Reading the introduction to this rich and wide-ranging new anthology, one might think that the field of disability studies, having pursued multiple paths for more than a half-century, has come full circle. The editors align themselves with Erving Goffman and interactionist approaches to the study of disability, in particular “how embodied difference is negotiated in everyday settings” (p.4). The purpose of the book is partly to normalize these negotiations and demonstrate how disability is necessarily embedded in a socially complex life-world. The pitfalls that the editors wish to avoid through this approach are those associated with models, perhaps particularly the (British) social model that continues to exert influence on many if not most theoretically informed discussions of disability. In the introductory chapter, Thomas and Sakellariou argue that the debate over models is played out by now, and that the more pressing concern is to explore an ethic of care, that is, how good lives can be assembled by and for disabled people across the globe. This ofcourse invites the question of what is potentially lost in an interactionist approach; that line of inquiry was rightly critiqued not addressing the structural causes of marginalization and oppression of people who are identified by mainstream society as ‘spoiled’, ‘damaged’ or ‘discreditable’, to borrow the key concepts from Goffman's (1963) stigma theory. Partly out of resistance to a social-scientific approach that focused on the management strategies and micro-interactions of individuals grew a disability-theoretical strain of research that has been mostly concerned with the political, economic and symbolic structures that impose the need for such ameliorative strategies. However, thick descriptions of everyday lives need not omit structural analysis. One of the standout chapters in the book, co-written by Helen Errington, Karen Soldatic and Louisa Smith, narrates Errington's biography from her birth in 1947 in Western Australia through her ‘normalised and alternative activists’ paths’ (p.114) in the post-war decades. The story is personal and therefore also political, invoking and analysing the structural changes in Australian (and international) approaches to disability as they influence – and are influenced by Errington's life. At their best, such ways of doing disability studies do not obviate the need for theory or models, but demonstrate that the proof is in the writing: negotiations of embodied difference have prescriptive as well as descriptive dimensions. The descriptive strategies of microsociology and ethnography, when applied to marginalized groups, become acknowledgements and validations of their lives. Not every contribution succeeds at its purpose. Some chapters effectively summarize what is already fairly established in disability studies – regarding living conditions, the state of services in various places, and so on – rather than going into the kind of descriptive detail that is required by an interactionist approach. Part III of the book, containing in addition to Errington's story chapters on the management of support workers and on the phenomenology of Parkinson's, is perhaps the most successful. Studying the everyday means not only getting close to the ground, but also, in the relatively brief contributions that make up an anthology, foregoing state-of-the-field summaries and trusting the reader to generalize from the specific. Disability, Normalcy and the Everyday is a valuable contribution to the field, particularly when its parts align with the intention of the whole. And the intention – to explore ethics of care through examination of the everyday – is wholly commendable. Regarding theory and theoretical progression, it is interesting to note that there is no stepping twice into the same river. The return to the everyday cannot take place as though the debates over models, action research and disciplinary boundaries never happened. And this is a good thing: the subtext of and background for anthologies such as this one is by now richer than it would have been in previous years. The world has changed: political accommodation of disability, at least in some countries, has progressed, though progress in these areas is ever fragile. Perhaps, the melancholiest notion to arise from Thomas’ and Sakellariou's book is that the negotiations are unending. The embodied experience of disability will remain linked to oppression and marginalization; nevertheless, it is a form of life experience as rich and complex as any other. Thus, it is important to tell of it.
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Open Access
Mar 1, 2020
Patricia A Halpin + 2
