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Emily Frank, EdD
Student, Disability Studies Certificate Program
In the relatively new field of Disability Studies, there is much emphasis placed on the “model” of disability that is operative in a given setting. This emphasis serves the important purpose of pushing back on the long-held primacy of the medical model, and the attendant belief that disability is an objective, singularly defined phenomenon that exists only in the individual. As explained in the UN Training Guide for The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the focus in the medical model is “very much on the person’s impairment,” “disability is an individual problem,” and “individuals can be ‘fixed’ through medicine or rehabilitation to get back to society” (2014, p. 9). Disability Studies scholars such as Mike Oliver (2004) tout the social model as a counter-narrative to the medical model because of its recognition that stigma and resulting social barriers may be a primary source of hardship and trauma for people with disabilities. While the social model provides a much-needed corrective to long-held assumptions that have privileged the views of people and institutions with money and power, it can also function as its own orthodoxy , with its own limitations.
The Interplay between Social and Medical Models
The social model alone does not capture the complex, multi-directional dynamics that impede the attainment of equity for at least some people with disabilities. In describing the social model, Bickenbach (2012) states, “The actual impact on a person’s life of a problem of physical or mental functioning is as much a matter of his or her physical, social, political, and attitudinal environment as it is a matter of the functional problem itself” (p. 25). This statement assumes that elements in “the environment” operate in reaction to “the functional problem.” Bickenbach critiques “the radical social model,” and notes that “disability” is a “complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon” resulting from multiple, interacting entities (p. 26). Like Bickenbach, Tom Shakespeare (2017) takes issue with the social model. Shakespeare describes several limitations of the model, including the fact that it does not address the reality that disabled people do have “intrinsic limitations” (p. 201). However, neither Bickenbach nor Shakespeare explore how social conditions themselves can be a root cause of disability; this interplay warrants more exploration. Systemic inequities, and resulting hardship and trauma, may be creating disabilities for some people. For example, people may have cognitive disabilities as a result of exposure to lead in water or paint in places that are supposed to be safe, such as home and school, and mental health disabilities as a result of intergenerational trauma stemming from systemic racism or profound isolation.
What is Cause, What is Effect?
How does social context create, exacerbate, or ameliorate disabilities? Is it “wrong” to consider people disabled if the root causes of their “functional problem[s]” are societal inequities? Erevelles and Minear’s essay in The Disability Studies Reader (2017), “Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality,” is relevant to this question. In writing about special education as a legacy of racial segregation, Erevelles and Minear conclude by discussing “the structural forces in place that constitute certain students as a surplus population that is of little value in both social and economic terms” (p. 394). They note that “most of these students are poor, disabled, and of color” (p. 394). They write powerfully about the marginalization and oppression of young people who are Black, poor, and disabled, and they illuminate the critical role that disability plays in that oppression.
What Erevelles and Minear don’t ask is: Is disability, at least in some circumstances, a result of social and cultural inequity, and not a condition that originates in the individual? Perhaps this question is taboo; it suggests that marginalized people, because of traumas stemming from their oppression, may have disabilities and diminished capacities. The question also points to an unstated, subtle bias towards individualism in the social model. The framing of social response as the primary hardship for people with disabilities suggests that individuals are affected and oppressed by their social context, but not in ongoing, dynamic interaction with it. For the most part, those who write about the social model do not entertain the idea that social conditions can create disabilities. In his discussion of the fight for women’s suffrage, Baynton (2017) addresses the idea that social conditions can cause disability, but only to critique this idea as “an implicit acknowledgement that capacity is indeed relevant to the question of rights” and as a reflection of “the cultural power of disability to discredit” (p. 26).
Feminist Disability Studies explores the idea that social conditions, and specifically social constructions of femininity, are disabling for women (Garland-Thomson, 2002). Garland-Thomson notes, “…feminist theorists have argued that female embodiment is a disabling condition in sexist culture” (p. 6). She calls attention to misogynistic cultural practices that disable women, such as foot binding and clitorectomies. She also describes performative expressions of femininity, such as wearing girdles and stiletto heels, that can lead to impairments for women (p. 17). These descriptions illuminate the interlocking, mutually influencing spheres of individual psychology and cultural influence in the development of disabling conditions. My particular interest within this area of inquiry is the disability that results from the blunt force of multiple inequities and traumas, as well as disabling consequences from performance of a cultural role or identity.
Would conceptualizing disability as a result of social inequities reinforce the view inherent in the charity model (Bickenbach, p. 24) that disability is a tragedy, and undermine the fight for equity for people with disabilities? Would such conceptualization make it difficult to promote disability pride, and to build political power around strong, positive disability identity? As we learned with the single medical model, orthodoxy impedes the acquisition of new insights and perspectives. Centering the perspectives of people of color, women, and also people with LGBTQ+ identities is critical to gaining deeper insight into the cycle of cause and effect with regard to societal inequities and disability.
References
Baynton, D. C. (2017). Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History. In The Disability Studies Reader (Fifth ed., pp. 17-34). Routledge.
Bickenbach, J. E. (2012). Introduction, Background, and History. In Ethics, Law, and Policy (pp. 20-50). Sage. Retrieved March 26, 2021 from https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991036759968103811
Erevelles, N. and Minear A. (2017). Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality. In The Disability Studies Reader (Fifth ed., pp. 381-395). Routledge.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002, Autumn). Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory. NWSA Journal, 14(3), 1-32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4316922. Retrieved July 24, 2021, from https://www.english.upenn.edu/sites/www.english.upenn.edu/files/Garland-Thomson_Rosemarie_Disability-Feminist-Theory.pdfni
Oliver, M. (2004). The social model in action: if I had a hammer. In Implementing the Social Model of Disability: Theory and Research. The Disability Press. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from https://www.disabilityequalityactlabour.org/the-social-model-in-action-if-i-had-a-hammer/
Shakespeare, T. (2017). The Social Model of Disability. In The Disability Studies Reader (Fifth ed., pp. 195-203). Routledge.
United Nations (2006). The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Training Guide, p. 9. Retrieved August 10, 2021 from https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/CRPD_TrainingGuide_PTS19_EN%20Accessible.pdf