Abstract
Since its first formulation in English, the ‘principle of normalization’ has had a profound impact on policy and practice in the field of intellectual disability. Over the past fifty years, normalization, and Social Role Valorization, have drawn on liberal humanist philosophy, adopting varied and complex positions in relation to it. This article will consider an apparent structural correspondence between a discourse of ‘liberal equality’ with versions of normalization that emphasised conformity to social norms, and those drawing primarily on ‘liberal autonomy’, emphasising independence and self-determination of people with intellectual disabilities. Despite this seeming correspondence, the article eschews a structuralist account in favour of a discursive and rhizomatic model, in which the philosophical elements are seen as tactical forces deployed in the pursuit of wider strategic ends. The article concludes by highlighting paradoxes in contemporary thinking that can be traced to the legacy of normalization, specifically, the tensions between sameness, difference, equality and independence.
Highlights
The principle of normalization has been identified by numerous authors as the single most significant model for policy and services in the field of intellectual disability in the past fifty years—a fact that holds true in virtually all English-speaking countries around the world, as well as many others
Whilst not always explicitly cited in policy and legislation, it had a significant influence on the United Nations (1971) Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons; and, in the United Kingdom, both on the white paper, Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped (Department of Health and Social Security, 1971) and The Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Mental Handicap Nursing and Care (Jay, 1979), which ushered in policies of deinstitutionalization; whilst in current policy for people with intellectual disabilities1 (Department of Health, 2001; Scottish Government, 2013), it continues to be the implicit theoretical pivot upon which services shifted to a non-institutional basis (Johnson, Walmsley, & Wolfe, 2010)
[It] had a major impact on social policy in the United Kingdom and the provision of care services to disabled people, and can be seen as being an influential driver in the closure of long-stay institutions and the development of more personalised, community-based alternatives. (2017, p. 1364). It did set out relatively clear objectives for reformed policy and services, its principal target, at least in the early years, was the institution or hospital
Summary
The principle of normalization has been identified by numerous authors as the single most significant model for policy and services in the field of intellectual disability in the past fifty years—a fact that holds true in virtually all English-speaking countries around the world, as well as many others (see, for example, Caruso & Osburn, 2011; Emerson & McGill, 1989; Keith & Keith, 2013; Kendrick, 1999; Race, 2002). Strategies, have linked institutional critiques and putatively ‘progressive’ thinking to two different aspects of liberal humanism—equality and autonomy—with the former being more closely aligned with behavioural psychology, and its emphasis on adherence and adaptation to behavioural norms, and the latter more in evidence in thinking around community-based services and the promotion of independence. Needless to say, these are broad characterizations of approaches that in reality exhibited far less consistency or coherence. Failure to do so will result in the continual replication of variants of the present
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