my own
conception of self is dependent upon so much else that the I is sometimes
elusory. (I refer you to
the concepts of false consciosness) Of course I judge from my centre how I
shall call "my" "self"
that only really makes it true for me, from the viewpoint of a vast history
and interconnection of
physicality and physics who can ever know for sure? We advance theries, and
they survive by there
usefulness as tools. I think the social model survives as an empowering tool
not a scientific
explanation, and there is a big difference because if you look at your self
in that light it
increases the possibilities that can be achieved with the given set of
circumstances one starts out
with and allows one to escape the victorian notions of everyone in there
station, the rich man in
his castle, the poor man at the gate.
Larry
________________End of message________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies).
Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.
|