Social Inclusion: Invading Consciousness

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is persons living with an intellectual disability as they continue to remain socially excluded from their communities in western societies. A possible explanation for this phenomenon occurs when persons living without an intellectual disability encounter persons who live with an intellectual disability and how the former’s personal, latent, preconceived notions dominate their ability to act freely. The term ostracized other: social pariah other is, I propose, a more accurate way of describing persons living circumstances in western societies. Carling-Jenkins (2014) presents a four-category critique which positions “[persons living with an intellectual] disability as other” across domains such as citizenship, segregation within institutions, living on the margins and the disabled body (p. 4). The author notes that this risks understanding disability “in binary terms” (p. 4) although it has the advantage of understanding how persons living with an intellectual disability actually live their lives and how policies and society form to shape, positively and negatively, the personal lives of persons living with an intellectual disability. Carling-Jones’ (2014) argument presents how Australians living with an intellectual disability are positioned in roles that reinforce disability as a negative characteristic and which fail to use contemporary knowledge to create spaces inclusively. DeJong (1979) has explored the independent living movement in the United States and compared it to five other social movements: civil rights, consumerism, self-help, de-medicalization and deinstitutionalization. This notion of a person being defined by his/her limitations is by no means new; for example, Adrianne Asch argues that disability is not part of her “lived experience”, rather it is the basis on which she is judged as a person (1976, p. 28). There are, however, two domains that are not addressed in this typology, the first could be termed economically excluded: emphasizing disability and the second ostracized other: social pariah other. These aspects of persons living with an intellectual disability lives are presented in the Sects. 3.4 and 3.5 in this chapter.