UCEDD Trainee Seminar

Spring 2010Welcome!

I. 1960s Construction of Normal

• Young, married, white, urban, northern heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports’ (Goffman 1963: 128).

• Who is missing from the above description?

II. Disability Studies Predecessors

• Disability Rights

• Independent Living

III. Disability Studies ‘The Discipline’

A. Interdisciplinary • Explore corporal, sensorial and cognitive

experiences• Questions in-built social exclusion• Departs from exclusionary models

IV. Purpose

Depart from ‘disability business’• Rejects presuppositions about bodys and

capacity• Unconcern with the improvement of the

‘human stock’• Find unique worldview

V. Models of Disability

• Medical/Individual

• Social?Minority

VI. Comparison

Medical Model• Condition is seen as a deficiency

or abnormality• Condition is usually seen as

negative• Disability is seen as an individual

“problem”• The individual is the focus of

intervention• The intervention agent is the

professional

Sociopolitical Model• Impairment seen as difference• Condition seen as neutral• Disability derives from

interaction between individual and society

• The environment is the primary focus of intervention

• Disability is addressed by disabled individuals, peers, political activism and self-help

VII. Definitions & distinctions

• Impairment: Lacking part or all of a limb, or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.

• Disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physi cal impairments and thus excludes them from partici pation in the mainstream of social activities (UPIAS)

VIII. A note of caution

• The social model is not about showing that every dysfunction in our bodies can be compensated for by a gadget, or good design, so that everybody can work an 8-hour day and play badminton in the evenings. It’s a way of demonstrating that everyone — even someone who has no movement, no sensory function and who is going to die tomorrow — has the right to a certain standard of living and to be treated with respect. (Vasey 1992: 44)

IX. Society’s reaction to Disabilities

A. Institutionalization/warehousing– Rehabilitation– Limited or unrealized rights

X. Thinking critically?

A. What do you think about these phrases:A. I don’t think of you as ‘disabled’B. Everyone has some sort of disability

XI. Professional ImplicationsA. Preventing marginalizationB. Understanding the experienceC. Egalitarian Collaborations

XII. Q & A

Discussion via group email list “UCEDD Trainee Spring 2010”

XIII. Resources– National Review of English Language Disability Studies Degrees and

Courses - Article can be found at: http://www.dsq-sds.org/issue/view/41

– Society for Disability Studies (SDS) - http://disstudies.org/– Disability Studies Quarterly (Open access academic journal)– http://www.dsq-sds.org/– Association of University Centers of Disability (AUCD)– www.aucd.org – Administration on Developmental Disabilities -

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/add/ddact/DDACT2.htmlD. Disability Studies Quarterly -