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Disability Studies: A historicalmaterialist viewB. J.
GLEESONPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: B. J. GLEESON (1997) Disability Studies: A
historical materialistview, Disability & Society, 12:2,
179-202, DOI: 10.1080/09687599727326
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Disability & Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1997, pp. 179 202
Disability Studies: a historicalmaterialist viewB. J.
GLEESONUrban Research Program, Research School of Social Sciences,
The Australian National
University, Canberra, ACT. 0200, Australia
ABSTRACT This paper presents an historical materialist view of
recent accounts of disability
in Western societies. This view is presented in two main parts:
rst, as an in-depth appraisal
of the eld of disability studies, and secondly, as an outline
for an alternative, historical
materialist account of disablement.
The critical assessment of disability studies nds that recent
accounts of disability are in the
main seriously de cient in terms of both epistemology and
historiography (though some
important exceptions are identi ed). In particular, four speci c
areas of theoretical weakness are
identi ed: theoretical super ciality, idealism, the xation with
normality, and an unwillingness
to consider history seriously. It is argued that these de
ciencies have prevented the eld of
disability studies from realising its potential to challenge the
structures which oppress impaired
people.
From this critical epistemologica l perspective, an outline is
made of an alternative,
materialist account of disability, stressing both theoretical
and political agendas.
Introduction
This paper presents a historical materialist view of disability
studies within Western
social science [1]. This view is presented in two main parts:
theoretical critique and
theoretical alternative.
The rst part of the paper is an in-depth appraisal of the eld of
disability
studies. An assessment of this length cannot hope to cover the
entire corpus of
literature on disability. The intention here is not to survey
the uneven terrain of
disability studies exhaustively, but rather, to visit this
through a series of speci c
theoretical appraisals. Consequently, this review consults a
cross-section of
in uential accounts of disability as the basis for its
appraisal. The sample of
literature is drawn mostly from North American and British
sources, although some
Australian contributions are included in the assessment. The
review focuses upon
the literature concerning physical disability.
From this critical epistemological perspective, an outline is
then made for an
alternative, historical materialist account of disability. This
alternative account
traces both a new theoretical framework for understanding
disability and the
contours for an emancipatory political practice by disabled
people and their allies.
0968-7599/97/020179-24 $7.00 1997 Journals Oxford Ltd
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180 B. J. Gleeson
The paper is structured as follows. First an initial speci
cation of `disability
studies is made. Following this, an appraisal of disability
studies is organised in four
main sections: theoretical development, idealism, normalisation,
and the history of
disability. The paper concludes by outlining an alternative
historical materialist
approach to disability, drawing upon the recent political
economic analyses of
Abberley (e.g. 1989, 1991a,b, 1993), Finkelstein (e.g. 1993),
Gleeson (e.g. 1993,
1995) and Oliver (e.g. 1989, 1990 , 1993).
Disability Studies
Disability studies is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging
as a `coherent [2]
discourse in the 1950s [though studies of disability, especially
in anthropology, were
known previously, e.g. see the studies by Evans-Pritchard (1937)
and Hanks &
Hanks (1948)]. The rise of the civil rights movement in the
United States during the
1960s did much to encourage the growth of a discernible eld of
disability studies.
However, disability studies remains in the United States mostly
a discourse on
policy issues, such as employment, physical access, bene t
rights and de-institution-
alisation [3].
As the rubric suggests, disability studies is a
cross-disciplinary endeavour [4]
with the major points of contact lim ited to journals and
conferences. The lack of
disciplinary boundaries is a potential advantage, allowing
disability studies the
freedom to integrate the rather arbitrary divisions of thought
institutionalised in
Western academies (e.g. between Political `Science and
Economics).
However, both this unbounded character and the inchoate
development of
disability studies make it a dif cult theoretical terrain to
appraise. This paper
critically traces some of the important theoretical contours of
disability studies by
mapping a cross section of important (i.e. widely cited)
contributions from a variety
of social scienti c commentators. As mentioned earlier, this
`critical mapping of the
terrain of disability studies is undertaken from an historical
materialist perspective.
Four major evaluations of disability studies now follow.
Theoretical Development
Disability studies is a form of enquiry which has drifted long
in atheoretical currents
(Barnes, 1995; Radford, 1994). This is, in part, due to the fact
that many of its
contributors are either practitioners (mostly social workers) or
advocates. Both
groups of observers tend to focus on the immediate policy
landscape. In recent
years, several serious considerations of the epistemological
dimensions of disability
have been made [see, for example, Barton (1991), Davis (1995)
and the collection
edited by Rioux & Bach (1994)]. Many of these recent
contributions to the social
theorisation of disability have been by disabled academics [e.g.
Hahn (1989), Oliver
(1990, 1993), Abberley (1991a,b, 1993), Zola (1993) and
Shakespeare (1994)].
However, the broad eld of disability studies remains dominated
by discussions of
policy matters, often conducted within discursive circles of
disability professionals
[see Smith & Smith (1991) for a recent Australian example of
this].
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 181
The failure of the social sciences generally to consider
physical impairment as
an important issue partly explains the atheoretical cast of its
discursive subsidiary,
disability studies. This may be seen as part of the wider
problem of the entrenched
indifference of social science to issues of human embodiment
[see Frank (1990) and
Turner (1984, 1991) on this].
Before proceeding further it must be stated that the policy
orientation of
disability studies represents both a weakness and a strength of
the eld. The latter
quality should never be underestimated. The historical
materialis t nds much that
is gratifying in a theoretical discourse so rmly rooted in the
world of everyday social
practice. Though often expressed in theoretically
unsophisticated terms, the asser-
tions contained in the works of many disability scholars are
frequently marked by a
rst-hand grasp of the social oppression which attends
impairment.
By nature, disability studies justi ably challenges the social
theorist by demand-
ing explanations that lead to policy prescription. The
highly-politic ised (if often at a
somewhat timorous policy level) nature of disability studies
promises great potential
for a more theoretically-in formed praxis. A powerful force for
this politic isation has
been the increasing numbers of disabled people making in uential
contributions to
the eld from critical theoretical perspectives (e.g. Abberley,
1985, 1987, 1989;
Hahn, 1986, 1987, 1988 , 1989; Oliver, 1986 & 1990; Morris,
1991, 1993a,b;
Appleby, 1994).
A series of empirically-grounded analyses during the 1970s and
1980s by
disability commentators focused on mainstream social scienti c
concerns includ-
ing gender (e.g. Campling, 1981; Deegan & Brooks, 1985), age
(e.g. Walker, 1980),
race (Thorpe & Toikka, 1980), education (e.g. Anderson,
1979) and class (e.g.
