Disability: Physical Disabilities

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Clute
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Physical Disability ◽  
Physical Disabilities ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
People With Physical Disabilities

Physical disability is traditionally defined by society's view of atypical function. The medical model offers information on factors contributing to physical disability, including genetics, injury, and disease. The social model of disability, however, defines the societal responses, not the physical differences, as disabling. People with physical disabilities have unique characteristics and experiences that fall into the broad range of human diversity. They belong as full participants in society. Social workers must focus on working in respectful partnerships with people with physical disabilities to change environments and attitudes. This will help build a just society that honors diversity. This entry addresses multiple factors that cause disability, from genetics to environment, as viewed through the medical model. The social model view of “the problem” is offered in comparison. It also introduces the wide diversity of people with physical disability. The entry discusses two major societal responses to physical disability. Environmental modification is one approach. A more recent approach, Universal Access, involves upfront design of environments to meet diverse needs. The final sections explain implications for social workers and lays groundwork for action. Creating access and respectful partnerships are foundations of the work ahead. It is difficult to define physical disability without situating the discussion in the model used to view and deal with human diversity. This discussion is based on the social model of disability, a view of disability that sees the environment as disabling, not the individual condition. Discussion of the medical model is offered as a contrast. (For a more complete discussion of disability models, see Mackelprang's Disability: An Overview in this publication.)

scholarly journals Elective Impairment Minus Elective Disability: The Social Model of Disability and Body Integrity Identity Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Physical Disability ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Limb Amputation ◽  
Biomedical Model ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Body Integrity Identity Disorder ◽  
The Social ◽  
Healthy Body

AbstractIndividuals with body integrity identity disorder (BIID) seek to address a non-delusional incongruity between their body image and their physical embodiment, sometimes via the surgical amputation of healthy body parts. Opponents to the provision of therapeutic healthy-limb amputation in cases of BIID make appeals to the envisioned harms that such an intervention would cause, harms such as the creation of a lifelong physical disability where none existed before. However, this concept of harm is often based on a normative biomedical model of health and disability, a model which conflates amputation with impairment, and impairment with a disability. This article challenges the prima facie harms assumed to be inherent in limb amputation and argues in favour of a potential treatment option for those with BIID. To do this, it employs the social model of disability as a means to separate the concept of impairment and disability and thereby separate the acute and chronic harms of the practice of therapeutic healthy-limb amputation. It will then argue that provided sufficient measures are put in place to ensure that those with atypical bodily constructions are not disadvantaged, the chronic harms of elective amputation would cease to be.

scholarly journals Daouidi v Bootes Plus SL and the Concept of ‘Disability’ in EU Anti-Discrimination Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delia Ferri
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Attitudinal Barriers ◽  
Direct Discrimination ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time

Daouidi v Bootes Plus SL is one the latest decisions in which the CJEU has been directly confronted with the concept of disability in the realm of EU anti-discrimination legislation. In particular, in this judgment, the Court attempted to identify when the dismissal of a worker due to temporary incapacity of an unknown duration may constitute direct discrimination on the grounds of disability. This decision appears to be significant in that, for the first time, the CJEU discusses the meaning of ‘long-term limitation’ for the purpose of Directive 2000/78. Although the Court treads carefully, it attempts to further elucidate and bring new elements to the definition of disability in EU anti-discrimination law. In spite of the fact that the Court is potentially widening the notion of disability, it appears, once again, quite reticent in its approach to the role of social, environmental and attitudinal barriers in disabling an individual, and remains somewhat ‘trapped’ in the medical model of disability. All in all, this analysis endeavors to highlight that the CJEU is struggling to move beyond a rhetorical recognition of the social model of disability and to apply this in practice.

scholarly journals The Social Model of Disability and Music Therapy: Practical Suggestions for the Emerging Clinical Practitioner

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Gross
Keyword(s):  
Music Therapy ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Music Therapists ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medical Model Of Disability ◽  
The Individual

More and more music therapists are becoming aware of the social model of disability. The social model of disability maintains that the locus of disability rests in the capacity for society to create barriers for people with physical or mental differences. Much of music therapy practice still invests in the medical model of disability, which maintains that disability is an inherent personal flaw in the individual which requires remediation. This paper argues that music therapy practice should adopt the social model of disability, and maintains that, in particular, music-centered music therapy is one theory of music therapy that resonates well with the social model of disability. The paper includes advice for the emerging music therapy clinician on how better to incorporate social model of disability perspectives in practice based on the work of previous scholars who have written extensively about the social model.

The Disability Rights Movement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Scotch ◽  
Kara Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Disability Rights Movement ◽  
Disability Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Conceptual Underpinning

This chapter provides an overview of the social movement advocating for disability rights, including its origins, goals, strategies, structure, and impact. The chapter’s primary focus is on the movement in the United States, although developments in other nations are also discussed. The chapter reviews the origins of the disability rights movement in the 20th century in response to stigma and discrimination associated with disabilities and the medical model of disability; addresses the movement’s advocacy strategies, as well as the social model of disability that provided the conceptual underpinning for its goals and activities; and describes how the major components of the movement, including cross-disability organization, were brought together through collaboration and the common experiences of disability culture.

Later life and the social model of disability: a comfortable partnership?

