Squaring the Circle

INTRODUCTION

At the moment I’m considering a variety of interconnected themes. Sometimes I believe certain scholar activists are guilty of trying to square the circle and make arguments or practice neatly fit together.

We aren’t helped by the dominant thinking associated with disability. According to the World Health Organisation “disabilities” include individuals’ impairments, measured impact and negative social consequences. All of these sites are determined by an individual’s impairment. Hence it is stated that a “person HAS a disability”. I, and the original disability activists, reject this individualistic approach used to define disability.

At no time did the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation deny or ignore the fact that individuals who have impairments can be bodily constrained; that is often what I use the term ‘impairment reality’, but this is not in our opinion the root cause of people’s social restrictions. I want to explain why I talk about impairment reality and not impairment effect.

IMPAIRMENT REALITY

Dominant views stem from the idea that it is meaningful to compare the workings of an impaired body with that of a non-impaired body. Hence the less an impaired person functions like a ‘normal person’ the more ‘disabled’ someone is, Is it really meaningful?

It’s often argued the social approach “doesn’t talk about what Carol Thomas calls ‘impairment effects’ (which are different for everyone, but might include pain and fatigue).” In my opinion this criticism misrepresents the argument UPIAS put forward. UPIAS believed our social disadvantage came from the ways in which society’s is organised. They suggested contemporary capitalist society took ‘little or no account’ of people with impairments; I believe in the final analysis this is true, however, this is not the whole story. What was missing was the ideological grounding of our treatment. It precisely how society evaluates people with impairments that ultimately leads to how we are excluded and/or marginalised within society.

Society focuses, as I’ve argued all along, upon individual functioning. No matter how they wrap it up, ever since the middle of the 19th century. people’s impairments have been “blamed” for the person’s own misfortune within society. UPIAS and scholar activists linked with their thinking had a different focus. We sought to address how society disables people with impairments. This alternative approach broke the causal link between impairment and social disadvantage.

 Rather than see functional loss as the cause of social restriction, the radical social approach saw the cause of social restriction as being the failure to factor in the fact people have impairments. If we take for example the question of pain and fatigue as mentioned previously, does the social approach ignore them?

I often use this Mike Oliver quotation:

Using the generic term [disabled people] does not mean that I do not recognise differences in experience within the group but that in exploring this we should start from the ways oppression differentially impacts on different groups of people rather than with differences in experience among individuals with different impairments.”

I agree with this because our approach isn’t about trying to address living with impairments in a disabling world, but rather the impact of social relations for groups of people with impairments. No model or approach could address how Jack or Jackie live with pain or fatigue, but it’s possible to explore how oppressive societal attitudes and practice is vis-a-vis pain and fatigue and the impact this may have in terms of creating social restrictions / disabling barriers for the likes of Jack and Jackie.

In my view talking about impairment effect is problematic. It’s possible  to speak about the impact of impairments in terms of functioning, for example, seeing, hearing, walking, dexterity, etc. however this can be misleading as not all impairments are static, presented in obvious ways or are predictable. Whilst I acknowledge the fact Thomas accepts UPIAS’ understanding that disablement is ‘relational’, I’m less convinced by how she articulates the notion of impairment effect because in my opinion it always needs contextualising if and when talking about individual experiences.

The methodology of the Department of Works and Pensions’ tests are based upon the bio-psycho-social approach. With the mobility element it is completely obsessed with functioning – can you mobilise twenty metres. There is no social consideration here. Walking 20 metres on a flat carpet is not the same as walking on a slope on a pavement. The DWP are interested only in what they see as impairment effect which makes their tests so oppressive. I rather talk about impairment reality as opposed to impairment effect – am I splitting hairs?

