Bad Samaritan: Very Cognitively Disabled People and the Sociological Sensibility

Abstract

Introduction In this paper I examine critical sociologists' and historians' lack of interest in cognitively disabled people. In a more general sense, the paper is about the selection and development of academic within critical science, and about the identification of the of disadvantage and oppression by critical scientists, since the two types of problem, academic and social, are intimately related. I raise the issue of forms of extreme disadvantage and oppression which do not seem to stimulate a critical scientific response. In this way, I am confronting fundamental issues of critical science practice, but I am not using cognitively disabled as a mere example for a broader purpose; I show why the experiences of cognitively disabled should be a central concern of critical sociologists, historians and theorists. The terms very cognitively disabled people and very extensive used throughout this paper are not intended to carry a technical meaning, such as a defined range of estimated I.Q., a specific level of retardation, or a set of particular disabilities, but to denote the most serious levels of or intellectual disability in a general way. However, I am not thereby intending to avoid the obvious of more technical terms, and to achieve some sort of natural relation between term and referent. The issue of the constructedness of terms relating to disability (including cognitive disability) is central to this paper, and is tackled directly, using the terms I have chosen. Indeed, I begin by examining Philip Ferguson's sympathetic critique of constructionism (Ferguson, 1987) which is aimed directly at explaining critical scientists' abandonment of cognitively disabled people. The examination of Ferguson's position allows me to set up and initiate my discussion of academic disinterest in cognitively disabled people. While accepting his critique of constructionism, I argue that Ferguson does not successfully explain the neglect of cognitively disabled within critical analyses with objectivist elements. In addition, he fails to fully acknowledge the significance of cognitively disabled people's powerlessness as a cause of their academic neglect. I go on to show how constructionist analyses of disability are variants of the constructionist approach to social problems, and I discuss the ways in which the academic neglect of extremely powerless groups has been handled by constructionist social problems theorists in recent years (Collins, 1989; Miller, 1993). I argue that their treatment is superficial because, despite appearances, it relies solely on a sociological, as opposed to an ethical, orientation to develop a response. I claim that the lack of interest of critical scientists in certain vulnerable groups, such as cognitively disabled people, is a product of the sociological orientation itself, or what I call the sociological sensibility, and of the engagement of this sensibility with the socially critical impulse. A central element of the sociological sensibility is the sense that academic relate to significant social-historical forces or processes, but cognitively disabled cannot constitute themselves as a social-historical force. A key component of the critical impulse is the desire to avoid a paternalistic relation to disadvantaged and oppressed subjects through an insistence that critical science elaborates the existing political speech of disadvantaged and oppressed subjects and does not simply speak for them, but cognitively disabled cannot speak for themselves. I do not attempt to destructively deconstruct the sociological sensibility. My aim is rather to identify and examine it, and to discuss some of its limitations. …