Disability and Identity Flashcards
What is Disability?
A chronic illness that will impair a person’s movement, senses or activities.
This can be mental or physical
What are the two models of disability?
Medical model and Social model
What is the medical model?
Sees disability as a medical impairment
Limitations/barriers felt by the person are due to the impairment
What is the social model?
Society is the disabling factor, not the impairment
Suggests disability is socially constructed
Suggests there is an assumption in society of whats normal or abnormal
What does Shakespeare (1996) speak about?
‘Victim Mentality’
This is socialised into disabled people and suggests disabled people are victims or passive sufferers of their disorder
What is ‘Master Status’?
The idea that disability overrides all other aspects of identity and becomes the defining characteristic which individuals and judged upon
What does Martin Seligman speak on?
‘Learned Helplessness’
The idea that some disabled people may internslise the idea that they are incapable of changing a situation
A low self-esteem and highly structured life may contribute to this
What did Zola (1982) speak about?
He wrote that the language we use is discriminatory and borrowed from an able-bodied society
What did Barnes (1992) say?
Media representations of disabled people are generally negative and oppressive
What are the 8 common media representations Barnes speaks of?
1) In need of pity and charity
2) As Victims
3) As Villians
4) Super-Cripples
5) A burden
6) Sexually Abnormal
7) Incapable of participating fully in community life
8) Normal People (this is rare)
