Disability Oppression Research Articles

The Political Economy of Disability and the Nursing Home Industry in the United States

While the mass of Covid-19 related deaths in nursing homes has begun to draw attention to the corruption of the industry, the existing literature focuses primarily on the post-productive population (the elderly), or on the unpaid and underpaid care workers, while the discussion of the young and disabled, making up over 15% of residents in U. S. nursing homes, is largely absent. What can a Marxist analysis of disability tell us about both the nature of disability oppression and of the nursing home industry in the United States? Why are 16.9% of nursing home residents young disabled people? How are nursing homes in the U. S. funded? What political conclusions can we draw from this analysis? Building on the work of the late disabled socialist activist Marta Russell, I argue that the trapping of young disabled people in nursing homes is a result of their absorption by the nursing home industry due to capitalism's “compulsory unemployment” of the disabled and the segregation of those who cannot produce surplus value (Russell, 2019). Furthermore, private nursing homes do not “extract” from the disabled, as some have argued, as surplus value can only be extracted from the living labor of nursing-home and other workers. The incorporation of the non-working, institutionalized disabled into class struggle, then, is the only path to ending capitalist exploitation of the entire working class.

Something about us with us: a reflection of disability studies within psychology in South Africa

Despite the fact that disability makes up the largest minority in the world, training in psychology in South Africa today does not give viable mention to the challenges associated to living with disability. Indeed, disability studies and psychology have had an awkward relationship for various reasons, resulting in lack of engagement with disability rights issues in the field of South African psychology. The article discusses what we see as the hiddenness of disability in and from South African psychology, despite disability’s argued centrality to South Africa’s history and present. After presenting key issues in the history of disability rights both globally and locally, the article moves to discuss the tendency of silencing disabled academics and of disability studies within psychology in the country. The stories of two disabled psychologists and academics are shared to illustrate how society is controlled along biopolitical lines, namely that of compulsory able-bodiedness, resulting in the continued silencing of disabled psychology academics; and the continued binary of ‘us vs them’, the able-bodied versus disabled, remains. Arguably, focusing on disability oppression and exclusion provides a way into understanding other forms of exclusion and oppression, including racial and gender oppression. We need to continue to integrate psychology and disability studies by celebrating disabled psychologists and encouraging psychological reflections on disabled experiences. Psychology cannot continue to allow disabled people to be silenced.

‘I have it, so I understand it, I feel it’: The secondary school experiences of adolescent females with ADHD in England

AbstractThis research explores how adolescent females who have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience secondary education in England and make sense of their identity. Within schools, responsibility for supporting this population is placed in the hands of teachers, though prior research suggests that teachers feel underconfident in their ability to do so. Informed by a notion from the disability rights movement ‘nothing about us, without us’ (Charlton, Nothing about us without us: disability oppression and empowerment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), this study places the voice of people with ADHD at the centre of research. Using an interpretivist approach, qualitative data was gathered through unstructured interviews with five participants and was analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings suggested that participants' experiences of education and identity formation were shaped by internal cognitive differences in skills relating to executive function (EF) and sensory differences. The implications of social construction of the ADHD label had an impact, both on how participants understood their identities, and how teaching staff were reported to respond to ADHD‐traits which participants felt they had little control over. Participants reported differences in their perceived ability to self‐advocate and described experiences of attempting to adapt their ADHD‐traits to reduce the risk of social or educational sanction in response to their differences.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Relationship Between Being Respected and Quality of Life of Disabled People

The United Nations exclaims "all human beings have the right to be treated with dignity and respect" (Annan, 2005, p. 34). Yet, disabled people have long been denied respect in the United States and have been subjected to disability oppression and ableism. For these reasons, the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between respect and disability, particularly respect's impact on the quality of life of disabled people. We had two research questions: (1.) what factors predict disabled people being respected? and, (2.) how does being respected impact the quality of life of disabled people? To explore these questions, we used secondary Personal Outcome Measures® data from approximately 1,500 disabled people; we analyzed this data to examine relationships between disabled people's interpretations of feeling and being respected, and their quality of life. Our findings revealed being respected had a significant impact on every area of ones' quality of life. Problematically, this also included areas which should be considered non-negotiable fundamental human and civil rights, that should not depend on if, and how, people respect disabled people. While the attitudes underlying the disrespect of disabled people are harmful and problematic, human and civil rights should be inalienable – ones' access to exercise their rights, to safety, to health, and to many other domains should not depend on others' attitudes about, and treatment toward, you.