Townsend, 1979). Although primarily cast within a policy
framework, these investi-
gations of critical sociocultural aspects of disablement laid
the empirical and concep-
tual groundwork for a sociological approach to disability. The
sociological turn,
which gathered strength in the 1980s, represented an important
departure from a
tradition of disability commentary which had drawn heavily upon
variants of
methodological individualism (e.g. psychopathology) (Leonard,
1984; Oliver,
1990).
Nevertheless, the disability debate still suffers the legacy of
theoretical depri-
vation. Put simply, for most of its existence, the eld of
disability studies has been
notable in social science for its failure to engage major
theories of society. Its
potential to be radically transformed by, and in turn to
transform, the broader
currents of social theory has heretofore remained largely
latent. One vainly scruti-
nises many of the essay collections concerning disability in
recent decades (e.g.
Laura, 1980; Ferguson et al., 1992; Ballard , 1994) for examples
of commentators
seriously engaging social theory and philosophy; most references
to epistemology in
these diverse works are either allusive or tokenistic [5].
A pathology of the atheoretical cast of disability studies is
the tendency of
commentators to mire themselves in a de nitional bog. The
seemingly endless
iterations of de nitional orthodoxies concerning the meaning of
terms such as
`disability , `impairment and `handicap are a problematic
feature of the discourse
(Oliver, 1990). The inability of observers to agree on the basic
terms of the debate
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182 B. J. Gleeson
is in fact the discourse s incapacity to comprehend the
nature-culture relation, which
in turn stems from the absence of strong social theory. Without
recourse to the
established debates on the nature-culture relation, disability
studies are condemned
to a Sisyphean exercise of moving from one unsatisfactory de
nition to another. It
will later be argued that historical materialism offers one
epistemological solution to
this de nitional conundrum.
Theoretical super ciality has encouraged a further linguistic
diversion in dis-
ability debates. This concerns the regular announcements that
currently-favoured
collective and individual terms for disabled people have become
outmoded and in
need of immediate replacement by `less dehumanising
alternatives. Whilst not
denying the political importance of the process of naming social
groups, it must be
stated that this endless tendency to reinvent titles for
disabled people is characteristic
of a vacuous humanism which seeks to emphasise a `human
commonality over the
material reality of oppression. Typical of this is the
insistence by many commen-
tators on terms which primordially stress the humanity of
disabled people e.g.
`people with disabilities . This paper follows Abberley
(1991a,b) in rejecting the now
popular notion that `people with disabilities is a humanising
improvement on the
term `disabled people (the same may be said for the singular
form). Abberley
(1991a,b) declares this to be a retrograde terminological change
which effectively
depoliticises the social discrim ination that disabled people
are subjected to. He is
not prepared to accept the displacement of the adjective
`disabled until disabled
people are actually permitted to experience social life in fully
human ways.
The wider consequences of the theoretical unconsciousness of
disability studies
are manifold and cannot be fully essayed here. However, this
discussion cannot
neglect to mention the critical dynamics of gender and race
which remain largely
beyond the ken of disability studies. Some movement towards
consideration of these
other potential oppressions and the multiple subjectivity of
disabled people
seems to have emerged in recent years [6]. This has doubtless
been inspired by the
political experiences of practitioners, advocates, and, more
importantly, disabled
people themselves. The growing awareness in Western countries of
social move-
ments based upon coalitions of the marginalised, has no doubt
encouraged an
increasingly broad view of oppression amongst disability
commentators (cf.
Abberley, 1991a; Young, 1990).
Hahn (1989) has made some particularly thoughtful surveys of the
common
political ground which might potentially link, if not unite,
minority social move-
ments. Abberley has also emphasised the link between disability
and other forms of
social oppression, remarking that:
This abnormality is something we share with women, black,
elderly, gay
and lesbian people, in fact the majority of the population
(1991a, p. 15).
In addition, a feminist perspective which explores the `double
handicap of gender
and disability has begun to emerge both in Australia (e.g. Orr,
1984; Cass et al.,
1988; Meekosha, 1989; Cooper, 1990; William s and Thorpe, 1992)
and overseas
(e.g. Deegan & Brooks, 1985; Lonsdale, 1990).
Nonetheless, it must be concluded that disability studies still
exists in a state of
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 183
theoretical underdevelopment. There is much to be done in terms
of applying the
insights of social theory and philosophy to the issue of
disability. Barnes (1995)
recent caution against inaccessible terminology (particularly of
the post-modern ilk)
and theoretical opacity in disability studies is well advised.
However, the issue of
discursive clarity and accessibility must not be confused with
the need for theoretical
substance in analyses of disability. Disability is a social
phenomenon and must
therefore be explained through recourse to theories of society
(cf. Oliver, 1990).
Idealism
Where social theory has been consulted in disability studies,
the analyses have
frequently emphasised the non-material dynamics (e.g. attitudes,
aesthetics) that
supposedly characterise the human experience of impairment. Much
of the social
theoretical work on disability has been sourced in philosophical
idealism, an episte-
mology which presumes the human environment to be the product of
ideas and
attitudes (Gleeson, 1995). Abberley (1991a), for example, identi
es certain forms of
individual and social psychological perspectives as evidence of
idealist explanations
of disablement. Hevey also declaims against idealist
explanations of disability where
the material world (for disabled people, the material world of
physical
inaccessibility) is taken as given and xed and is an artefact of
the world of
attitudes and ideas (1992, p. 14).
Individual psychology approaches are evident in many studies of
disability and tend
to explain disability as a `personal tragedy which `sufferers
must adjust to, or cope
with (Oliver, 1990). The historical genesis of this approach may
be traced to the
early 1960s when, for example, Wright (1960, p. 1) was able to
observe approvingly
that
the study of adjustment to disability is beginning to be
regarded as a
serious area of investigation by more than a few psychologists
(emphasis
added).
Both Oliver (1986, 1990) and Abberley (1991a) have exposed the
inadequacy of
this `personal tragedy mysti cation which is central to the
individual psychology
perspective. Social psychology, on the other hand, has inspired
a formidable
idealism in disability studies and deserves some critical
appraisal.
