Individual stakes and collective ideology in tension: Looking at physical and spatial obstacles from an experiential perspective

Abstract

This paper presents a critical hermeneutic interpretation of the meanings, practices and values associated with physical and spatial obstacles present in the shopping experiences of individuals with mobility or visual impairments. The social model of disability, which positions disablement in societal attitudes, understandings, practices, and institutions, has reinforced a view that built environments tend to limit, restrict, segregate, and even oppress differently-abled individuals. Despite the pervasiveness of this view, little research has empirically explored the experiences of, responses to, or evaluations of environmental barriers. In the current study, we interviewed and observed four individuals with visual impairments and four individuals with mobility impairments in hopes of better understanding these topics within a shopping context. Reconstructing participants’ discourses into their implicit narrative structures, we found that participants generally re-established equilibrium in their emplotted encounters with obstacles in the mall, transfiguring challenging and dysfunctional environments into coherent and functional spaces. Our findings challenge the notion that the constructions, meanings, and values of physical and spatial obstacles are universal or intrinsic, and point to the agency of participants in shaping their own plots. We suggest that future research ought to examine physical and spatial obstacles within even broader frameworks of meaning.