Disability in the Family: John and Alice Dewey Raising Their Son, Sabino

Background/Context The current biographic understanding of John Dewey's experience adopting and raising an Italian boy named Sabino emphasizes the theme of finding an emotional replacement for Morris and Gordon, two young sons who had tragically died on family trips to Europe. Lacking is substantive attention to the fact that John Dewey's son had a physical disability who grew up during the early surge of eugenics thought in American popular life. The leading biographer Jay Martin has portrayed John and Alice Dewey as rescuing Sabino from poverty, an experience that gave John Dewey “a special empathy for the second-best, the second-class citizen, the loser in society. “ What is missing from all biographic research on the Deweys is their experience of raising a boy with a physical disability during a historical time when disabilities were highly stigmatized. Purpose/Objective/Research The purpose of this historical study is to supplement the current understanding of John Dewey fathering an adopted son with an account that attends to the fact that young Sabino had a physical disability. Working in the disability studies tradition, this analysis explores both how the Deweys contended with Sabino's bone tuberculosis as an illness requiring medical treatment and how they navigated the complex political context of deeply discriminatory attitudes surrounding disabled persons. The conclusion initiates a discussion of the larger questions concerning how the experiences of fathering a boy impacted directly by disability oppression might have influenced John Dewey's political activity and scholarship. Research Design This historical analysis utilizes prior biographic research, published and unpublished works by John Dewey, and primary historical documents such as family letters and medical and popular publications of the era. Conclusions/Recommendations This analysis finds that John and Alice Dewey were very loving and attentive parents who endured many struggles due to their child's disability. They worried about their son's health, and they capably navigated the available medical options. They were troubled by their son's suffering and pain, and they worked together with great consistency to comfort and support him. Further, they directly confronted disability prejudice, including educational segregation, and worked assiduously against the powerful cultural assumption that their disabled son should lead a life of anything less than full participation in the community. The article concludes with a preliminary examination of how these experiences influenced John Dewey's political writings and activities.

Becoming Dysfluent

The article offers a crip reading of “hegemony” to shift attention away from ideology to the material site of disability politics. Related yet distinct from normalcy, “fluency” is a technology of optimization and closure that operates upon semiotic bodies at the intersection of biopolitics and hegemony. Only by inscribing social order in our bodies and smoothing over the site of politics can compulsory able-bodiedness manifest as a stable, seamless, and natural field—everywhere and nowhere at once. The article ends by highlighting the dangers of populist demands for legibility/intelligibility that restrict the possibilities (of access, participation, and belonging) for dysfluent people and instead imagines “dysfluency” as a distinctly material and crip resource against hegemony.

Disability as Abject: Kristeva, Disability, and Resistance

In this essay, I develop an account of disability exclusion that, though inspired by Julia Kristeva, diverges from her account in several important ways. I first offer a brief interpretation of Kristeva's essays “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and … Vulnerability” and “A Tragedy and a Dream: Disability Revisited” and, using this interpretation, I assess certain criticisms of Kristeva's position made by Jan Grue in his “Rhetorics of Difference: Julia Kristeva and Disability.” I then argue that Kristeva's concept ofabjection,especially as developed by Sara Ahmed and Tina Chanter, offers important insights into disability oppression; Ahmed's and Chanter's contributions improve upon Kristeva's account. Understanding disability as abject helps to explain both resistances to interacting with disabled others and ways to resist disability oppression. Finally, I argue that understanding disability as abject is preferable to recent deployments of Lacanian theory in disability studies and that this account is compatible with social models of disability.

"We are not aliens": Exploring the Meaning of Disability and the Nature of Belongingness in a Fourth Grade Classroom

In this narrative essay I describe the process and outcomes of a group of fourth graders' engagement in a critical inquiry into the constructed meaning of disability in society. Through self-directed and guided learning, these students examined the historical roots of disability oppression and deconstructed ableist assumptions, and thus found their own understanding about community membership to be transformed. Positioning the need to infuse disability history in schools as an imperative, this paper invites disability studies scholars and social justice educators alike to confront the silences around the topic of disability in schools and to create spaces for children to engage in meaningful dialogues about society's responses to human differences.