For commentators who subscribe to a social psychology view,
disability is
viewed as an ideological construct rooted in the negative
attitudes of society towards
impaired bodies (Abberley, 1991a; Fine & Asch, 1988). Whilst
`social forces are
acknowledged as constitutive dynamics, their material contents
are overlooked in
favour of psychological or discursive structures (Meyerson,
1988). The most notor-
ious example of social psychology is the explanation of
disability advanced by the
interactionist perspective, whose chief evangelist was Goffman
(e.g. 1964, 1969).
For Goffman, an individual s `personality is said to arise from
social inter-
action as an iterative process between actors where attitudes
are formed on the
basis of the perceived attributes (positive and negative) of
others (Jary & Jary, 1991).
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184 B. J. Gleeson
In this view, disability is understood as a `stigma a negative
social attribute or
sign which emerges from the ritualistic interaction of actors in
society. Thus,
interactionists, like Goffman, were able to posit the reality of
a `disabled personality
moulded by an in nity of stigmatising encounters (Abberley,
1991a, p. 11,
emphasis added). Abberley (1991a) rightly dismisses this view
for its idealism,
evidenced both by its inability to offer any satisfactory
explanation of belief forma-
tion (interactionism merely describes this), and the lack of
appreciation of the
materiality of social practices (such as `interaction ).
The interactionist fallacy of explain ing disability as the
product of aesthetic and
perceptional dynamics continues to nd favour in disability
studies. Warren (1980,
p. 80) exempli es this tendency with his remark that
handicap should not be `objecti ed , not be made a `thing out
there in the
world , but rather be seen as a matter of interpretation.
Similarly, Deegan & Brooks (1985, p. 5) suggest that the
social restrictions of
disability are enforced by `a handicapped symbolic and mythic
world .
The political implications of dematerialising the explanation of
disability are
clear. The view of disability as an attitudinal structure and/or
aesthetic construct
avoids the issue of how these ideological realities are formed.
Idealist prescriptions
are consequently reduced either to the ineffectual realm of
`attitude changing
policies or the oppressive suggestion that disabled people
should conform to
aesthetic and behavioural `norms in order to qualify for social
approbation.
This last point invites consideration of a further tendency
within disability
studies. At issue is the service principle of `normalisation ,
more latterly known
amongst some of its adherents as `social role valorisation
(Wolfensberger, 1983,
1995).
Normalisation
The principle of social role valorisation, which began life with
the revealing epithet,
`normalisation , was described by Wolfensberger & Thomas
(1983, p. 23) as `the use
of culturally valued means in order to enable, establish and/or
maintain valued social
roles for people . As the original title suggests, this service
philosophy which has
been taken up with great vigour in much of the Western world
since the 1970s
[7] has the normalisation of socially-devalued (or `devalorised
) people as its object
[8]. The appeal to extant `culturally valued means to improve
the social position of
groups such as disabled people effectively forecloses on the
possibility of their
challenging both the established norms of society and the
embedded material
conditions which generated them. `Normality , as the set of
`culturally valued social
roles is both naturalised and rei ed by this principle.
Abberley (1991a, p. 15), speaking as a disabled person,
admonishes `normalis-
ing philosophies and service practices for failing to locate
`abnormality in the
society which fails to meet our needs . These perspectives
assume, instead, that
abnormality resides with the disabled subject. Abberley s
(1991a) rebuke emphasises
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 185
the materialist view, already considered in this discussion,
that humans are charac-
terised by varying sets of needs which cannot be described
through references to
`norms . As he sees it, disabled people, amongst other social
groups, are oppressed
by societies which fail to meet their basic human requirements,
most notably the
desire for inclusion in social relations.
Abberley (1991a, p. 21) argues that disabled people do not
desire the current
social standard of `normality , but rather seek a `fuller
participation in social life .
For many disabled people (especially historical materialists
like Abberley), the
predominant bourgeois mode of social life is neither `normal ,
nor one to which they
aspire [see also Abberley (1993) on this]. This is to echo Young
s (1990) in uential
critique of normative political theories which have effaced the
critical fact of human
social difference by presupposing abstract, homogenized notions
of human subjec-
tivity.
History and Disability
The Absence of History in Disability Studies
Disability studies are largely an ahistorical eld of enquiry
(Scheer & Groce, 1988).
Given the criticisms outlined above, this nding may not be
surprising. Disability
studies have remained nearly silent on the issue of history; a
situation encouraged
by the failure of most of its participants to engage established
social theory. On
this Abberley (1987, p. 5) offers disability analysts the
following well-earned
iconoclasms:
the sociology of disability is both theoretically backward and a
hindrance
rather than a help to disabled people.
Furthermore:
Another aspect of `good sociology generally absent is any signi
cant
recognition of the historical speci city of the experience of
disability
(Abberley, 1987, p. 6).
In an earlier article, Abberley is more speci c about the
historical unconsciousness
of disability studies:
A key defect of most accounts of handicap is their blind
disregard for the
accretions of history. Insofar as such elements do enter into
accounts of
handicap, they generally consist of a ragbag of examples from
Leviticus via
Richard III to Frankenstein, all serving to indicate the
supposed perennial,
`natural character of discrimination against the handicapped.
Such
`histories serve paradoxically to produce an understanding of
handicap which is
an ahistorical one. (Abberley, 1985, p. 9, emphasis added.)
As Abberley is aware, disability studies have not entirely
erased history; they have,
however, trivialised the past to the point where it is little
more than a rei cation of
the present.
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186 B. J. Gleeson
Before reviewing the lim ited attempts to produce histories in
disability studies,
it is advisable to rst mention the wider problem which has
contributed to this
failing.
`The Creatures Time Forgot [9]
The social sciences in particular, history must themselves
accept responsibility
for the indifference to the past in disability studies. This has
been recognised by
several disability commentators, including Haj (1970), Oliver
(1990), and McCagg
& Siegelbaum (1989) [10]. The former is notable for his
early recognition of the
disabled body s absence in the historical discourse. For Haj
(1970, p. 13), disability
represented `a vast uncharted area of history . His comment was
to go unheard
and 20 years later Oliver (1990 , p. xi) felt compelled to claim
that `[o]n the
experience of disability, history is large ly silent . Only one
historian (Riley, 1987)
seems to have acknowledged that the issue of impairment in past
societies has been
large ly ignored.
The few attempts made at considering the historical dimensions
of disability
hardly amount to an adequate treatment of the issue. The early
study by Watson
(1930), whilst interesting for its empirical content, is both
atheoretical and con-
descending towards its pathologised subject. In it `the cripple
is portrayed as a
transhistorical problematic which different cultures have had to
deal with (`the
cripple and `civilisation are revealingly juxtaposed in the book
s title).
