Disability as Diversity: A Legitimacy Approach

University of MichiganSeptember 29, 2006

Stephen Gilson, Ph.D.Elizabeth DePoy, Ph.D.

The University of Maine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability

Studieswww.umaine.edu/cci1-800-203-6957 v/tty

Maine

Three Interrelated Areas• Diversity• Disability• Bodies in Art, Literature, Technology

Diversity

What does diversity have to do with disability?

• Basis in inter-group relations which links to concepts of groups as “inferior” or “superior”

• Emergence of the concept of the “normal body” rendered atypical or unusual bodies outsiders (e.g., immigrants, disabled people)

Looking Backward

Diversity History in Brief

• Historically, discrimination and oppression have been conceptualized as population specific marginalization with a particular focus on race, class, ethnicity, and gender, and more recently, sexual orientation, disability, and age.

Contribution of Nomothetic Inquiry

• Assumes homogeneity of members beyond membership criteria

• Criteria defining groups and their membership are dynamic & influenced by contextual factors

• Category studies tend to examine inequality• Category studies are frequently referred to as “Diversity Studies”

The Normal Curve: Normal Man

Pluralism emerges

• As movement away from the “single truth” associated with positivism occurred, room was made for the constructs of multiple realities and diversity

• Multiculturalism began to be equivalent to diversity theory and provided a framework for examination of group membership and power relationships.

Three approaches to multiculturalism

Assimilationist You can join usYou should join usTo join us, you need to be like us

Integrationist We can all live together on our worldCome and join us- We will help you “others” come into the mainstream, but you do not have to be like us

Incorporationist We will transform each other for the betterment of all.

Return to the Current Context

New theory

Why Another Theory?

• Failure of current diversity work to distinguish descriptive from explanatory definitions and to illuminate the essential value dimension that places diversity descriptions and explanations in categories.

Why Another Theory?

Failure of current diversity theory to reach incorporationist goals.

Explanatory Legitimacy Theory

• A contemporary theoretical approach to analyzing, clarifying, and responding to human diversity.

Diversity is comprised of the three interactive

elements:•Description•Explanation•Legitimacy

Description

• The full range of human activity (what people do and do not do and how they do what they do) appearance, and experience.

Explanation

• Why people do what they do, appear as they appear, and experience what they experience.

Legitimacy

• Judgment - value assessments about the consistency of explanations for category description with criteria for membership.

• Responses-actions (both negative and positive) that are deemed appropriate by those rendering the value judgments.

Disability

Why does disability belong within a progressive diversity

dialog?• It is currently conceptualized as a binary

•Normal=non-disabled•Not normal=Disabled

Description, Explanation, and Legitimacy applied to

disability

Two intersecting dimensions of Description

• Typical /Atypical • Observable/Reportable

Typical

• Activity, appearance, and experience as most frequently occurring and expected in a specified context.

Atypical

• Activity, appearance, and experience outside of what is considered to be typical in a specified context.

• The disability locus of concern lies here.

Explanation

• Why people do, appear, and experience atypically (medical-diagnostic; constructed).

Medical Diagnostic•Locates disability within humans and defines it as an anomalous medical condition of long-term or permanent duration.

Constructed•Disability is a condition that results from limitations imposed on individuals (with or even without diagnosed medical conditions) from external factors.

Legitimacy• Judgment - value assessments about the consistency of explanations for atypical description with criteria for membership.

• Responses-actions (both negative and positive) that are deemed appropriate by those rendering the value judgments.

Example #1• Description: Jimmy cannot hear the lecture

• Explanation: Jimmy is heard of hearing

• Legitimacy: Jimmy is disabled and qualifies for disabled student services and accommodations-

Example #2• Description: Jimmy cannot hear the lecture

• Explanation: Lecture hall acoustics are not good

• Legitimacy: All students are disabled and responses need to consider all (e.g., C-Print, lectures posted on-line).

Bodies in Art, Literature, and Technology

A Reciprocal Arrangement

• Over the course of history, the human body has been both object and subject of diversity, legitimacy, worth, and response.

