New Thoughts Concerning Disability – Disability Studies

Is this cafe accessible? Why isn´t this movie subtitled? These are questions disabled people deal with. But only the fewest know about their worries and hardships. Disability Studies are supposed to change that.

01/01/2010

Not every divergence from the
average is considered as a
disability; © SXC

Who handicaps whom?

Since centuries science has been interested in people with disabilities over and over again. Indeed, they have always been only research objects, besides, their own view of the things remained widely unnoticed.

Concerning Disability Studies this is different. Here people with handicap become relevant protagonists of research. Their personal perception on disability is important. However, what is disability?

“Actually, it is interesting that in our society only certain impairments and divergences are considered to be a disability. The different eye colours of the people for example do not constitute a handicap. But when is one considered as divergent? Who defines a person to be disabled?”, Anne Waldschmidt, professor for Disability Studies at the University of Cologne, points out.

To their research the Disability Studies take a social model of disability as a basis and by doing so they answer this question: Therefore, disability does not originate from the individual interference of a single person. The social conditions, the society itself, are the ones which make a handicap from the specific feature of the individual.

Imagine Mr. Smith uses a wheelchair because he is affected with multiple sclerosis. Then he is certainly physically restricted, impaired. But only the architectural conditions when visiting a cinema cause problems to him, they handicap him. If the whole population was now, however, like Mr. Smith, the cinema would be oriented on wheel chairs. Now the people who do not need a wheelchair would be suddenly disabled, because there would be no more seats in the cinema.

“Our society adjusts its thinking always to the average person“, Waldschmidt regrets. She asks herself, why it is apparently not possible to plan and build generally in a way that nobody comes across barriers when visiting the cinema. However, to achieve that the society and its way of thinking would have to change first of all.

 
People with handicaps often come across unsurmountable barriers in every day life - and the society does not seem to notice; © Michalke/Pixelio.de

Who was first?

The Disability Studies have their origin in the emancipatory disabled person's movement. Many people with disability were weary of being excluded from the public life by society. In the beginning of the 1980s groupings of the handicapped people formed at the same time in the USA and in Great Britain. They did not longer want to accept their role on the edge of society.

In 1982 handicapped scientists and activists around the American medicine sociologist Irving Kenneth Zola founded the "Society for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment and Disability" which renamed itself in 1986 into "Society of Disability Studies". Simultaneously researchers also had formed a group in Great Britain around the social scientist Michael Oliver. In 1990 they founded together with a research group the first institute of Disability Studies in Europe. Then in 2000 this was extended to interdisciplinary "Centre for Disability Studies".

Since then the Disability Studies have developed on and on. In the meantime they have established themselves as a field which is taught at many universities and colleges, among the rest, in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, France.

What about Germany?

In Germany, until some years ago, almost nobody knew the concept Disability Studies. Besides, since the beginning of the 1970s the German disabled person's movement has actually exactly done this – but it wasn´t called that way.

“In this regard Germany has gone through, so to speak, a proto phase“, sums up Anne Waldschmidt who herself is one of the foundation mothers of the German Disability Studies. Everything has begun, actually, with a science criticism. Final works and theses about disability were written. All these works would today immediately be considered as Disability Studies, according to Waldschmidt.

Germany gets much more involved
in Disability Studies; © SXC

“In Germany the starting signal for Disability Studies under just this concept, actually, was given in 2001“, remembers Waldschmidt. That year the international conference “The (un) Perfect Person“ took place. In 2002 another conference followed with the title "Phantom Pain". “For the first time we had personal contact with international representatives of the Disability Studies. And we found out enthusiastically that they do exactly what we do“, Anne Waldschmidt describes the meeting at that time.

Since then a lot has happened: After the conferences, in 2002, Waldschmidt founded – together with other researchers – the nationwide study group „Disability Studies in Germany – We do research ourselves“. In 2003 the summer university of the educational institute and research institute to the self-determined life of disabled persons took place. Under the title “Disability Studies in Germany – thinking disability in a new way“ arose another opportunity to heighten the profile of the still rather young research approach.

Up to now there are no own professorships and institutes of Disability Studies at German universities – like there are in other countries. But more and more universities offer at least various lectures for interested students. “Until Germany can keep up internationally in this field, some time will probably pass“, Anne Waldschmidt ventures a forecast. “But we are on a good way.“

REHACARE.de