The only other notable history of disability Haj s (1970) study
of Disability in
Antiquity is much less patronising towards its subject. Haj
(1970) carefully circum-
scribed his interesting study by concentrating on disability in
Islamic Antiquity.
Whilst Haj s (1970) historical and cultural purview is much more
lim ited than
Watson s (1930), his analysis is far richer in theoretical
terms. However, like
Watson s (1930) chronicle, Haj s (1970) investigation never
seems to have come to
the attention of disability studies.
Two Approaches to History in Disability Studies
Temporality has been ignored or trivialised by disability
commentators in a range of
speci c ways. Generally, however, two broad types of
historiography are evident
within disability studies. The rst strategy is by far the most
common and is
characterised by the type of apriorism and speculation that
Abberley (1985) refers
to. The usual form is for a commentator to present a few
paragraphs on the `history
of disability (usually restricted to Western societies, though
the ambitious are not
usually so restrained) by way of prefatory remark to a more
contemporaneous study.
Examples of the `microscopic history approach are almost
limitless see, for
example, Sa lios-Rothschild (1970), the essays in the Laura
(1980) collection,
Topliss, (1982), Harrison (1987), Lonsdale (1990), and Smith
& Smith (1991).
The chief defects of these historical sketches include brevity,
lack of empirical
substantiation, theoretical underdevelopment and rei cation
(through idealist ten-
dencies). Whilst there is neither time nor need to explore all
of these de ciencies in
detail, it is worth pausing to consider certain of the
consequences that these studies
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 187
have had for the historical consciousness of disability enquiry.
Importantly, the
lim ited historiography of disability studies seems to have
burdened the eld with a
number of assumed orthodoxies about the social context of
impairment in previous
societies.
The rst orthodoxy is the belief that the predominance of a
`Judeo-Christian
ethic in past European (particularly pre-modern) societies was
directly responsible
for the historical oppression of impaired people. Smith &
Smith (1991, p. 41)
evidence the continuing currency of this view by pointing to
the Judeo-Christian ethic of associating physical defects with
sin. Since
people are supposedly created in the image of God, anything
which fails to
t that image is deemed imperfect that is, not Godly and hence
evil.
According to this judgement, people with physical disabilities,
through
their obvious blemishes, are wanting and epitomised as bad
Two objections may immediately be raised to this orthodoxy.
First, it is not at all
clear that disabled people were subject to universal social or
religious antipathy in
pre-modern societies. This is an a priori speculation which
ignores the complexity of
how discursive religious and ethical mores were socially
concretised for disabled
persons. The fallacy of reading historical material reality
directly from ideological/
religious texts or aesthetical records of the past is a failing
of idealist approaches in
general.
Secondly, this conjecture is a case of methodological delendum
subjectum, relying
on a simplism in this instance the `Judeo-Christian ethic to
justify the absence of
complicating historical realities. The history of
Judeo-Christian thought and practice
can hardly be explained through appeal to a single `ethic .
Christianity had a much
more complex presence in European society than such a
construction would allow,
with its teachings subject to localised interpretations, and
even rejections, in varying
periods.
Even theologically, Judeo-Christian thought was hardly a
cohesive `ethic , being
characterised by discrepancies of interpretation at many levels;
the constant dis-
agreements over the spiritual signi cance of materialities being
one example of
these. There were certainly many lines of religious thought on
the question of
disability. The in uential philosophy of Spinoza (1632 1677),
for example, opposed
negative constructions of disability. For Spinoza:
A physical cripple is such because of its place in the system:
God has not
tried to produce perfection and failed (Urmson & Ree, 1989,
p. 305).
In addition, in the realm of everyday life, feudal peoples may
have welcomed the
presence of disabled mendicants, as Braudel (1981, p. 508)
explains:
In the old days, the beggar who knocked at the rich man s door
was
regarded as a messenger from God, and might even be Christ in
disguise.
Though subject to a variety of interpretations (e.g. Bovi, 1971;
Foote, 1971), the
inclusion of various groups of lame beggars in the works of
Bruegel (1520? 1569)
(see especially The Fight Between Carnival and Lent and The
Cripples) would seem to
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188 B. J. Gleeson
signify that those with physical `maladies had a valued place
within the pre-modern
social order.
The other rei cation of the schematic approach to history is the
view that all
impaired people were beggars in the pre-industrial era. This
orthodoxy is explained
by Sa lios-Rothschild (1970):
the disabled have always been `problematical for all societies
throughout
history, since they could not usually perform their social
responsibilitie s
satisfactorily and became dependent upon the productive
ablebodied.
(Emphasis added.)
Hahn (1988, p. 29) is also convinced that disabled people in the
pre-modern world
were doomed to become either beggars or minstrels
who wandered through the countryside until they became the rst
group to
receive outdoor relief under the English Poor Law of 1601 and
subsequent
legislation.
Elsewhere he repeats this view in even more strongly fatalistic
terms:
To the extent that disabled persons had any legitim ized role in
an inhos-
pitable environment prior to the advent of industrializa tion,
they were
beggars rather than competitive members of the labor force.
(Hahn, 1987,
p. 5.)
Consequently:
Unlike most disadvantaged groups, disabled adults never have
been a
signi cant threat to the jobs of nondisabled workers (Hahn,
1987:5).
William s & Thorpe (1992), although not writing within the
disability studies
discourse speci cally, testify to the resilience of the
disabled-as-beggars approach in
Australia. They quote Cass et al. (1988) in the following:
In Australia, people with disabilities were regarded in the
nineteenth
century as part of the `deserving poor and, as such were
`appropriate
objects for pity, protection and charity . (William s &
Thorpe, 1992,
p. 110.)
The effect of this view is to silence history, projecting
disabled people s relatively
recent experience of service dependency and marginalisation
through the entirety of
past social formations. This assumption must be rejected on two
grounds. First, it
is based on a lim ited reading of extant textual and visual
records of disability and
makes no attempt to capture the concrete experience of impaired
persons in
historical societies (Scheer & Groce, 1988). Thus, the view
of all disabled persons
as beggars is based upon an ontological and methodological
selectivity which must
inevitably run the danger of rei cation. Second, this
construction of disability in
history has odious political implications by encouraging the
identi cation of impair-
ment with social dependency.
The second approach to history in disability studies is
relatively recent in origin .
It contrasts with the rst, being characterised by a greater
depth of analysis, the
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 189
consultation of documentary evidence (to varying degrees), and
reference to major
historical and social theories. This analysis will review two
examples of this [11]:
rst, the chronicle produced by Stone (1984) which has received
considerable
attention; and second, the historical materialis t accounts
offered by Finkelstein
(1980), Oliver (1986, 1990), and Abberley (1985, 1987,
1991a,b).