The word effect means “a change which is a result or consequence of an action or other cause”, therefore ‘impairment effect’ is an assumed evaluation of how an impairment changes bodily functioning. I say assumed because not only is it individualised, I would argue it’s overlaid with both objective and subjective meanings. The word reality on the other hand means “the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them”. In my mind this is about accepting ‘an altered state of a given body’. Within medicine it may be of value to appraise the nature and degree of impairment as it effects a body, but within a social context I would argue what we should be addressing is impairment reality and doing so in a non-judgemental matter. This is why breaking the causal link is so important. It is also why I believe it is misleading to focus on so called “ableism”.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN IMPAIRMENT AND DISABILITY

When UPIAS and Finkelstein looked at how people with physical impairments were seen and treated the dominant thinking was that a medical condition created a difference in body structure or organism; this was a ‘flawed body’ i.e. impaired. If this impaired body had a loss or reduced function, then the person had a ‘disability’ i.e. the inability to perform accepted and expected bodily tasks I want to argue that this isn’t just about society or doctors being preoccupied with ‘ability’, but is part of the regulatory social construction of “normality” required by developing capitalist societies – it wasn’t just impaired bodies who were subjected to the imposition of ‘normative values’ either. Most oppressions are legitimated by this “Othering”.

UNDERSTANDING OPPRESSION

Further, there are consequences for not paying enough attention to the similarities and differences between oppressions. Paul Abberley was critical of UPIAS’ and Oliver’s imprecise way of talking about disabled people’s social oppression. Abberley saw the impaired body as the site of struggle:

“In developing theories of sexual and racial oppression it has been necessary for theoreticians of the women’s and anti-racist movements to settle accounts with biology, which in both cases has been employed to explain and to justify social disadvantage. For a theory of disability as oppression however an important difference arises when we consider the issue of impairment. While in the cases of sexual and racial oppression, biological difference serves only as a qualificatory condition of a wholly ideological oppression, for disabled people the biological difference, albeit as I shall argue itself a consequence of social practices, is itself a part of the oppression. It is crucial that a theory of disability as oppression comes to grips with this `real’ inferiority, since it forms a bedrock upon which justificatory oppressive theories are based and, psychologically, an immense impediment to the development of political consciousness amongst disabled people. Such a development is systematically blocked through the naturalisation of impairment.”

This paragraph contains the core weakness within the directions that many American and British scholar activists have gone in. Our failure to address adequately impairment reality in terms of ‘not being the same as’ people without impairments. In Britain we’ve either played down or been ambiguous about impairment reality; whereas in the US they have flipped the social construction whereby they are reversing the purchase of dominant oppressive ideologies. The quotation from Abberley exposes this idealistic nonsense. I can’t address this in great detail here, but I question the positioning of impairment reality within American disability politics and their articulation of “Disability Pride”.

COMING TO TERMS WITH DISABILITY

Vic Finkelstein attempted to explain the social approach towards disability by subverting the dominant definitions of the WHO – impairment, disability and handicap. The definition of impairment was unaltered. Vic then acknowledged how some impairments caused personal constraints i.e. handicaps. Finally, he argued the social disadvantages or restrictions were imposed by negative interactions which ‘disabled’ people with impairments.

The ICIDH and Vic’s subversion of them both employ the notion of interaction between the impaired person and their social environment, but how the ‘interaction’ is articulated is very different. An interaction is between two sides – the impaired person on the one side and their social environment on the other. In dominant approaches the ICIDH and the ICF, the impaired person’s social environment is nearly always their immediate one. In other words we are talking about things taking place at a micro level.

The two sides are not viewed as having equal significance. The negative interactions are seen as being heavily influenced by the person’s impairment. A wheelchair user is prevented from entering a building — side A disabled by the inability to walk, so when side B presents a flight of stairs the disabling barriers results from both the inability to walk and the failure to compensate for that inability. I chose my words deliberately here.

The UPIAS’ argument sees both sides as well – the impaired person and their social environment. The interaction is however viewed differently. On side A is the impaired person and their inability to walk is an impairment reality, however a negative interaction takes place because the social environment failed to plan into the building design the possibility that a wheelchair user might need to access the building. There is no direct causal link as ANY wheelchair user would encounter the disabling barrier. This said, Vic acknowledges that negative interactions are two sides. This relates back to both impairment reality and Abberley’s point about ‘real” inferiority.

In societies designed for and operated primary by people without impairments, the social environment is likely to be more disabling for people with significant impairments. This isn’t Vic agreeing with the ‘normative evaluation’ associated with functionality; it relates to the social exclusion and marginalisation encountered by disabled people. The focus is on the need to address disablement at both macro and micro levels of society. It is a direct challenge to the whole social organisation of society.

What should be clearer now is the difference between blaming the individual’s nonconformity for their positioning within society and pointing towards the creation of disablement through the way people with impairments are excluded from social participation. This comes back to the question of squaring the circle – how should we view the relationship between impairment [bodily difference] and disability [social restriction]. I see the binary ability/disability construct as judgemental nonsense. Impairments can reduce or remove functionality, however when this is ideologically operationalised, it becomes oppressive.

Making comparisons based upon degrees of functionality sets people with impairments up to fail; it also reinforces the individualistic approach of seeing disability as a ‘personal problem” rather than a socio-political one. To embrace the difference between impairment reality and disablement requires a political leap. The Labour Party isn’t ignorant about the radical social model of disability, the truth is that to adopt it would mean accepting a negative critique of capitalism and people like Corbyn would need to break with their ‘normative values’ – but this goes for much of the Left as well.

SOCIAL RESTRCTION AND DISABLING BARRIERS

I believe Vic Finkelstein’s approach helped to inform Disability Equality Training. Whilst DET assisted people in understanding the inequality disabled people faced, I feel it also created problems. To make things easier to grasp, the nature of disabled people’s oppression was simply boiled down to a question of ‘disabling barriers’. If we then train on ‘removing disabling barriers’, the assumption can be made that we can create a barrier-free society. Again, trying to square the circle. Is capitalism just a disabling barrier then?

In a similar fashion, emancipation was reduced to the demand for ‘social inclusion’ and our social oppression viewed purely as discriminatory practice that could be solved via legal rights! This drift towards the reformist ‘disability rights’ approach undermined the radical nature of the original social approach towards disability. In my opinion, the other major mistake was not being clear enough about disability politics.

Disability politics were about challenging the nature of society, they were not about all things to do with living with impairments in general. By focusing on the social model and disabling barriers, little or no space was created to deal with the wider aspects of our social oppression. Did the Disabled People’s Movement address the hegemonic power of disablism? In my opinion it failed to do this because it ignored both the significance of impairment as a site of struggle and inadequately explained that discrimination and social oppression are not one and the same.

DISCRIMINATION AND SOCIAL OPPRESSION

Discrimination is defined as being ‘the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people’. The key issue here is ‘treatment’. It’s possible to have positive and negative ‘unequal and differential treatment’ from individuals, groups and institutions. I tend to think of discrimination as acts which can be direct, indirect or structural i.e. institutional discrimination. The action arises from idea, but usually enacted through policies, procedures and practice. I believe discrimination stems from disabled people’s social oppression therefore they aren’t one and the same.

Many of my political ideas on this subject concur with those of Paul Abberley, but there are some differences. I do share his starting point which was:

“A crucial feature of oppression and the way it operates is its specificity, of form, content and location; so to analyse the oppression of disabled people in part involves pointing to the essential differences between their lives and those of other sections of society, including those who are, in other ways, oppressed.” This issue of ‘essential difference between lives of disabled and nondisabled people’ underpins the specific nature of our social oppression. I also believe it indicates why intersectionality is an important question – the specific oppressive experiences groups of disabled people. The lives of disabled women differ from those of men for example.

It is my argument that people with impairments are seen as lacking in social worth when identified through their nonconformity. The issue isn’t so much that capitalist society doesn’t take them into account, but rather its through the ways society does evaluate their actual or potential social roles. Historically, the inability to labour has always had social and economic consequences. Abberley argues:

“A theory of disability as oppression, then,

(1) recognises and, in the present context, emphasises the social origins of impairment;

(2) recognises and opposes the social, financial, environmental and psychological disadvantages inflicted on impaired people;

(3) sees both (1) and (2) as historical products, not as the results of nature, human or otherwise; (4) asserts the value of disabled modes of living, at the same time as it condemns the social production of impairment; (5) is inevitably a political perspective, in that it involves the defence and transformation, both material and ideological, of state health and welfare provision as an essential condition of transforming the lives of the vast majority of disabled people.”

There is nothing here I’d disagree with, but I believe the argument needs to be extended as the nature of disabled people’s social oppression has to be understood in terms of why the value of ‘disabled modes of living’ [sic] remains unacceptable under capitalism. I view ‘disabled modes of living’ as meaning people with impairments developing lifestyles which address impairment reality within the constraints of a disablist society.

HOW TO VIEW IMPAIRMENT VERSUS PEOPLE WITH IMPAIRMENTS

Part of the political debate has to be around the relations between impairment and disability. Both disabled and nondisabled people struggle with this. I’ve not seen anyone address this difficult question the way Abberley does and often I feel the Disabled People’s Movement opted out by focusing purely on our lived experience of social oppression and avoided confronting the reasons why we’re oppressed. In this context it is valid to say the issue of impairment hasn’t been adequately addressed within disability politics. Abberley argues:

“In developing theories of sexual and racial oppression it has been necessary for theoreticians of the women’s and anti-racist movements to settle accounts with biology, which in both cases has been employed to explain and to justify social disadvantage. For a theory of disability as oppression however an important difference arises when we consider the issue of impairment. While in the cases of sexual and racial oppression, biological difference serves only as a qualificatory condition of a wholly ideological oppression, for disabled people the biological difference, albeit as I shall argue itself a consequence of social practices, is itself a part of the oppression.” Why is this important? He goes on to explain:

“This rejection of the authenticity of impaired life forms is exhibited both in the obvious form of what Dartington, Miller and Gwynne (1981) call the “less than whole person” view, and its inverse, the “really normal” ideology, which finds its expression in everyday life in the exceptionalism of `but I don’t think of you as disabled’, denying a key aspect of a disabled person’s identity in what is intended as a compliment. Compare this phrase to `played like a white man’ and `she thinks like a man’.

What is required is essentially an attitude of ambivalence towards impairment, that is “co-existence in one person of love and hate towards the same object” Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964). Impairment must be identified as a bad thing, insofar as it is an undesirable consequence of a distorted social development, at the same time as it is held to be a positive attribute of the individual who is impaired. An analogy may be drawn here with the feminist treatment of so-called `women’s troubles’. The key distinction that must be made is between the prevention of impairment, on the one hand, and attitudes to and treatment of people who are already impaired on the other.”

Many disabled people would balk at this key distinction and I believe it can’t be an absolute position because where would this leave Deaf people? This said, I’m a materialist not an idealist; the majority of impairments aren’t natural but produced through human action which is detrimental to human life. I understand how ‘kill or cure’ is established within oppressive ideologies, but this isn’t the basis for Abberley’s argument. We need to discuss the ways in which impairments come into being and separate this from the disablism which rejects the value within the lives of people with impairments.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Here is a definition of oppression that outlines for me why social oppression is more than encountered discrimination.

“Oppression is a phenomenon of power in which relations between people and between groups are experienced in terms of domination and subordination, superiority and control. Those with power control; those without power lack control. Power presupposes political, economic and social hierarchies, structured relations of groups of people, and a system or regime of power. This system, the existing power structure, encompasses the thousand of ways some groups and individuals impose control over others.” (Charlton, J. 1998) I believe the capitalist mode of production turned people with impairments into disabled people. The developed capitalist society seeks to police and regulate people and through these processes people with significant impairment have been excluded and marginalised. Much remains to be done to address the oppressive nature of society. Neither the social approach nor disability politics sets out to address the lived experiences of people with impairments and it would be irresponsible to try and square the circle this way.

Abberley, P., The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disabilityin Disability Studies: Past Present and Future edited by Len Barton and Mike Oliver; Leeds: The Disability Press, pp. 160 – 178, 1997

Oliver , M., Capitalism, disability and ideology: A materialist critique of the Normalization principle (1994)

Charlton, J., Nothing About Us Without Us, University of California Press, 1998

Finkelstein, V., Attitudes and Disabled People, New York, World Rehabilitation Fund, 1980