Edwin Lemert’s (1948, 1951) account of the structured, material and social construction of deviant status is key to understanding the social generation of the constructs ‘disability’ and ‘learning disability’. By rejecting individual
pathologisation as a way of explaining deviancy, Lemert’s interactionist work challenged dominant notions of deviance and, in turn, confronted whether or not the strict binary dualism of ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ (see Canguilhem, 1978) was necessary or useful. He argued that ‘the archaic and medicinal idea that human beings can be divided into normal and pathological’ categories reflect reductive, immoral, and dehumanising beliefs, which are founded through unequal power relations in the social domain (Lemert: 1948: 25). He presented the idea that the concept of the ‘norm’ was a construct and deviation from such ideas occurred through social interactions; yet more specifically within the social reactions to behaviour as contingent on the context of said action (Lemert, 1951). He argued that conflict exists between differentially situated groups as one attempts to exert their hegemonic power relations over the other (Lemert, 1951: 56). Moreover, Becker (1963: 14) added:
‘deviance is not a quality that lies in behaviour itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it.’ Indeed, the seminal sociology of deviance work – which was itself closely aligned with symbolic
interactionism and the Chicago school (discussed further in chapter 4) - marked a shift from considering the individual as deviant to the behaviour itself.
Interactionist accounts of disability owe much to Goffman’s (1963) ground-breaking work in Stigma where he distinguished the social conditions and relations which produce ‘normal’ and ‘stigmatised’ identities (see chapters 3,7, and 8 for further discussion). Goffman argues that a ‘norm’ is socially established within any given social environment or exchange, and assumed ‘normal’ identity or behaviour constructs stereotypes through a stigma theory in order to explain the inferiority,
23 lesser status, and social danger which the ‘stigmatised’ person may represent
(Goffman, 1963: 15-16). His account focuses on the social interactions among
‘normal’ and ‘stigmatised’ identity groups, explaining that power is inherent in these relationships due to the prevalence of stereotypes; the construct of the socially-contingent idealised ‘norm’ renders visible ‘spoilt’ identity or ‘blemished’
characteristic (Goffman, 1963). Emblematic of symbolic interactionism, Goffman’s work demonstrated that the meanings stemming from interactions between social actors reveal that deviation from the norm, along with the stereotypical assumptions, are the product of social processes (see also, Thomas, 2007). The notion of ‘stigma’ is socially created in the way in which ‘normals’ socially interact with, classify, and treat those discredited by a devalued characteristic or social marker of difference from the norm (Goffman, 1963).
However, the concept of stigma and its embodiment can be reconsidered through the concept of prejudice so as to relocate the locus of blame; shifting focus to prejudice as the product of social interaction and spatial organisation forces a reconsideration of the notion of ‘vulnerability’ (Abberley, 1987; Watson, 2003). Watson (2003) re-evaluates the site of stigma to bring the idea that society is predisposed to concepts and constructs of ‘normal’:
Impaired people are thus cast in the position of outsider, placed on the margins of society by virtue of their impairment. It is this embodiment of stigma that is problematic… The concept of stigma, and its embodiment on the stigmatised ignores broader roles of cultural representation which render disabled people ‘other’. If the concept of stigma were to be recast around the concept of prejudice a far more powerful analysis could be achieved, in that the blame for such prejudice would fall squarely on the shoulders of the
‘normal’.
Watson (2003:37)
Similarly, Garland-Thomson (2011: 600) theoretically undresses the United Nations Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities Treaty (2006) definition of disability, and contests that there is a “misfit between ‘persons with impairments’ and
24 an unsustaining environment made up of ‘barriers’ materialises our inherent
vulnerability.’ She argues that the site of vulnerability resides not in the impaired body or mind, but rather in ‘the fit’ of any given individual within any given
environment; more hostile environments will inspire more frailty, but ultimately it is in the interaction between the individual and the physical, built, social and psycho-emotional world that the lack of fit presents itself (Garland-Thomson, 2011).
The labelling perspective emphasizes the political motivation to place ‘power’ on trial and question the legitimacy of the concept in the creation of deviance due to
ideological hegemonic power relations; perpetuating the interwoven and
inter-dependent notions of power in the social construction of deviance/deviants (Goffman, 1961; Jenkins, 2008). The concepts of deviance, power, and institutionalisation are inseparably entwined, as discussed in chapters 8 and 9, as a result of the constructed nature of direct and indirect mechanisms of social control; this is exemplified by Goffman in the final essay of Asylums (1961). He most ardently sets his arguments against the psychiatry movement, as he contended that the production of deviant
‘Others’ – that is, those deemed only fit for institutional commitment – is but a part of an extremely professional, systemic and bureaucratic structure geared at the
demarcation, control and containment of such undesirables (ibid.). As such, the labelling approach began to unveil routinised practices which seek to socially control specifically targeted populations of undesirable, socially devalued, and stigmatised
‘Others’ by revealing the techniques that both produce deviance as well as ‘the unnecessary intrusion by the state’ over our everyday lives (Sumner, 1994: 205; see also, Cohen, 2001; Cohen and Taylor, 1976; see also chapter 5 and 9 for further discussion).
Robert Scott (1981) presents an interactionist account of the creation of blindness, insofar as people with varying degrees of visual impairment are constructed both through meaning attribution to their outward social situation but also constrained by their structured institutional interactions to be suitably moulded to fit the standard
‘blind’ category. Similarly, Lennard Davis (1995) argues that the notion of ‘normalcy’
itself is created and sustained through conformity to the Weberian notion of the ideal type (ibid.: 27), yet in a functionalist fashion that follows the standard normal bell
25 curve given that there will always be outliers. Davis purported that ‘the problem’ did not reside within the disabled body but rather within the socio-cultural processes which create and sustain ‘normalcy’, which, in turn, creates the ‘disabled person’ and renders them a ‘problem’ to be dealt with (ibid.: 24; Shakespeare, 1994). Shakespeare (1994) highlights that socio-cultural forces produce and reinforce negative cultural predilections toward disabled people, and, in turn, generate cycles of prejudice and oppression. These devaluing social messages of exclusion and disavowal can become internalised by the disabled person and corrode their sense of self-worth; this is a thread I expand on throughout the data chapters that follow with regard to the ways in, and psychological and emotional impact of, which people with learning disabilities feel excluded from criminal justice processes and interactions particularly when their capacity is called to question.