As its title The Disabled State indicates, Stone s (1984)
history is predicated
upon a statist approach [12]. In this she posits the historical
existence of dual
`distributive systems in societies: one involving the activities
of those producing
suf cient value to meet their own needs and more; and the other,
a sort of social
circuit of dependency which includes those who cannot maintain
self-suf ciency.
From this dualism a basic `redistributive dilemma is held to
arise, presenting an
enduring socio-political problem for states.
The tension between the two systems based on work and need is
the
fundamental distributive dilemma (Stone, 1984, p. 17, emphasis
added.)
For her, disability is explained as a juridical and
administrative construct of state
policy which is aimed at resolving this supposed redistributive
predicament.
Many objections must be raised to Stone s (1984) chronicle.
However, a full
exegesis of these cannot be entertained here, and the following
analysis will be
lim ited to two general critic isms. First, the historiography
of the account is both
selective and ambiguous. The chief defect is the projection of
the `redistributive
dilemma construct seemingly through all history; an
epistemological presumption
which has little empirical substance. This `distributive dilemma
is, for example, of
doubtful relevance to the explanation of primitive societies
where a dichotomy
between `producers and dependants was neither obvious, nor
culturally-enshrined.
In reality, Stone (1984) is referring to a far more recent
episode of human
history where social formations have been characterised by
remuneration systems
which assume a direct reciprocity between indiv idual work and
individual reward.
That Stone (1984, p. 15) really has these social formations in
mind is evidenced by
her claim that `societies
face the problem of how to help people in need without
undermining the
basic principle of distribution according to work. (Emphasis
added.)
The reciprocity between work and reward for individuals which is
assumed here is
not a `basic principle in primitive societies. Mandel (1968, p.
31) provides
clari cation on the primitive organisation of labour:
Differences in individual productive skill are not re ected in
distribution.
Skill as such does not confer a right to the product of
individual work, and
the same applies to diligent work.
The co-operative character of the primitive labour process
favours a communal,
rather than individual, distribution of the social product
[13].
The anthropologists, Dettwyler (1991) and Scheer & Groce
(1988), doubt that
any `distributive dilemma can easily be identi ed in any past
society, let alone in
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190 B. J. Gleeson
primitive social forms. Dettwyler (1991) sees the social
category of dependency as
exceedingly uid, and warns against the tendency to reduce it to
physical impair-
ment:
In reality, every population has members who are, for varying
lengths of
time, nonproductive and nonself-supporting. (1991, p. 379.)
Dettwyler believes that
as with children, disabled people in most societies partic ipate
as much as
they can in those activities that they are capable of
performing. (1991,
p. 380.)
Thus,
[e]very society, regardless of its subsistence base, has
necessary jobs that
can be done by people with disabilities (Dettwyler, 1991, p.
380.)
The consequence of this view is that
[i]t is presumptuous of anthropologists to assume that they can
accurately
assess how productive disabled individuals might have been in
the past.
(Dettwyler, 1991, p. 381.)
One would expect the accuracy of such analysis to be rather
better for societies in
the more recent past; Dettwyler is probably thinking of
primitive society when
making this remark. However, the comment serves as a general
caution against the
historicist tendency to cast impaired people as the objects of a
`distributive dilemma
throughout human history.
By historically universalising the qualities of certain modes of
production, Stone
(1984) is encouraged to adopt confusing generalisations, such as
seemingly equating
`peasant societies (a vague term in her analysis) with
subsistence forms of pro-
duction. A subsistence community is characterised by the absence
(or extreme
lim itation) of productive surplus and most commonly refers to
simple societies such
as tribes or hunter-gatherer groups (Jary & Jary, 1991).
Peasant societies, by
contrast, embody a different form of social development, usually
organised around
an agrarian economy, and where surpluses may be both common and
signi cant.
Consequently, Stone s (1984) analysis must be seen as applying
only to relatively
recent Western modes of production viz. feudalism and capitalism
in spite of the
wider historical ambit it assumes.
The second objection to Stone s (1984) account is that it avoids
or trivialises
the primal motive force of distribution the social relations of
production. The
statist approach emphasises disability as a juridical and
administrative construct,
thereby subjecting it to conceptual de-materialisation. This
approach can only reveal
the meaning of disability to the state; it cannot adequately
claim to capture the
concrete reality of impairment in social relations generally.
The actual lived experi-
ence of impairment in the past can only be sensed through
materialist analyses of the
organisation of production and reproduction [14].
Insofar as Stone (1984) has produced a record of public policy
approaches to
disability in relatively recent Western history, the project may
be seen as a quali ed
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 191
success. The analysis cannot, however, claim to be an historical
explanation of
disability as a concrete social experience. The primary motive
force in the social
construction of disability must be the material organisation of
production and
reproduction. Disability, as a policy response of states to the
contradictions of
exploitative modes of production, is itself a material force in
social relations.
However, state policy and practice cannot be taken as an
accurate empirical record
of how disabled people lived in previous societies. The
juridical record, in particular,
cannot divulge the historical lived experience of disabled
people, however much the
law may have helped to shape the social context of impairment
[15].
The great danger of chronicles such as Stone s (1984) is that
they (unwittingly?)
encourage belief in a `beggared history of disability. The
tendency is to reduce the
concrete lived experience of impairment to the more lim ited
domain of disability as
state social policy. This must both obfuscate the material
genesis of disability and
reify the entrenched policy construction of impaired persons as
ineluctably depen-
dent upon social support. The history of disabled people, with
its potential material
complexity, is reduced thus to a saga of vagabondage and
marginality. Paradoxically,
as Abberley (1985) has recognised, this view is effectively an
ahistorical one.
So far this analysis has reviewed two types of approach to the
history of
disability: the rst, the idealist, `microscopic chronicles
evident in policy-orientated
literature; and the second, the more sophisticated, statist
approach of Stone (1984).
Against these, theorists such as Finkelstein (1980), Leonard
(1984), Oliver (1986,
1990), and Abberley (1985, 1987, 1991a,b) have proposed a
historical materialist
explanation of disability. Although none of these authors has
offered a comprehen-
sive materialist chronicle of disability (Oliver comes closest
with a useful historical
chapter in his 1990 study), their analyses have clearly
established the need for such
an endeavour. In addition, the works of Oliver (1986, 1990) and
Abberley (1985,
1987) represent, together, an important step towards de ning the
elements of a
materialist history of disability.
