Disability and later life

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-122
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Financial Interests ◽  
Adult Lives

This chapter highlights the importance of bodily impairment and infirmity in creating social divisions in later life. It begins with a consideration of what constitutes disability and impairment. It examines such distinctions and divisions in the light of the social model of disability and the distinction between ageing with disability and ageing into disability. While the former draws more easily upon the social model, the social identification with disability is more difficult for those whose adult lives have placed them in the position of being able-bodied adults. The confounding of age and disability represents not simply a social divide, but a divide within the person. While policies designed to serve older people as former workers who have become pensioners to some degree protects the financial interests of older disabled people, the absence of community framed by disability risks a greater social exclusion. The rise of policies designed both to encourage older people to be responsible for the success of their own ageing and to more strictly delineate distinctions (and entitlements) between the frail and the non-frail has sharpened this division. The difficulties are highlighted of aligning a social model of disability and the common interests of disabled people with a model based on frailty as an intersectional location fashioned around age disadvantage and disablement.

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.

Identity and intersectionality

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Power And Influence

This chapter addresses the question of intersectionality and the positioning of older people at points in a complex set of locations structured and leant upon by multiple sources of difference and inequality. It argues that social locations are no longer organised through simple binary divisions underpinned by single hierarchies of power and influence. Instead, identities and inequalities are located in the interstices that social divisions and differences form. The positioning both of age and of able-bodiedness, class, ethnicity, gender is rendered contingent by this intersectionality, making each of these potential divisions the source of at most a limited set of demi-regularities that constrain both the political claims of different social groups and the restrict the commonalities of different communities. The chapter concludes that intersectionality, though a much-contested concept, does draw attention to the social positioning of and social divisions within later life.

scholarly journals Ewolucja pojęcia niepełnosprawności na gruncie prawa polskiego

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 246-253
Author(s):  
Michał Skóra ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
National Legislation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

Disability is one of the greatest problems of modern society. It is a multidimensional phenomenon, as evidenced by numerous classifications and definitions of disability, created by representatives of various fields of science. The medical and social model of disability is adopted in the literature. Analyzing legal regulations, it should be stated that the social model of disability prevails, i.e. limitations concerning disabled people and their ability to function in society. The author describes the definition of disability on the basis of national legislation.

Disability, Society, and Personal Transformation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Sean Aas
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Personal Transformation ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Response ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bodily Difference

The social model of disability claims that disadvantage from disability is primarily a result of the social response to bodily difference. Social modellers typically draw two normative conclusions: first, that society has a responsibility to address disability disadvantage as a matter of justice, not charity; second, that the appropriate way of addressing this disadvantage is to change social institutions themselves, to better fit for bodily difference, rather than to normalize bodies to fit existing institutions. This paper offers a qualified defense of both inferences. Social institutions have reasons of justice to fix disability disadvantage, because the choice of institutions that contingently favor those whose bodies are statistically typical incurs responsibilities to compensate those who disfavored, in that choice. Among other things, this responsibility implies that societies should not simultaneously materially disadvantage disabled people, and also withhold symbolic resources, by demanding a presumption in favor of personal transformation – thereby, undermining the social conditions for disability pride.

scholarly journals An Overview of Current Library Support for Readers with Special Needs

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-56
Author(s):  
Katherine Read
Keyword(s):  
Special Needs ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Wheelchair Users ◽  
The Social ◽  
Library Support

The Social Model of Disability sees “disabled people disabled by physical, organisational and/or attitudinal/behavioural barriers in society. For instance it is not an inability to climb stairs that excludes wheelchair users from accessing the different floors of a library but the fact that a lift or ramp is not provided in the first place” (Jones, 2002)

scholarly journals Non-disabled ableism: An autoethnography of cultural encounters between a non-disabled researcher and disabled people in the field

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rannveig Svendby ◽  
Grace Inga Romsland ◽  
Kåre Moen
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

This article describes situations where preconceptions about disabled people were made apparent in a non-disabled researcher’s thoughts, words and actions in the course of fieldwork for a qualitative study into the lives of disabled young adults. The article uses these experiences as entry points to discovery and analysis of cultural ableism. It draws on critical theory and insights from the social model of disability, and takes an autoethnographic approach to highlight the researcher’s preconceptions and her process towards a more nuanced understanding of disability.

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.

Disability, work, and welfare

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 527-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Barnes ◽  
Geof Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Independent Living ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Meaning Of Work ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Recent Developments

This article engages with debates relating to social policy and disabled people’s exclusion from the British labour market. Drawing on recent developments from within the disabled people’s movement, in particular, the concept of independent living and the social model of disability, and the associated disability studies literature, a critical evaluation of orthodox sociological theories of work, unemployment, and under-employment in relation to disabled people’s exclusion from the workplace is provided. It is argued that hitherto, analyses of work and disability have failed to address in sufficient depth or breadth the various social and environmental barriers that confront disabled people. It is suggested therefore that a reconfiguration of the meaning of work for disabled people - drawing on and commensurate with disabled people’s perspectives as expressed by the philosophy of independent living - and a social model analysis of their oppression is needed and long overdue.

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