ABSTRACT
In this book, I have re-examined some of the key principles of the British disability rights movement. I have questioned the intellectual and political basis for the social model of disability and the personal assistance model of independent living. I have also questioned the rejection of cure, genetic screening, assisted suicide and charity. Throughout the book, I have suggested that academics, activists and policy-makers need to look again at cherished rhetoric and taken-for-granted assumptions. I have tried to orient my discussions in the empirical evidence – quantitative and qualitative – about the lives of disabled people. Like William of Ockham, I take an inductive approach to theory: we need explanations that are no more complex than necessary to make sense of the evidence. This seems preferable to imposing over-arching conceptual schemes, whether they originate from Marx or Foucault, and then subordinating the testimonies of research participants to those theoretical frameworks. In writing and revising this book, I want to contribute to better
understandings, better policies and better practices regarding disability and disabled people. While I challenge consensus, I want to stress three points of agreement. First, I accept that social and environmental barriers constitute major problems for many disabled people, and that removing such obstacles is the main priority for disability politics. Second, I agree that disabled people should have choices over their lives, and should be supported to live in the community. Third, I have no doubt that the medicalisation of disability and the persistent assumption that disabled people are defined by their incapacity are cultural barriers to the emancipation of disabled people which must be challenged. Seven years on
from the first edition, it is very depressing to note that the current British government has attacked the living standards, withdrawn the support and threatened the independent living of disabled people. I believe my account of disability suggests a full agenda for engaged
social research. Disability studies should work to provide rich empirical studies, both quantitative and qualitative, of how disabled people experience barriers, and how they experience their impairments. In particular, the differences between disabled people are as important as the similarities, for example, examination of the role of class is paradoxically absent, even from materialist disability studies (Shakespeare, 2010). Rather than being restricted by social model orthodoxy, disability studies should be pluralist, valuing analytical rigour and open debate. Disability researchers should look outwards and engage with medical sociology, philosophy, economics and other areas of academia. This book also highlights ways forward for emancipatory strategies.
Disability movements should be cautious about assuming that either disability identity or disability rights are robust foundations for emancipation. Recognition that the majority of people with impairments have no desire to identify as disabled is overdue. So too is the appreciation that rights alone will not solve all disability problems (Young and Quibell, 2000; Barron, 2001): social justice may ultimately be the preferable goal (Sen, 1992). Disability groups should seek coalition with other parallel communities, particularly older people. It would be wrong to neglect either prevention of impairment or attention to the medical needs of disabled people (Shakespeare, 2013). Finally, neither rights nor justice renders concepts such as charity and community redundant. Supporting positive social relationships between disabled and nondisabled people and recognising the beneficial role of solidarity and mutuality are both vital to the flourishing of disabled people.