At one point Oliver (1990) voices an ambivalence towards
historical material-
ism, but he is clearly guided by this mode of analysis in his
speculations about past
treatments of impaired persons. Though sometimes given over to
pluralism , and
idealism [16], the work of Hahn (1986, 1987, 1988, 1989) is also
inclined towards
a materialist interpretation of Western history. Finkelstein
(1980), whose early
comments on the history of disablement provided an important
spur to the interest
of Oliver and Abberley in this question, may also be counted as
a `fellow-traveller
of materialism . However, the rather enigmatic character of
Finkelstein s (1980)
historiography is a serious point of difference.
Though yet to produce much in the way of historical empirical
substance,
this materialis t approach in disability studies is important
for the conceptual
break it asserts with other forms of explanation. Of critical
importance is the
assertion by these materialis t analysts that disability is both
a socially- and
historically-re lative social relation that is conditioned by
political-economic
dynamics. Thus, Oliver (1990) is able to argue that the concrete
experience of, and
attitude towards, impairment has differed between modes of
production. Feudal
society, for example,
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192 B. J. Gleeson
did not preclude the great majority of disabled people from
participating in
the production process, and even where they could not
participate fully,
they were still able to make a contribution. In this era
disabled people were
regarded as individually unfortunate and not segregated from the
rest of
society. (Oliver, 1990, p. 27.)
Oliver (1990) is clearly against the `beggared view of
impairment in history.
The feudal situation is one that Oliver (1990) and the other
materialists
contrast with the experience of disablement in capitalist social
formations. For these
commentators, disability is viewed as a historically- and
socially-speci c outcome of
social development. Consequently, they are at pains to point out
that impairment
hasn t always been equated with dependency, and that material
change may liberate
disabled people from contemporary forms of oppression.
Outline for a Historical Materialist Account
From Critique to Theory
A historical materialist evaluation of disability studies has
been presented. The
assessment is that recent theories of disability are in the main
seriously de cient in
the critical areas of epistemology and historiography (though
some important
exceptions were identi ed). In particular, four speci c areas of
theoretical weakness
were identi ed. The critic isms were: the detachment from major
social theory;
idealism; the xation with normality; and historical
unconsciousness. These
de ciencies have prevented the eld of disability studies from
realising its potential
to challenge the structures which oppress impaired people.
The epistemological super ciality of many disability accounts
was pointed to.
However, the analysis also highlighted the failure of the
broader social sciences to
consider the question of disability. This can be attributed to
the neglect of the body
in general within social theory historically. The tradition of
historical materialist
thought stands similarly condemned, having failed in the past to
acknowledge the
material importance of both the body and disability in social
relations (Gleeson,
1993).
The policy orientation of disability studies was seen as both a
strength and
weakness of the eld. Whilst the policy focus may explain the
theoretical shallowness
of certain explanations of disability, it also demonstrates a
concern for praxis so
often lacking in other areas of social science. Disabled writers
have contributed
powerful accounts of the concrete experience of the oppression
of disablement. A
historical materialist approach would seek to cultivate this
evident strength of the
eld, thereby foreclosing on any tendency to subject disability
to abstract contem-
plation.
Materialising Disability
The historical materialist view of disability is a recent
development. In the past,
Marxian theory and practice has ignored or trivialised most
social oppressions that
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 193
weren t dependent upon class; critical social dynamics like
gender, race and dis-
ability were simply ignored or marginalised as theoretical
`specialisms (Vogel,
1983). In fact, Marx made some interesting allusions to
disability, in the form of
comments on the surplus labour force (the `industrial reserve
army ) and the
`crippling effects of industrialism (Marx, 1976) [17]. These
remarks, however, were
ignored by subsequent Marxist scholars and activists and it must
be acknowledged
that the issue of disablement has been large ly neglected in the
socialist tradition [the
work of Mandel (1968) is a rare exception].
In recent years some members of the British Disability Studies
community have
been exploring historical materialism as a social theory which
might illuminate the
genesis and reproduction of disablement in Western societies
[see, for example, the
work of Abberley (1987, 1991a,b), Finkelstein (1980) and Oliver
(1986, 1990)].
Leonard s (1984) attempt to theorise identity formation amongst
those social groups
marginalised by the capitalist economy, including the unemployed
and disabled
people, was an important early step in the development of a
materialist understand-
ing of disability (Oliver, 1990). Leonard s (1984) explanation
of the `disabled
identity drew upon the inchoate sociological accounts of
disability commentators,
such as Finkelstein (1980) and Campling (1981). These early
critical instincts in
disability studies encouraged Leonard (1984) to implicate
certain ideological struc-
tures (e.g. professional knowledge) and social institutions
(e.g. the family) in the
genesis of the disabled identity. However, Leonard s materialism
is critically limited
by his failure to problematise, and explain, the
political-economic structures
(notably, employment markets) which economically devalue
disabled people and
thus expose them to ideological marginalisation.
Amongst other things, materialism requires the recognition that
all social
relations are products of the practices which humans pursue in
meeting their
basic needs for food, shelter, affective ties, movement and the
like. The social
practices of each community are seen as transforming the basic
materials
both physical and biological received from previous societies
(Bottomore et al.,
1983). These basic, historically-received materials are known to
materialism
as ` rst nature , and include everything from the built
environment to the
bodies social actors receive from previous generations. When
these materials are
then taken and remade by a succeeding society they become known
as `second
nature .
From materialism emerges a distinctive conception of disability
which parallels
this twin conception of rst and second natures [see, for
example, Abberley (1987,
1991a,b), Finkelstein (1980) and Oliver (1986, 1990)] . These
theorists have insisted
upon an important conceptual distinction between impairment,
which refers to the
absence of part of or all of a limb, or having a defective limb,
organism or
mechanism of the body and disability, which is the socially
imposed state of
exclusion or constraint that physically impaired individuals may
be forced to endure
(Oliver, 1990). From this disability is de ned as a social
oppression which any society
might produce in its transformation of rst nature the bodies and
materials
received from previous social formations. The critical point is
that the social
construction of physically impaired people as disabled people
arises, in the rst
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194 B. J. Gleeson
instance, from the speci c ways in which society organises its
basic material activities
(work, transport, leisure, domestic activities). Attitudes,
discourses and symbolic
representations are, of course, critical to the reproduction of
disablement, but are
themselves the product of the social practices which society
undertakes in order to
meet its basic material needs. Important is the assumption that
impairment is simply
a bodily state, characterised by absence or altered physiology,
which de nes the
physicality of certain people. No a priori assumption is made
about the social
meaning or signi cance of impairment. Impairment can only be
understood con-
cretely viz. historically and culturally through its
socialisation as disability or
some other (less repressive) social identity.