Beyond Braille on Toilet Doors: Museum Curators and Audiences with Vision Impairment

Beyond Braille on Toilet Doors: Museum Curators and Audiences with Vision Impairment

Teacher education, InExclusion, and the implicit ideology of Separate but Equal: An invitation to a dialogue

In this analytic essay, we initiate a dialogue about the place of disability in a multicultural education framework, and the role of inclusive education in a democracy. Problematizing the common omission of the topic of disability oppression from anti-oppression pedagogies and from social justice education generally, we invite teacher educators concerned with educational equity to position themselves on the persistent issue of the segregation of large numbers of students labeled with disabilities in schools, and to consider how we might engage in sustained dialogue toward pursuing an agenda that is opposed to the systematic deployment of educational segregation in all its forms. In addition to opening this broad conversation, we have specifically invited dialogic interchange with three of our teacher educator colleagues whose responses are embedded within this manuscript.

Institutionalized Ableism and the Misguided “Disability Awareness Day”: Transformative Pedagogies for Teacher Education

Despite acknowledgement among social justice educators about the need to infuse anti-bias lessons in K-12 curricula, discussions of disability oppression are silent in schools. Token efforts at addressing the topic of disability generally manifest as “disability awareness day(s)” and often include “disability simulations,” which have been long condemned by disability rights activists as promoting cultural attitudes that are ableist in nature. In this article, we discuss a qualitative inquiry that examines shifts in the perceptions of graduate students, with regard to the pedagogical use of disability simulations for teaching children about disability. The context of this study is a teacher education course informed by critical disability studies perspectives. The findings indicate transformations in students’ thinking about the ableism implicit in disability simulations. We discuss the implications of this inquiry for social justice education, and suggest ways to prepare educators to disrupt the socio-political dimensions of disability oppression.

Breakdown Is Built into It: A Politics of Resilience in a Disabling World

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture...

Leadership development of individuals with developmental disabilities in the self‐advocacy movement

Exploring the life stories of leaders in the self-advocacy movement can expand our knowledge about leadership development of individuals with developmental disabilities. A better understanding of this process may assist with supporting the movement and leadership development of youth with disabilities. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 leaders in the self-advocacy movement within the USA in order to explore their life stories. Purposeful sampling contributed to a diverse sample of leaders. A grounded theory approach led to the identification of major themes and factors associated with their leadership development. Four major themes emerged: (1) disability oppression and resistance; (2) environmental supports and relationships; (3) leadership skills; and (4) advanced leadership opportunities. Findings have conceptual and practical relevance for future interventions and research.

Disability, Social Policy and the Burden of Disease: Creating an “Assertive” Community Mental Health System in New York

One conclusion of the decade-long epidemiological Global Burden of Disease Project is that five of the top 10 disease “burdens” the world will face by 2020 will be related to mental disabilities. Therefore, developing social policy and community responses to the ways that people with mental disabilities are treated is becoming an important focus for community practitioners, political activists and legislators. The author explores some of the dynamics of our culture’s approach to dealing with difference, especially when manifested in disenfranchized individuals. He discusses a community development project created by a New York City advocacy and social policy organization following the 1999 murder of a woman by an individual whose mental health disability was never treated. Parallels are drawn between the civil rights and community mental health movements, which created a precedent for the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Also examined are the ways in which community mental health systems manifest social policy that alternately resists, repeats and colludes with power operations. The unexamined assumptions that drive this dynamic are examined as ableism or disability oppression.

"When Black Women start Going on Prozac": Race, Gender, and Mental Illness in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's Willow Weep for Me

Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression (1998) is a first-person narrative by an author who, without identifying as or signaling any alliance with the disability rights movement, describes the her caused and recounts her triumph over it, an achieved through a combination of courage, resilience, prescription drugs, and other medical interventions (237, 18, 262). As such, Danquah's memoir is precisely the kind of text that much disability scholarship in the humanities has taught us to critique. Foundational work in this field has stressed the formation and assertion of positive disability identities. It has also underscored the distinction between illness and disability, describing disability in terms of visible bodily difference rather than sickness or suffering. Moreover, disability scholars have criticized personal narratives that highlight disabled people's courage or show them overcoming their impairments; framing disability in terms of an individual's struggle against adversity, they have argued, deflects attention from the political realities of disability oppression. (1) These arguments have enormous importance. They form the basis of a scholarship that has redefined disability, demonstrating that it is best understood not as a biological given, but rather as a social process requiring sustained intellectual and political attention. Yet Danquah's memoir, in its deep engagement with the politics of race, gender, class, and mental illness, forces a reconsideration of several of these tenets of disability studies. Most important, Willow Weep for Me makes it clear that disability studies, which has tended to define disability as a visual, objectively observable phenomenon, must also carefully attend to the phenomenological aspects of impairment, particularly those that involve suffering and illness. Such attention will necessitate developing more nuanced ways of describing intersections of multiple forms of oppression than have predominated in the most influential disability scholarship. Examining such intersectionality in Danquah's memoir complicates aspects of some disabled people's critiques of the medical or psychiatric model of mental illness; for many African American women with depression, lack of access to health care, rather than involuntary administration of it, is the most oppressive aspect of the contemporary politics of mental illness. (2) Danquah's memoir may also be the basis for a critique of a tendency, within much disability scholarship, to avoid representing impairments in terms of sickness or suffering. The social model's (bodily) impairment vs. (socially produced) disability binary, which has often lead to a de-politicization of impairments, cannot be upheld in Willow Weep for Me, which illuminates both the suffering that impairments can cause and the role of politics in producing them. But on the other hand, Danquah's narrative also complicates some disability theorists' deconstructions of the impairment-disability distinction. These postmodern analyses of impairment tend to see individuals' reliance upon impairment categories as invariably serving to buttress hegemonic constructions of disability; but Danquah's autopathography demonstrates that such categories can be mobilized in ways that are politically resistant. Finally, Willow Weep for Me presents challenges to disability studies' critique of stories of overcoming; by highlighting individuals' power in relation to oppressive political and economic structures, Danquah's narrative offers a powerful antidote to despair. In order to apprehend the significance of Willow Weep for Me, a critical method that can account for intersections of multiple forms of oppression is crucial. am black; I am female; I am an immigrant, Danquah writes. Every one of these labels plays an equally significant part in my perception of myself and the world around me (225). …

Liberation theology of disability and the option for the poor

A liberation theology of disability provides a spiritual discourse that unites a critical analysis of the economic dimensions of disability oppression with an appreciation for the lived experience of disabled persons. This paper builds from prior liberation theology scholarship and the Catholic theological concept called the preferential option for the poor to articulate a liberation theology of disability marked by critical social analysis, humility, hope, and love.

Disability Oppression in the Contemporary U. S. Capitalist Workplace

Recent analyses of disability oppression have focused on the historical exclusion of people with disabilities from employment in capitalist societies. There is, however, little systematic research on recent efforts, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to break down barriers to employment for people with disabilities. In-depth personal interviews with employees with disabilities in large, public-sector organizations reveals the varieties of alienation and harassment experienced by employees with disabilities in the implementation phase of the ADA. Truly overcoming disability oppression in the contemporary capitalist workplace would require a continuing, militant and national movement. Demands for equality and accommodation for employees with disabilities deserve an important role in any struggle for humane and democratically controlled workplaces.

What the Nazi "Euthanasia Program" Can Tell Us About Disability Oppression

Under the T 4 Euthanasie program of Nazi Germany, people with physical and mental disabilities were put to death against their will by their physicians. These individuals were oppressed in every sense of the word. They had no constitutional rights to protect their lives and their liberty. They had no statutory rights to protect them from discrimination and ensure their personal autonomy. They had no disability rights/independent living movement to secure such rights and no guarantee that such rights were enforced. Their horrible oppression is not comparable to the situation of people with disabilities in the United States.

Disability and Institutional Change

For at least three decades, disability rights activists have challenged exclusionary and stigmatizing social processes that constrain people with disabilities, an effort highlighted by the 1990 enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, all environmental barriers to participation by people with disabilities may not be eliminated by a policy strategy that focuses on discrimination and fails to address many forms of oppression that do not fall under legal definitions of discrimination. The human variation model of disability defines disability as the systematic mismatch between physical and mental attributes of individuals and the present (but not the potential) ability of social institutions to accommodate those attributes. Although rights-based approaches remain necessary to overcome the barriers facing many Americans with disabilities, a policy strategy that builds on a human variation approach may further efforts to eliminate disability oppression.

Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment

Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment