Disability Flashcards
What is disability?
A physical or mental impairment that has a negative effect on a person ability to do normal daily activities
What are the two models for disability?
Medical and social
What does the medical model say?
The individual is the problem, problem belongs to affected individual, responsibility of disabled person to adapt to fit into society
What does the social model say?
Society disables individuals, exclusion due to disability, society should reduce disabling barriers, the individual is the expert on their requirements
What are the problems with the medical model?
Disabled people unable to adapt to society, has a negative affect on identity, blames the victim, learned helplessness, has postive affect on identity
What does Murugam say?
We can construct an identity that accepts their impairment but independent of it, you are a person first, then disabled
How is disability a social construct?
Most have impairments but are rarely classified as disabled, there are degrees of difference and what society defines as a problem
What do Marsh and Keating say?
Very few people are really independent, we are in a interdependent network of other people, with aids for mobility and transportation
What do Marxists e.g. Finkelstein suggest has created our negative view of disability?
Capitalism’s emphasis on work was a source of identity, segregation did not exist in pre-industrial society, now disabled people have become an economic burden, defined as am abnormal social problem
How has industrialisation been responsible for a dramatic shift in cultural attitudes?
Capitalist society required a healthy fit workforce to generate profits for capitalist class, disabled are unable to work so are an economic burden
What did shakespeare say about learned helplessness?
Disabled people are socialised to see self as inferior as there is a lack of role models
How have disabled people learnt to be helpless?
It is a self fulfilling prophecy, assumed and labelled as hopeless, internalise this and it affects self esteem, being disabled becomes their master status, felt incapable of changing their situation and fail to help themself
Which model is disabled identity now centred on?
Social model of disability, more likely to resist definitions that stress dependence and helplessness
