Proponents of the so-called "social model of disability" emerged in Great Britain during the 1970s, as disabled persons bearing an overtly adversarial and challenging response to the dominance of biomedical accounts of disability. Their vehemently held, revolutionary position was founded upon the conviction that it is the selective inattention of social systems to the participation-needs of individuals which is at the root of the marginality and deprivation experienced by disabled people (Abberley, 1987; 1996; Barnes, 1990; Oliver, 1986; 1990; Swain et al., 1993). The exclusion of disabled persons from full participation in all aspects of social life, according to this radical position, is an entirely avoidable artifact of oppressive ideology, rather than part of the inevitable "sequelae" of bodily difference or dysfunction (as held by the traditional medical view).
In embarking upon a searing critique of prevailing modes of thinking about disability, which directed attention instead toward a critical interrogation of society, these authors began by drawing a key conceptual distinction between the notions of "disability" and "impairment". Within the new schema, "impairment" was defined as a narrow, medical account of difference or dysfunction of the body or its systems. Separating off this "diagnostic", somatic layer paved the way for a new, inherently subversive account of what composes disability, which was designed to bring the ideological mediation of disabled lives firmly into relief. Whilst social model definitions of the "narrow" and theoretically specific concept of disability have varied, this variation has been slight, and merely the result of ideas and wording being fine- tuned over time. This example of such a definition is typical, and instructive:
Disability: The loss or limitation of opportunities that prevents people who have impairments from taking part in the normal life of the community on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers.
(Finkelstein & French, 1993, p. 27)
In separating out these concepts, the architects of the social model inverted the prevailing logic on disability. Instead of the bodies of disabled persons being placed under the microscope, the new subject of interrogation became society itself – the complex, layered world of "barriers", be they cultural, physical, legal, institutional, or whatever, which obstruct impaired individuals from full and equitable participation. So, in the minds of the social modelists, would begin a long and intricate process of unpacking society's multifarious, distorted, and disadvantageous responses to persons with impairments. From the stubbornness of prejudiced myths, to the sweeping narrative of socially engineered segregation; from rehabilitation, normalisation and control, to the demeaning exploitation of the freak show; from educational and occupational exclusion, to the alienation engendered by a physical environment racked with unnecessary barriers; such aspects as these are the subject matter of the model's cross-examination. The social model, in contrast to the scientific "crispness" of medical attributions for the marginality of disabled persons, directs complex, testing questions at the social order, seeking out multifaceted and layered answers embedded within the very fabric of society's organisation. A notion of disability with the concept of social oppression at its epicentre had begun to move into view (Abberley, 1987, p. 5). To "be disabled", within this theoretical position, was to be identified as subject to a "complex system of social restrictions" inflicted upon persons with impairments by "a highly discriminatory society" (Abberley, 1996, p. 61).
Advocates of the new social approach vociferously demanded that attention be drawn toward how so-called "normal" human modes of living are structured and constrained by an inherently discriminatory societal context; one which is designed and constructed with exclusive consideration of the needs of non-impaired persons (Abberley, 1996, p. 61). Correspondingly, the ostracisation and systematic deprivations experienced by disabled persons within contemporary society remain justified and entrenched by medically and culturally sanctioned – yet illusory – notions of normalcy and aberrance (Braddock & Parish,
2001, p. 13). In launching a fierce attack on the role of biomedicine in the perpetuation of "individualising" accounts of disability, social model theorists branded the medical approach a "personal tragedy theory" (Oliver, 1986, p. 16). What was meant here was that modern medicine's somatic preoccupation created a meaning system surrounding disability which reduced what were, in fact, complex and atrocious societal ills, to chance personal experiences of misfortune. Furthermore, medicine's subtly depoliticising sleight of hand created the illusion of immutability around disability struggle, in a manner which obviated societal accountability for human rights violations which were – in the social model schema – entirely avoidable (Barnes et al., 2002a, p. 5). Oliver (1986, p. 16) locates this "personal tragedy theory" of disability as one "victim-blaming" model amongst many others, all serving the purpose of obscuring the political and economic structures which underpin social oppression. Examples of such "deceptive" accounts of social phenomena include the use of deficit theory to explain poor scholastic performance, character weakness as a cause for poverty, or sickness as an explanation for criminal behaviour – in each case, individuals are condemned as deficient, to the detriment of social critique (Ryan, 1971 cited in Oliver, 1986, p. 16). The onus for dealing with "deficit" is, via such understandings, placed on the individual. Thus it is that, notwithstanding what Imrie (1998, p. 129) describes as the "design apartheid" of Western cities, mobility impaired persons are required to "confront" and "deal with" built environments riddled with impossible obstructions (Imrie, 1996).
As will be explored later, the social model was not without its conceptual shortcomings. Nevertheless, its radical re-focusing of attention upon modes of exclusion served, and continues to serve, an extremely valuable purpose in facilitating personal recognition amongst disabled people of the everyday contravention of citizenship rights (Thomas, 1999a, p. 26). It is the hegemonic nature of such aspects of one's life-world that may cause even quite palpably oppressive contradictions to remain, until consciously questioned, cloaked in a disguise of familiarity. The social model provided a device capable of transforming a domesticating and unjust self-blame into rightful outrage at one's unnecessary exclusion; the social model message was a clarion call to political action.
