<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Znet "Disability Rights Watch"</title></head><body> <div>Jim wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>I guess it would depend on what you think of disability, wouldn't it?  Generally though, I think it is a good thing you don't think of people you see regularly as some category (even "disability").  People first.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I will be "disabled" until society unmakes that condition.<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Afterall, "disability" is a social result from a physiological lack of function.  Not having legs or the ability to reason linearly is not itself a disability (it can be an improvement in some contexts).  Corrective vision is not considered a disability because of glasses/contacts/Lazik.  People with different social and financial means have very different sets of limits depending on access to resources and technology.</blockquote> <div><br> <br> </div> <div>Here I take a much different approach. Disability theorists such as Michael Oliver uses the<font face="Times" color="#000000"> term "disabled" to designate the socio-economic disadvantages imposed on top of a physical or mental impairment.</font></div> <div><font face="Times" size="-1" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><font face="Times" color="#000000">Excerpt from:</font></div> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000">Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (eds.), A World of Contradictions: Socialist Register 2002 (Merlin Press 2002).<br> <br> The Political Economy of Disablement: Advances and Contradictions</font></div> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000">Marta Russell and Ravi Malhotra<br> </font></div> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000">Having a disability is conventionally regarded as a personal tragedy which the individual must overcome, or as a medical problem to which the individual must become adjusted. In 1976, however, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in Britain made a significant  advance when it pointed out that 'disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society.'1 Among those concerned with disability it soon became common ground that 'it is society which disables persons with impairments.'<br> <x-tab>       </x-tab>This social model of disability2 necessitates a rethinking of prevalent definitions. Leaving aside biological or physical-anthropological definitions of disability which make it appear that impaired persons are 'naturally' and, therefore, justifiably, excluded from the mainstream labour force, even quite mainstream definitions have serious shortcomings. The World Health Organization, for instance, defines impairment (the condition of being deaf or blind, or having impaired mobility or being otherwise impaired) as the physiological 'problem;' disability as restricted functions or activities resulting from an impairment; and handicap as the 'disadvantage resulting from the impairment or disability, that limits or prevents the fulfillment of a role.'3 This terminology has been criticized by social model theorists of disability because it relies primarily on medical definitions and uses a bio-physiological definition of normality. Further, 'the environment' within which this 'disadvantage' is located, 'is represented as "neutral"....barriers' and any negative consequences of this approach for the person with an impairment are regarded as inevitable or acceptable rather than as disabling barriers.'4<br> <x-tab>   </x-tab>Reconceptualizing disability as an outcome of the political economy, however, also requires acknowledging the limitations of the 'minority' model of disability, which views it as the product of a disabling social and architectural environment. In this view the fundamental source of the problems encountered by disabled persons is prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes, implying that by erasing mistaken attitudes society will accept 'difference' and equality will flourish.5 This approach diverts attention from the mode of production and the concrete social relations that produce the disabling barriers, exclusion and inequalities facing disabled persons.<br> <x-tab>    </x-tab>In contrast, we take the view that disability is a socially-created category derived from labour relations, a product of the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society: one which creates (and then oppresses) the so-called 'dis-abled' body as one of the conditions that allow the capitalist class to accumulate wealth. Seen in this light, disability is an aspect of the central contradiction of capitalism, and disability politics that do not accept this are, at best, fundamentally flawed strategies of reform or worse, forms of bourgeois ideology that prevent this from being seen.</font></div> <div><br></div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> <div>Marta Russell<br> Los Angeles, CA<br> http://www.disweb.org</div> </body> </html>