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 791-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE OLDMAN
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Critical Gerontology ◽  
Care Services ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Perspective

There has been very limited debate about the usefulness of links between later life and disability studies. The paper reviews the arguments for and against a closer association. The social model of disability makes crucial the separation of disability from impairment and shows that it is society that does the disabling. This is never so clear as in the case of housing policies for older people, the focus of this article. Older people suffer discrimination and have to submit to a medical model of later life if they receive health or social care services. The argument against an association between later life studies and disability studies is that later life is an immensely diverse experience, much of it nothing to do with disability. Moreover, some older people reject the negative connotation when later life is equated with disability. The paper argues, however, for a specific application of the social model of disability to the situation of older people with impairments who receive services. It also asserts that the social model of disability can be accommodated in critical gerontology and, in particular, in a post-modern perspective. The paper concludes with examples of the value of the social model of disability at both the policy and political levels.

The Aesthetic Model of Disability

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-215
Author(s):  
Nanna Kathrine Edvardsen ◽  
Rikke Gürgens Gjærum
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Applied Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Democracy ◽  
Art Based Research ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter explores the questions of how and why certain behaviours are perceived as an expression of a disability – and not, for example, as an mic expression – and what role art can play when it comes to constructing and (re)framing disability as a phenomenon. The chapter is based on three field studies conducted at the NewYoungArt [NyUngKunst] festival in Northern Norway during the period 2017–2019, and uses dissemination methodology derived from art-based research and performance ethnography (Denzin, 2003; Haseman & Mafe, 2009; McNiff, 2007). The authors’ purpose is to present the “aesthetic model of disability”. This is a new model that clearly deviates from the medical model, but which complements the social model of disability and the Nordic GAP model (Owens, 2015; Shakespeare, 2004). The theoretical framework consists of Rancière (2012), Seel (2003) and Dewey (1934), among others. With this chapter, the authors wish to contribute to cultural democracy by identifying an opportunity, through applied art, for people with disabilities.

Disability, Identity, and Early Twentieth-Century Irish Drama

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Emma Creedon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Disability ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Disability Identity ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
The Disabled

This essay assesses the role of physical disability in early twentieth-century Irish dramatic literature. In particular, by focusing on such plays as W.B. Yeats's On Baile's Strand (1903) and the character of Johnny Boyle in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (1924), it critiques the tradition of identifying characters with disabilities solely by their physical impairment and exploiting disability as metaphor; physical disability has been historically employed as a synecdoche for a thwarted morality, or blindness as an allegory for prophecy. However, scholarly criticisms of the Social Model of Disability have demonstrated how disability can be reappropriated to reconceptualize notions of bodily normalcy. Furthermore, this essay suggests that the convention of “cripping up”, an industry term describing the practice of an able-bodied actor playing a character with a physical disability, contributes to the marginalization of those with physical disability in Irish culture. The result is the potential degradation of the disabled body, a stylized performance evoking vaudevillian conventions; performance thus engenders belief in stereotype.

Choreographing conjoinment: Side Show’s fleshly fixations and disability simulation

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Yates
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
Conjoined Twins ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Construction Of Disability ◽  
Disability Simulation ◽  
Bioethical Inquiry

This article aims to amplify disability theory’s impact in performance studies by generating a framework for understanding disability representation in musical theatre. Taking the original and revival Broadway productions of Side Show (1997, 2014) as a case study, I articulate how the musical simulates disability through a ‘choreography of conjoinment’ that relies on the exceptional able-bodiedness of the actors playing conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Using disability as a category of analysis reveals how disabled bodies are made to be maximally productive iterations of themselves in musicals. To support this claim, I track the shift from the 1997 production’s co-construction of disability by the actors and audience, which replicates the social model of disability, to the 2014 revival’s grounding in a diagnostic realism typical of disability’s medical model. Side Show’s trajectory generates possibilities for considering the musical as an archive for disability representation and knowledge, bioethical inquiry, and artistic innovation.

Responses of the Occupational Therapy Profession to the Perspective of the Disability Movement, Part 1

1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Craddock
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Therapy ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Occupational Therapy Interventions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Disability Movement

Since the 1960s, people with disabilities have been developing their own perspective on what it means to be disabled. At the vanguard of this development was the independent living movement which, with other organisations of disabled people, identified disabled people as a group experiencing a particular oppression, disabled by social processes and handicapped by society's lack of commitment to the creation of enabling environments. Part 1 of this article examines the genesis and development of the disability movement. The ideas and analysis that the disability movement has generated and its critique of the medical model of disability are outlined, and its impact — both ideological and legislative — is reviewed. The changing professional philosophy of occupational therapy is described and the impact on it of changing social values is assessed. Part 2 will review the explicit responses of the occupational therapy profession to the disability movement. The validity of the social model of disability for occupational therapy interventions will be considered and an analysis will be presented of the implications for the profession's philosophy and practice of the adoption of the social model of disability in appropriate areas of practice.

Responses of the Occupational Therapy Profession to the Perspective of the Disability Movement, Part 2

1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Craddock
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Therapy ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Disability Movement ◽  
Model Of Practice

In part 1 of this article, the origins and development of the disability movement were described. The movement's perspective of a social model of disability and its critique of the adoption of a medical model of practice by the rehabilitation professions were discussed. The evolving professional philosophy of the occupational therapy profession was explored. In part 2, the explicit responses of the occupational therapy profession in the UK and in the USA to the concerns of the disability movement are described. The implications for the philosophy and practice of occupational therapy of the adoption of a social model of disability in appropriate interventions are discussed. The conclusion is reached that the occupational therapy profession has yet to debate fully the validity of the social model of disability for appropriate areas of professional practice. The author foresees two major effects of its adoption: a clarification of the philosophical base underpinning such practice and a changed professional role.

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