This is not to say that the materialist position ignores the
real limits which
nature, through impairment, places upon individuals. Rather,
materialists seek to
separate, both ontologically and politically, the oppressive
social experience of
disability from the unique functional lim itations (and
capacities) which impairment
can pose for individuals. Impairment is a form of rst nature
which certainly
embodies a given set of lim itations and abilitie s which then
places real and in-
eluctable conditions on the social capacities of certain
individuals. However, the
social capacities of impaired people can never be de ned as a
set of knowable and
historically xed `functional lim itations . The capacities of
impaired people are
conditioned both culturally and historically and must therefore
be de ned through
concrete spatiotemporal analyses.
Far from being a natural human experience, disability is what
may become of
impairment as each society produces itself sociospatially :
there is no necessary
correspondence between impairment and disability. There are only
historical-
geographical correspondences which obtain when some societies,
in the course of
producing and reproducing themselves, oppressively transform
impaired rst nature
as disablement. As the foregoing survey demonstrated, there is
an established
tendency for disability analysts to reduce disability to
impairment: the ahistorical
and aspatial assumption that nature dictates the social
delimitation of disability.
Against this, materialism recognises that different societies
may produce environ-
ments which liberate the capacities of impaired people whilst
not aggravating their
lim itations.
It is certainly possible to point to historical societies where
impairment was
sociospatially reproduced in far less disabling ways than has
been the case in
capitalism. The historical analyses of Morris (1969), Topliss
(1979), Finkelstein
(1980), Ryan & Thomas (1987), Gleeson (1993) and Dorn (1994)
have all opposed
the idea that capitalist society is inherently less disabling
than previous social forms.
Gleeson s (1993) substantial empirical investigation has shown,
for example, that
whilst impairment was probably a prosaic feature of the feudal
England, disablement
was not.
Gleeson (1993) attributes the non-disabling character of feudal
English society
both to a con ned realm of physical interaction and, more
importantly,
to the relative ly weak presence of commodity production. He
argues that the
growth of commodity relations in late feudal England (i.e. from
around the 15th
century) slowly eroded the labour-power of impaired people.
Market relations,
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 195
and the commodi cation of labour, introduced a social evaluation
of work the
law of value into peasant households which had heretofore been
relatively
autonomous production units. The increasing social authority of
the law of value
meant the submission of peasant households to an abstract
external force (market
relations) which appraised the worth of individual labour in
terms of average
productivity standards. From the rst, this competitive, social
evaluation of
individual labour-power meant that `slower , `weaker or more in
exible workers
were devalued in terms of their potential for paid work [see
also Mandel (1968) on
this].
Impaired workers thus entered the rst historical stage of
capitalis t accummula-
tion handicapped by the devaluing logic of the law of value and
competitive
commodity relations. Also under the impress of commodity
relations, sites of
production were themselves evolving (in fact, convulsively by
the late 18th century),
and were recreating as social spaces which were compelled by the
logic of
competition to seek the most productive forms of labour-power.
The `original
handicap which early commodity relations bestowed upon impaired
people was
crucial in setting a trajectory of change in both the social
relations of production and
their sociospatial settings (e.g. factories) which progressively
devalued their labour
power.
The commodi cation of labour resulted in the production of
increasingly
disabling environments in Britain and its colonies. The
emergence of the industrial
city in the late eighteenth century crystallised the
sociospatial oppression of disabled
people which had been slowly rising after the appearance of
commodity relations in
the late feudal era.
One disabling feature of the industrial city was the new
separation of home and
work, a common (if not universal) aspect of industrialism which
was all, but absent
in the feudal era. This disjuncture of home and work created a
powerfully disabling
friction in everyday life for physically impaired people. In
addition, industrial
workplaces were structured and used in ways which disabled
`uncompetitive
workers, including physically impaired people. The rise of
mechanised forms of
production introduced productivity standards which assumed a
`normal (viz,
usually male and non-impaired) worker s body and disabled all
others.
As Marx (1981) pointed out at the time, one result of these
changes was the
production of an `incapable stratum of labour, most of which was
eventually
incarcerated in a new institutional system of workhouses,
hospitals, asylums, and
(later) `crippleages . Industrialism, he believed
produced too great a section of the population which is
incapable of
work, which owing to its situation is dependent on the
exploitation of the
labour of others or on kinds of work that can only count as such
within a
miserable mode of production. (Marx, 1981, p. 366.)
For impaired people then, the social history of capitalism
appears as a sociospatial
dialectic of commodi cation and spatial change which
progressively disabled their
labour power.
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196 B. J. Gleeson
The Need for Historical-Materialist Research
The foregoing presented an historical sketch of the oppressive
socialisation of the
impaired body in a relatively recent period of human history.
[Gleeson s (1993)
analysis provides a comprehensive version of this account,
contrasting the experi-
ences of disabled people in late feudal England and Colonial
(19th century)
Melbourne.] However, there remains a vast continent of human
history including,
for example, `prim itive and Classical societies which remains
unexplored by
materialist scholars of disability. Moreover, the heretofore
limited attempts to
analyse the concrete situation of disabled people in the variety
of feudal and
industrial capitalist societies await further empirical
elaboration. (What do we know,
for example, about the speci c experiences of disabled people
during the separate,
rst phases of industrialisation in Britain and the United
States?) There is, therefore,
a pressing need for empirically-grounded research on the social
experience of
disabled people in nearly all historical societies. Such
research is urgently required
if materialism isn t itself to repeat the errors of conventional
social science by
proposing ahistorical and speculative accounts of
disablement.
There is, of course, a more immediate political reason
underscoring the call for
empirically-sound research on disability by materialist
analysts. A distinguishing,
and politically-salient, feature of materialism is its
insistence that the fundamental
relationships of capitalis t society are implicated in the
social oppression of disabled
people. This suggests that the eliminiation of disablement (and,
for that matter,
many other forms of oppression) requires a radical
transformation, rather than a
reform, of capitalism . Historically-grounded research is thus
needed both to identify
those speci c dynamics of capitalism which oppress disabled
people and also to
demonstrate the ways in which impairment was experienced in
alternative social
formations. The latter research aim is critical given that
capitalism has not been the
exclusive source of disablement in human history, and the
project of creating a new,
non-disabling society must surely have regard for the oppressive
potential of
putatively-emancipatory political movements. For this reason, it
is politically im-
portant that materialis ts turn a critical gaze towards the
historical experience of
disabled people in `socialist societies.
