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John Lawson
To cite this article: John Lawson (2001) Disability as a Cultural Identity, International Studies in
Sociology of Education, 11:3, 203-222, DOI: 10.1080/09620210100200076
JOHN LAWSON
University of Salford, United Kingdom
Introduction
Special schools occupy a contested political arena which sees special
education as segregating disabled children from their non-disabled peers
which, it is argued (e.g. Oliver, 1983, 1990, 1996; John, 1988; Barnes, 1991;
Mason, 1992; French, 1993; Oliver & Barnes, 1998), causes disabled
children to acquire a negative self image and a second-class identity.
Nevertheless, special education endures. This paper will, therefore, consider
the debate on inclusive education as represented by the views of the disability
movement and education professionals in the United Kingdom. Two themes
will feature in the discussion. Firstly, what has become a significant issue for
disability activists and theorists, namely, the concept of disability as a distinct
culture and identity. This aspect of the discussion will be located around the
notion that to be disabled is to have a particular cultural identity which, it
will be suggested, needs to be promoted unless disabled people are to run the
risk of social homogenisation as a consequence of the reductionism of being
defined merely as a social construction. Secondly, the role of education, in
the context of culture, will be discussed. Here, it will be proposed that special
education is both villain and, potentially, saviour, in the role it plays in the
formation of disabled young peoples identity. An analysis of issues relating
to inclusive education and disabled children, and the capacity of the social
model of disability to accommodate the concept of disability as a valid
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Disability
A number of terms have been used to define people with impairments. From
cripple, spastic, and invalid, to handicapped, the common factor was
that they were the property of non-disabled people. However, the emergence
of the UK disabled peoples movement resulted in people with impairments
challenging those terms and adopted the use of disabled person as the
preferred term. Consequently, to define oneself as a disabled person is to
assert the adherence to the view that ones identity is that of a disabled
person and not a person with a disability. Accordingly, to define oneself as a
disabled person is both a declaration of ones membership of a social group
and also a recognition of the objectification of disabled people which,
consequentially, oppresses them through social structures, individual
attitudes and institutional practices. The term disabled person therefore
denotes someone who has an intellectual, sensory, of physical impairment.
Use of the term should not, in itself, denote that disabled people are a
homogeneous group, but rather that they have a shared experience within
society and, whilst the nature of their impairments may differ, the
consequences of having an impairment result in a shared experience of
oppression.
Inclusive Education
Immediately prior to the adoption of the term inclusion in the early to mid-
1990s, the term in popular use had been integration. Acceptance of this
term can be seen as being, largely, the result of a discreditation of integrative
practices and their association, Reisser (1997), with the medical model with
the concomitant adherence to a concept of individual deficit. That is,
educational approaches which see children who require strategies to enable
them to learn as being problems or having difficulties. An example of why
Reisser sees integration as being a redundant concept can be found in
research conducted by Alderson & Goodey, who observed:
The unit observed is, in theory, part of the adjacent mainstream
primary school, and shares the site also with a mainstream secondary
and a large special school. There is almost no contact between the
schools, they might as well be miles apart. (Alderson & Goodey, 1999,
p. 262)
The misuse of terms has led Corbett to comment that:
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impractical, because teachers are inadequately trained and do not have the
appropriate skills.
A further complication based on self-interest is introduced by Shirley
Darlington, a National Union of Teachers Assistant Secretary, who identifies
intra professional tensions as being a potential obstacle:
The tension between the views of members working in special schools,
who saw the value of favourable staffing ratios, expert teachers and
ancillary staff, and specialised buildings and equipment, and those who
favoured integration on ideological grounds were apparent. (Darlington,
1992, p. 317)
A further facet of this aspect of the debate suggests that professionals have a
vested interest in the continuance of specialist provision. Consequently,
innovations which ostensibly meet need, are professional definitions of need.
As McNight has proposed:
Professionalized services communicate a world view that defines our
lives and our societies as a series of technical problems. Thus technical
definition is masked in symbols of care and love that obscure the
economic interests of the services and the disabling characteristics of their
practises.
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Disabled Identity
Over recent decades disabled people have developed a shared identity based
on a social model of disability. The social model has been developed
alongside a ground swell of consciousness-raising that has seen disabled
people forming organisations to represent themselves, and to promote the
rights of disabled people. It would be difficult to separate the social model
from this consciousness-raising because the two are inextricably linked, with
the result that since 1976 the social model has become the engine of the
disability movement providing the platform on which disabled people have
increasingly voiced their demands for civil rights. One aspect of this has been
a growth in disability writing. The significance of which will now be
discussed.
