CONCLUSIONES Discusión

Although the social model was formally articulated by disabled scholar, Mike Oliver, in 1983 (Roulstone et al., 2012), its earliest roots lies in the disabled people‟s movement that started in the mid-1970s in Great Britain (Barnes & Mercer, 2005; Fernie & Henning, 2006; Howell, 2005; Priestley, 2006; Swartz & Watermeyer, 2006; Thomas, 2002; Watermeyer, 2013; Williams, 2001). It marks the time when disabled activists started speaking out against their exclusion from mainstream society and their enforced poor economic circumstances (Thomas, 2002). In particular, disabled activists in a small British organisation, the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), spoke about their situation in the following way: “In our view, it is society which disables. . . . Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments; by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society” (UPIAS/Disability Alliance, 1976, p. 3). This extract is permeated by the first traces of critique against the medical model and thus introduced the transition to a new, social understanding of disability.

The social model defines disability as: “The loss or limitation of opportunities that prevents people who have impairments from taking part in the normal life of the community on an

24 equal level with others due to physical and social barriers” (Finkelstein & French, 1993, p. 27).

In these two definitions, it is clear that the social model introduced a significant shift to the understanding of disability. No longer was disability seen as a product of functional

limitations and biological deficit within an individual, but rather as caused by the external physical, attitudinal and political barriers directed towards and imposed upon people with disabilities (Ash, 1984; Barnes & Mercer, 1997; Beauchamp-Pryor & Symeonidou, 2014; Longmore, 2003; Oliver, 1983, 1990, 2009a; Oliver & Barnes, 1998; Priestley, 2006; Rieser, 2006; Schneider, 2006; Swartz & Watermeyer, 2006; Thomas, 2002). In the words of Oliver (1981), “This new paradigm involves nothing more or less fundamental than a switch away from focusing on the physical limitations of particular individuals to the way the physical and social environment impose limitations upon certain categories of people” (p. 28).

In her reflective paper, “Blind rage”, Georgina Kleege (an academic with a visual impairment), describes the experience of her disability in the following way:

. . . ninety nine % of my days are just fine. I get up, I go to work, I teach, I read, I write. The fact that I use aids and assistants to do some of these things is not really central to my consciousness. When everything works, I consider myself "normal." My blindness is just a fact of life, not an insurmountable obstacle blocking my path. I work around it. I ignore it. On a lot of days, it matters less than the weather. (Kleege, 1998, p. 62)

This quote clearly illustrates the premise of the social model – that disability is imposed by society. If everything in her environment works well, her disability is not disabling and barely reaches the edges of her awareness.

25 In tandem with the gaze that now turned away from physical deficit, the focus of intervention also changed direction. The aim switched from normalising the “defective” individual, to social restructuring and political emancipation as intervention for difficulties associated with disability (Barnes & Mercer, 2003; Oliver, 2009b; Reichart, 2014; Rieser, 2006; Shakespeare, 2014; Swartz & Watermeyer, 2006). In this light, instead of the individual, society needed to change.

Having said this, social model theorists did not disregard the biological nature of disability entirely. In their distinction between “impairment” and “disability”, they left room for both societal and biological influences (Loja et al., 2012). Impairment refers to the physical or medical basis of a disability that encapsulates the limitations of physical, sensory or psychological function. On the other hand, the term “disability” was used to describe the social exclusion and barriers imposed on people with disabilities (Barnes & Mercer, 2005; Disabled People‟s International, 1981; Shakespeare, 2014; Watermeyer, 2013). Social model writers therefore regarded disability as the interaction between an individual impairment and the socio-political environment (Ryan & Struths, 2004).

However, even though they recognise that a disability cannot exist without the foundation of a physical impairment, they still emphasise and perceive the disabling agents to be rooted within societal structures. In other words, a person might have an impairment, but it is society that determines whether the impairment will develop into a disability. As Barnes (2012) noted, “For advocates impairment may be a human constant but „disability‟ need not and should not be” (p. 18).

This external, environmental starting point created a platform for disabled scholars to challenge and unhinge the veiled discriminatory practices against them (Fernie & Henning, 2006; Oliver, 1990, 1996; Shakespeare, 2014; Watermeyer, 2013). The social model thus

26 brought hidden discrimination to the foreground, mobilising people with disabilities to take political action (Watermeyer, 2013). To a certain extent, the social model “woke” people with disabilities to the implications of medical formulations, and inspired them to develop new theories and models explaining disability-formation. Shakespeare (2014) captures this neatly when he writes,

Suddenly, people were able to understand that it was society that was at fault, not them. They did not need to change; society needed to change. They did not have to feel sorry for themselves; rather, they could be angry. . . . They became empowered to mobilise for equal citizenship. Rather than a demeaning reliance on charity, disabled activists could now demand their rights. (p.13)

It is no wonder then that the social model laid the foundation for disability studies as a distinct and discrete discipline (Swartz & Watermeyer, 2006). In addition, as Barnes (2012)

extensively describes, the social model laid the foundation for disability legislation and equality, prompted a growing number of literature around disability-related matters, for example the establishment of the academic journal Disability and Society (formerly

Disability, Handicap and Society) and led to the initiation of various organisations offering

services to people with disabilities in the UK and around the world. Organisations working with disability-related matters in the UK, furthermore, almost always have social model-based policies (Barnes & Mercer, 2010; Shakespeare, 2006). This social model rhetoric is also explicitly mentioned and/or implicitly implied in the policy documents of South African higher education settings.

In summary, the social model exposed and challenged the various layers of the medical model. Firstly, it stripped the medical understanding of disability from its biological roots. Instead, it argued for a socio-political definition of disability, wherein people with a

27 biological impairment are enabled or impeded through societal structures. Hereby, the

responsibility for change was transferred from the shoulders of the biologically impaired body, to the “broken” limbs of the social and political structures. In this move, the medical model‟s discriminatory practices became clear and, flowing from this, disability studies as an emancipatory discipline was established, and political action was mobilised (Watermeyer, 2013).