A Radical Political Agenda
What are the conceptual and political implications of the
materialis t viewpoint for
disability? An important argument of the foregoing review was
that disability cannot
be dematerialised and explained simply as the product of discrim
inatory beliefs,
symbols and perceptions. Materialism opposes such idealism by
arguing that distinct
social oppressions, such as disability, arise from the concrete
practices which de ne
a mode of life. Oliver, for example, has argued that the
experience of impairment
cannot be understood in terms of purely internal psychological
or inter-
personal processes, but requires a whole range of other material
factors
such as housing, nance, employment, the built environment and
family
circumstances to be taken into account. (1990, p. 69.)
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A Historical Materialist View of Disability Studies 197
This is certainly not to say that attitudinal change, for
example, should not be an
important goal in the struggle against disablement. The
materialist view acknow-
ledges the critical role of beliefs, symbols, ideologies, and
the like, in reproducing
disabling social environments. [Shakespeare (1994), for example,
has argued per-
suasively for the consideration of `cultural representations
within `social models of
disability.] However, the central emphasis for a transformative
political practice
must be on changing the material structures which marginalise
and devalue impaired
people.
Importantly, these structural phenomena cannot be reduced to
simple `material
surfaces , such as the built environment, but must include the
social practices and
institutions which devalorise the capabilities of impaired
people [18]. The discrimi-
natory design of workplaces, for example, often appears to
disabled people as the
immediate source of their economic exclusion. However, this is
true in only a very
immediate sense. The real source of economic devaluation is the
set of sociostruc-
tural forces that condition the production of disabling
workplaces. The commodity
labour market is, for example, clearly implicated in the
construction of disabling
employment environments. This market realm, through the
principle of employ-
ment competition, ensures that certain individuals (or bodies)
will be rewarded and
socially-enabled by paid labour, whilst others are economically
devalued and sen-
tenced to social dependency, or worse.
An obvious target for change is the social system through which
the labour of
individuals is valued (and devalued). This suggests that the
commodity labour
market must either be dispensed with or radically restructured
so that the principle
of competition is displaced from its central role in evaluating
tness for employment
(cf. Barnes, 1992; Trowbridge, 1993; Lunt & Thornton, 1994).
The commodity
labour market uses the lens of competition to distort and
magnify the lim itations of
impaired people: a just society would seek to liberate the
bodily capacities of all
individuals (cf. Young, 1990).
Short of a profound transformation of competitive labour
relations, it is dif cult
to imagine the end of disablement. In the era of global `market
truimphalism
(Altvater, 1993), many will promptly dismiss the materialist
view forthwith as
politically naive. A recognition, however, that commodity
relations exploit workers
or that patriarchy oppresses women has not stopped feminist and
class-based social
movements pursuing broad political change aimed at transforming
these oppressive
structures. Neither should the vastness of the emancipatory
project overwhelm
disabled people and their allies.
NOTES
[1] Historical materialism the philosophical underpinning of
Marxist social theory sees the
production of people s natural (physical) needs as the motive
force in human history
(Bottomore et al., 1983). Very broadly, materialism is a mode of
social explanation that
emphasises the economic and social activities which humans
undertake in order to meet
their everyday needs. In this view, ideological, psychological
and other non-material
processes, are seen as important, though not in themselves
determinative, dynamics in
social life.
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198 B. J. Gleeson
[2] This is to say, self-consciously organised, rather than
lucid or insightful.
[3] Barnes (1995, p. 378) has argued recently that `most of the
work on disability coming out
of the USA has been bereft of theory .
[4] There are relatively few academic departments which deal
exclusively with disability theory
and policy in Western universities.
[5] The collections edited by Barton (1989) and Swain et al.
(1993) are exceptions to this
observation; although in both volumes the engagement by many of
the contributing authors
with social theory is both uneven and limited.
[6] See, for example, the collection by Begum et al. (1994) and
the recent review of this by
Oliver (1995).
[7] Normalisation continues to inform service policy and
practice in many Western countries:
witness the recent volume of essays on Normalisation in Practice
edited by Alaszewski & Ong
(1990).
[8] See also Wolfensberger & Nirje (1972) for a full
explanation of the principle.
[9] The title of Hevey s (1992) recent treatise on disability,
social theory and photography
suggests the abandonment of disabled people by the discipline of
history.
[10] These authors make the general claim that `while modern
social science developed, the
disabled as a social group were ignored (McCagg &
Siegelbaum, 1989, p. 5).
[11] The six historical essays on disability in the Soviet Union
in the McCagg & Siegelbaum
(1989) collection must also be noted here. Unfortunately, the
rather singular national focus
of the studies reduces their relevance to the present
discussion.
[12] See also Berkowitz (1987) and Liachowitz (1988) for
alternative statist accounts which
focus on the development of disability policy in the United
States.
[13] `The customs and code of honour of the tribe are opposed to
any individual accumulation
in excess of the average (Mandel, 1968, pp. 30 31, his
emphasis).
[14] It is timely, given this and previous criticisms, to recall
here Marx s (1978, p. 5) warning
that we cannot judge `a period of transformation by its own
consciousness; on the contrary,
this consciousness must be explained rather from the
contradictions of material life .
[15] Liachowitz (1988) has also produced a chronicle of American
disability legislation. The
author alludes to a materialist position by asserting that
disability is the product of the
`relationship between physically impaired individuals and their
social environments
(1988, p. 2). However, Liachowitz later reduces this `social
environment to its juridical
content by announcing her intention to `demonstrate how
particular laws have converted
physical deviation into social and civil disability (1988, p. 3,
emphasis added). Thus, the
entire material substrate of the social environment vanishes
leaving only a juridical
superstructure.
[16] Criticism of the important and erudite work of Hahn is made
with some hesitation.
However, it must be said that he tends at times to dematerialise
his analysis by relying too
heavily on aesthetically-based explanations of disability (see
especially his 1987 paper).
[17] According to Marx, the industrial reserve army included
`the demoralised, the ragged, and
those unable to work , including `the victims of industry the
mutilated (1976, p. 797).
[18] See Gleeson (1993, 1995) and Longmore (1995), for a fuller
explanation of the dangers
of crude materialisms which reduce the the social oppression of
disability to a problem of
`access in the built environment.
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