• What constitutes a body and the role of the body in determining legitimate membership in diverse human categories such as beautiful, disability, ethnicity, race, gender, social group, and so forth have been central to human experience and a major area for human inquiry.

• Perspectives about what constitutes a body as well as what is an atypical body have shifted and changed, as depicted in, shaped by, and reflected in and influenced by the arts, literature, and technology.

Aztec Royalty

Moncliffe ------ Loren VFashion Models - laRage.com -2005

L. Ferguson. (2004). Neural network #1 (blue web). From The Visible Skeleton Series.

Performing artists - ndaf.org

Victor Hugo. (1936). (original publication date 1831). The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. New York:

Dodd, Mead.• When this sort of Cyclops appeared on the threshold of the chapel, motionless, squat, almost as broad as high, [the] populace instantly recognized him by his coat, half red and half purple, sprinkled with silver bells, and, more especially, by the perfection of his ugliness, and cried out with one voice: "It is Quasimodo the bell-ringer! It is Quasimodo the hunchback of Notre-Dame! Quasimodo the one-eyed! Quasimodo the bandy-legged! Hurrah! Hurrah!" the poor devil, it seems, had plenty of surnames to choose among.

Atypical Bodies in Contemporary Literature and Film

• Captain Hook-Peter Pan

• Lennie-Of Mice and Men

• Nemo-Finding Nemo

• Shrek and Liona-Shrek

Prose - Poetry - nfad.orgmale in wheelchair with tattoos

Technology

• Blurring the boundaries of medium and body

• Technology, art, sales?

Chuck Close. Self-Portrait. 1997.Pixel style portrait

2004 Ad for Colours Wheelchair Woman in designer wheelchair

Painter canvas genetic image of woman

www.CartoonStock.com

So why look at art, literature and technology to inform disability?

• The boundaries of typical and acceptable bodies are contextual and dynamic.

• Symbols of the body depicted throughout history move closer to and further from representational images.

• Technology has located bodies beyond the physical.

• Celebration of embodied diversity is critical to global tolerance.

Why Change and to What?• Given the vast changes in our world (intellectual trends-postmodernism; global trends, technological trends; political trends; economic trends), it is incumbent upon us to rethink disability as diversity.

• We need a more expansive view that will allow us to be more responsive to the full range of diverse human needs.

Looking Forward, Not Backward

• Categorical responses to discrimination, oppression, and exclusion are necessary but should be temporary.

• Social justice must rely on democracy and equal opportunity for all.

Looking Forward, Not Backward

• Movement away from embodied diversity to diversity of ideas

• Post-positivism and post-modernism provide the scaffold to reframe thinking about human diversity.

• Medicalizing bodies through positivist thinking further serves to entrench concepts of normalcy and deviation

• Medicalized and objectified bodies promote the acceptance of the “reality” of binaries such as normal and not normal, desirable, and undesirable.

Current responses—make atypical people typical

Our Vision

Flatten the Curve

• Flattening the curve calls for moving beyond medicalized, positivist, and categorical conceptualizations of diversity.

Group symmetry• Group symmetry does not naively posit that all groups have equal opportunity and access to resources. Rather it is an ideal that refers to the equal value and contribution of disparate groups, and their subsequent reciprocal positive transformation of multicultural environments .

Inclusion• Inclusion, although used to denote multiple meanings in varied domains, in the model that we propose, means the relocation of diversity beyond category membership to the larger domain of diversity depth, or that of varied beliefs, ideas, and experiences that are part of human existence, thereby repositioning diversity as the foundation for tolerance, transformation, and incorporation.

Universal

• Equal application of judgment and response criteria to all.

• Flattens the Curve• Locates legitimate responses in the environment

• Reminds us to construct an inclusive, symmetrical world

Homme l’epee ( Swordman) as beauty

Picasso abstract painting

The University of Maine Center for Community Inclusion and

Disability Studieswww.umaine.edu/cci

1-800-203-6957 v/tty

Thank You

Stephen Gilson (stephen_gilson@umit.maine.edu)Elizabeth DePoy (edepoy@maine.edu)