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identity and the notion of disability culture, and a solution found as to how
education could promote these.
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So, for Touraine, Melucci and Laclau and Mouffe, the social world is
cast in terms of its immanence and contingency, seen in its capacity for
self-governance and guidance; and social movements as conflictual,
particularistic, and activist in the pursuit of their social destiny what
Touraine calls societys struggle for historicity. (Hewitt, 1994, p. 203)
Although the latter is conducted in esoteric theoretical sociological language
it is quoted to highlight further work done on the growing development of
social movements, of which the disability movement is one, as a perceived
means of achieving change, even emancipation. Nevertheless, if the
development of group collectivism in the quest for emancipation is not to
founder as a result of over proliferation, then cultures must co-exist within a
wider framework (see Vernon, 1999). Consequently, the discussion will
continue with a focus on issues within the UK disability movement itself,
rather than on wider issues in society.
The emergence of culture within this context could be seen as a
response to the dominance of the social model which:
developed as it was by British disabled academics and activists, argues
that whatever differences or complexities exist in the way people
experience disability, the most appropriate research topic is not an
individual persons account, but rather their external social environment.
The aim is not to understand how people feel, but rather to provide fully
inclusive physical environments institutions, policies and practices.
Individual accounts are seen as a diversion from the main political
struggle of ending collective oppression. (Marks, 14, 1999, p. 612)
Criticisms of this approach have been voiced by disabled feminists, Crow
(1996), Morris (1996); disabled black women, Begum (1997), Vernon
(1997), and those who consider it does not offer sufficient scope to
accommodate sexuality, Shakespeare (1994).
Notable in debates on the nature of culture and disability have been
writers on deafness. Prominent amongst whom is Ladd (1996) who argues
that for deaf people a collective consciousness and culture is imperative.
Corker (1998) develops this line of argument further by arguing that in
organisational terms deafness and disability have been defined in relation to
work in the hearing and non-disabled environment. Young (1999) refers to a
cultural-linguistic model of deafness which identifies the uniqueness of how
deaf people experience the world as being one consequence of a shared
language, and, following Ladd (1988), she supports the cultural concept that:
Their [deaf people] characteristic traditions, attitudes, values and ways
of behaving are now understood to constitute a cultural identity. (Ibid.)
The views expressed above point to a potential ideological clash between deaf
people, the disability movement, and proponents of inclusive education.
Because, clearly, the consequence of spreading deaf people around the
ordinary school system would dilute deaf culture and would, in time, see it
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Conclusion
It has been suggested that, whilst acknowledging that special education for
disabled children has resulted in the acquisition by disabled people of a
second-class social identity, the wholesale implementation of inclusive
education would potentially result in cultural identities being diluted, denied
a voice, or even eradicated. Consequently, if it is accepted that to be a
disabled person is to have a unique cultural identity, then a likely outcome of
inclusion would be the assimilation of disabled children into a homogenised
cultural concept premised on a non-disabled social construction of a
nebulous notion of diversity.
The issue could be seen as being that for disabled children to be
educated separately from their non-disabled peers is not intrinsically
inappropriate. Indeed, groups such as the deaf community and Islamic
communities, have taken steps to ensure that children belonging to those
communities are educated in a setting which promotes their identity. On that
basis, it could legitimately be argued that it is the way in which special
schools have been organised and run that is the problem, rather than the
concept itself. Therefore, if special schools were to be seen as sites for the
positive promotion of disability as a cultural identity, then this should cause
the concept to be viewed through a different lens. Given the way in which
disabled people have organised themselves around integrated living centres,
by controlling and managing resources, and developing strategies, it is
possible to see this being a prototype for disabled people themselves
managing special schools. This would have the effect of providing positive
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role models to both the children attending the schools and their parents who,
it would be fair to say, tend to experience disability through the experience of
caring for their disabled child at home.
Clearly this goes against contemporary thinking on education, but does
offer an alternative to the untried ideological project of total inclusion, and
would ensure the retention of some choice for disabled children and their
parents.
Correspondence
John Lawson, School of Community, Health Sciences and Social Care,
University of Salford, Allerton Building, Frederick Street, Salford M6 6PU,
United Kingdom (j.lawson@salford.ac.uk).
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International Studies
in Sociology of Education
CALL FOR PAPERS
Volume 12 Nos. 1, 2 and 3, 2002
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