Disabled People In Britain Research Articles

Orientating disability studies to disablist austerity: applying Fraser’s insights

Many disabled people in Britain have experienced profound challenges brought about by a government policy programme characterised by ‘austerity’. Drawing on the work of Fraser and Polanyi, this article explores new ways in which disability studies can become theoretically orientated to the task of explaining and challenging what has become an issue of overbearing importance for many disabled people. It is argued that Fraser’s notion of bivalency encapsulates the combination of cultural and economic challenges which characterise ‘disablist austerity’. Fraser’s development of Polanyi’s work is used to argue that disability studies should be orientated to large-scale economic challenges as well as cultural and discursive concerns that are more often the object of study in the field.

Commodification, disabled people, and wage work in Britain

This paper focuses upon the development in Britain of a new out-of-work benefit, the Employment and Support Allowance —and a new employment service intervention (the Work Programme) which is supposed to support groups described as ‘hard-to-help’ people (one of which is disabled people) into wage work. The paper examines the ways in which such a combination of social security and labour market policies can be understood in political economic terms. The paper uses a theoretical framework drawing upon the ideas of commodification and proletarianizsation to argue that, rather than being concerned with the economic position of disabled people in Britain, the development of the Employment and Support Allowance and the Work Programme was concerned with relationships between the supply of labour and wage inflation, and with developing new welfare (quasi) markets in employment services. The paper concludes that attempting to address the economic disadvantages disabled people face through what are essentially market mechanisms will entrench, rather than address, those disadvantages.

Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain

This article explores the conflations and connections that postcolonial and disability scholars have drawn between ‘race’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘disability’ from a historical perspective. By looking at the connections drawn between ‘race’ and ‘disability’ in the context of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, I hope to probe beyond them to examine the origins and implications of their interplay. I do so by focusing on ideas about deafness, an impairment radically reconfigured in the colonial period, and inflected with concerns about degeneration, belonging, heredity and difference. Disability, I argue, not only operated as an additional ‘category of difference’ alongside ‘race’ as a way of categorising and subjugating the various ‘others’ of Empire, but intersected with it. The ‘colonisation’ of disabled people in Britain and the ‘racial other’ by the British were not simply simultaneous processes or even analogous ones, but were part and parcel of the same cultural and discursive system. The colonising context of the nineteenth century, a period when British political, economic and cultural expansion over areas of South Asia, Australasia and Africa increased markedly, structured the way in which all forms of difference were recognised and expressed, including the difference of deafness. So too did the shifts in the raced and gendered thinking that accompanied it, as new forms of knowledge were developed to justify, explain and contest Britain's global position and new languages were developed through which to articulate otherness. Such developments reconfigured the meaning of disability. Disability was, in effect, ‘orientalised’. ‘Race’ I argue was formative in shaping what we have come to understand as ‘disability’ and vice versa; they were related fantasies of difference.

From Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance: social sorting, sickness and impairment, and social security

This article focuses upon the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) as a replacement for the main income replacement benefit, Incapacity Benefit (IB), for sick and/or disabled people in Britain. The article argues that the process of claiming ESA, a process that is dependent upon medicalised perceptions of capability to work and which is aimed at managing the perceived economic and social costs of sick and impaired people, is a means of sorting sick and/or disabled people into subgroups of claimants. The article goes on to discuss the implications of this observation with regard to explanations of the disadvantages that sick and/or disabled people face and their implications for the income of such people. The article concludes that because the shift from IB to ESA is premised upon a number of mistaken assumptions, it represents a retrograde development for people who are sick and/or who have impairments.

Disability activism and the struggle for change

This article provides a critical evaluation of recent developments in government policy for disabled people in Britain. A brief outline of the re-definition of disability as social oppression by disabled activists and their organizations is provided. This is followed by a brief outline of its impact on recent government policy which aims to improve the life chances of people with designated `impairments and long term health conditions'. It is argued that although much has been achieved over recent years there is still a long way to go if the language of inclusion is to become more than empty rhetoric. Further, that while disability activism has had an important influence on disability policy in the UK, this very success threatens to undermine its continuity and future.

Trouble in Paradise - a disabled person's right to the satisfaction of a self-defined need: Some conceptual and practical problems

This paper questions the usefulness of the rights-based approach to ameliorating the social situation of disabled people in Britain and advances two criticisms. First, that rights and self-defined needs have been under-theorised by disability theorists to the extent that they have insufficiently appreciated the problems that these approaches pose. The paper suggests that rights to appropriate resources to satisfy self-defined needs will generate vast numbers of competing rights claims and that the resulting tendency of rights to conflict has been under-appreciated. Secondly, that there has been little consideration of how these conflicts might be reconciled. The first two sections of the paper look at the concepts of ascribed and self-defined needs, respectively, whilst the final one looks at some of the problems of the rights approach and some of the difficulties of making self-defined need the basis of rights claims.

Community care means extra cost for disabled people

Nearly a fifth of disabled people in Britain have to turn down help from local authorities because they cannot afford the services, according to a survey on the impact of the government's policy on care in the community. The survey, commissioned by the charity Scope, says that many disabled people now have to pay for services that they previously received free. The survey was of more than 1500 disabled people and 1300 carers during the summer of 1994. What …

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this articles:R. Pinder, The Managetnent of Chronic Illness: Patient and Doctor Perspectives on Parkinson's DiseaseC Power, O. Manor and J. Fox, Health and Class: the early yearsDenise Jodelet, Madness and Social RepresentationsK. Charmaz, Good Days, Bad Days: the Self in Chronic Illness and TimeH. Roberts (ed.). Women's Health MattersNicholas J. Fox, The Social Meaning of SurgeryPierre Aïach and Dominique Cèbe, Expression des symptômes et conduits de maladie – facteurs socio‐culturels et methodologiques de differenciationJ.CoreilandJ. D, Mull (eds.), Anthropology and Primary Health CareW, Stainton Rogers, Explaining Health and Illness. An Exploration of DiversityM. Pellingand R. M. Smith (eds.). Life Death and the Elderly: Historical PerspectivesS. Arber and J. Ginn, Gender and Later Life: A Sociological Analysis of Resources and ConstraintsA. Miles, Women, health and medicineC. Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and DiscriminationRobert N. Proctor, Value‐Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge.W. Manning, E. B. Keeler, J. P. Newhouse, E. M. Sloss and J. Wasserman, The Cost of Poor Health Habits. Shorter notices S. Payne, Women, Health and Poverty. An Introduction.Elaine Draper, Risky Business: Genetic testing and exlusionary practices in the hazardous workplace

Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination (Book).

Sociology of Health & IllnessVolume 14, Issue 3 p. 431-432 Free Access Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination (Book). Michael Morgan, Michael MorganSearch for more papers by this author Michael Morgan, Michael MorganSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1992 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11357534AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume14, Issue3September 1992Pages 431-432 RelatedInformation

The impact of a new form of transport help for disabled people in Britain

The impact of a new form of transport help for disabled people in Britain