Disability and Identity Flashcards
Impairment
Abnormal functioning of the body that isn’t a disability
- becomes a disability when it prevents them from carrying out day to day tasks
Briefly explain the medical model of disability described by Best (2005)
This model assumed that disability is a personal tragedy and that the disabled deserves our pity,
And that they are dependent on the able bodied so can’t function affectively without help
Briefly explain the social model of disability
- Oliver (1996) and Best (2005) ideas on it
Biological disability isn’t as important as social disability
- Oliver argues it is society which disables physically impaired people because they are excluded from full participation in society by stereotypical attitudes held by able bodied people
- Best believed the problem is in the social constructions of prejudice that surround disability instead of inside their bodies
Briefly explain Shakespeare (1998) ideas on disability as a social construct
Argues people become disabled because they have physical or mental differences from the majority that challenges the traditional ideas of what it is to be normal and the discrimination they therefore face
Why do sociologists suggest most of the UK population are disabled?
Because they are mostly impaired in some way but are rarely classified as disabled due to arguments of what degree of difference there is between an impairment or disability
- e.g. poor eyesight without glasses isn’t socially labelled as a disability as it doesn’t hinder social mobility or the structure of society
Briefly explain disability as a master identity
Due to stereotypes in any society of a ‘normal’ body may generate a disabled identity among those with bodies that don’t conform to this stereotype and many people with impairments experience difficulty asserting their own choice of identity due to their disability overriding other aspects of their identity (= master identity)
Disability as a stigmatised/spoiled identity
- include Goffman theory of impression management
Label of disabled carries stigma arising from stereotyping that prevents people with impairments from achievement full acceptance
Goffman believed disabled people fail at impression management because stereotypes of disability spoil their presentation of self and the identity they wish to project to others
Briefly explain Kallianes and Rubenfeld (1997) ideas on women with disabilities
They are often discriminated against in terms of their ability to be a mother due to being disabled
- there’s been many cases in which disabled women have been forcibly sterilised or have their children forcibly taken into care
They are even more likely than women are already, to be discriminated in the workplace
Briefly explain mass media representations of the disabled
- include Longmore (1987) , Cumberbatch and Negrine (1992)
Disabled are often represented negatively by the mass media.
Longmore suggests they tend to be represented on tv as inhuman, dependent on others, objects of pity/charity.
Cumberbatch and Negrine argue they are rarely presented as ‘a person who happens also to have a disability’ instead of it being the prominent feature about them
Briefly explain Marxist ideas on disability
- include Finklestein (1980)
Finklestein and other Marxists suggested our cultural attitudes towards the disabled may be the product of capitalist emphasis on work as a source of identity, status and power.
He suggested industrialisation was responsible for a dramatic shift in cultural attitudes from the disabled being segregated, because capitalist society requires a healthy and fit workforce to generate profit for capitalist class and the disabled become an economic burden so they are defined as abnormal because they are a social problem.
Briefly explain Marsh and Keating (2006) ideas in disabled identity and independence
They are critical of the negative social reaction to disability which views the disabled as dependent and constantly in need of help and assistance, however they point out very few of us are independent as we are all dependent on many aids of mobility and communication.
very few of us could function without a phone and transport so why do those with mobility aids attract so much negative social reaction.
Briefly explain recent developments of disabled identity
Recent criticisms of the social model of disability acknowledge that prejudice and discrimination need to be addressed and the social environment we live in isn’t always conducive to the disabled.
Obviously those with physical and mental impairments will experience social life differently due to pain too but it is about finding the ways to cope with both physical impairment of the body and social limitations of the social environment.