The advent of the social model repositioned disability as a temporally and contextually specific phenomenon; not a "natural" or "essential" aspect of being (Marks, 1999a, p. 76). Thus ran the logic: if disability is a social accomplishment – an artifact of the arbitrary neglect of the needs of impaired persons – then an optimally accessible society is feasible, within
which impairment may be present without disability. It is at this theoretical juncture that the original, roundly materialist version of the social model approach – described by Priestley (1998, p. 80) as a "social creationist" view – begins to intersect with a more social constructionist interpretation of the model. Within the social constructionist philosophical position (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 1985), reality is viewed as intersubjectively socially constructed (Lunt & Thornton, 1994, p. 226), situating "disability" as an illusory cultural artifact. The distinction between these deeply interwoven orientations is one of emphasis, with the Marxian historical materialist genealogy of the original social model position being primarily concerned with economic relations of production and exchange, rather than cultural representations.
A more constructionist orientation may, inter alia, focus on the buttressing of social identity via processes of "othering", which compose identity as pairs of binary oppositions, offering the opportunity for the affirming of one's favourable status in opposition to a denigrated "other" (e.g. Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Oliver (1990) notes that "there can be no such thing as madness without the idea of 'unmadness'", or "reason without unreason" – it is in the moment of positioning oneself as the favourable, unblemished "opposite" that pathology and deviance become exclusively located within a devalued "other" (Oliver, 1990, p. 47; Foucault, 1995). Thus it is, continues Oliver (1990), that the notion of disability as an individual pathology only becomes feasible upon formulation – and reification – of an idea of "individual able- bodiedness" (Oliver, 1990, p. 47). Here we find that, despite the staunchly materialist leanings of the early social model theorists, the psychological realm must begin to be brought into view, as we consider individual, psychic needs for the disavowal of unwanted or feared aspects of the self. Cixous and Clement (1975; 1986) regard the need for the reaffirmation of one's positive identity distinctiveness via the denigration of its (constructed) social counterpoint as so intrinsic to psychic functioning that "if there were no other, one would
invent it" (Cixous & Clement, 1975; 1986 cited in Kitzinger & Wilkinson, 1996, p. 8 – my
emphasis). It is a central aim of the current investigation to begin the work of creating a synthesis between social and intra-psychic levels of analysis of the disability phenomenon. The lack of conceptual space for an integration of psychological aspects within the social model approach has, in my view, foreshortened the model's relevance and impact, through affording only a partial capacity for the reflection, and hence validation, of disabled life.
Finkelstein (1980) argues that the bureaucratic delineation of citizens into the binary categories of disabled and nondisabled, with profound consequences for participation in all aspects of social life, was catalysed by the labour demands of early industrialisation in Europe. New and ever more highly differentiated patterns of division of labour arising during the industrial revolution led to imperatives to measure, categorise and separate out those with different or compromised capacities to participate in production. Over time, these roots of division solidified into increasingly structural segregation, the rise of institutionalisation, and the entrenchment of a myriad of constitutional elements which situated disablement as an axis of discrimination (Barnes, 1990, p. 10; Finkelstein, 1980). The nature of the social predicaments of disabled persons during mediaeval, pre-industrial times is an issue of some dispute. Historiographical accounts of the premodern disabled world range from an idealised view of an integrated, diverse society, uncontaminated by the distortions of capitalist markets and production (e.g. Finkelstein, 1980), to reconstructions which portray disabled lives as characterised by unmitigated hardship, ostracisation, deprivation, and death (Winzer, 1997; see also Borsay, 2002).
Henri-Jacques Stiker (1982), within the Foucaultian discourse analytic tradition, adds a further contextualising layer by associating the horrors of "the war to end all wars" with the rise of modern biomedical rehabilitation, and the drive to "normalise" disabled bodies (White, 1995, p. 267; Stiker, 1982). The catastrophic devastation during World War I of the material and cultural stuff of which society was composed was mirrored, macabrely, by the multitudes of distorted and damaged bodies to be re-incorporated into an ailing social world. A fervent need, in Stiker's terms, for belief in quasi-magical repair found form in prostheses, and quickly generalised to a dominant notion of people – and society at large – as "machines" amenable to reconstruction and restitution (ibid.). Such projects of reconstruction, however, inevitably became directed toward an illusory, idealised fantasy of what came before the apocalypse – a perfect, harmonious society, populated by pristinely shaped and functional bodies. Biomedical normalisation, and the submission of the "docile body" (Foucault, 1979) to the "rehabilitating" gaze of medicine, was born. Stiker carefully distinguishes between the notion of "cure", which he defines narrowly in relation to health, and the profoundly ideological actions of normalisation and re-integration, which exert forces of uniformity and control at the social level (Stiker, 1982, p. 141). Correspondingly, proponents of the social
l model, whilst virulently critical of medicine's "normalising" imperatives, reiterate that their view does not preclude the appropriate implementation of health care interventions where needed (Oliver, 2004 cited in Momin, 2005, p. 65). On the contrary, states Oliver and others, the denial of such services should be viewed as a contravention of citizenship rights (ibid.).
Varying historical factors within the United States of America and the United Kingdom led, during the course of the second half of the twentieth century, to contrasting disability rights movements. In the USA, the diversity of the population, and the rise of the civil rights movement during the 1960s, contributed to a disability lobby whose strategic emphasis lay in litigation, and the promise of anti-discrimination legislation (Hahn, 2001, p. 59). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was the culmination – albeit a deeply disappointing one to most – of this approach. Many view this tactical manoeuvre, known as the "minority model" view (Hahn, 2001, p. 62; Olkin, 1999), as one which fragmented the disability issue into the legal ramifications of the cases of individual litigants, diffusing the potential impact of a mass challenge to the status quo. Conversely, the roots of the British movement, based as these are within a tradition of Marxian class politics, fostered a brand of disability struggle which foregrounded the economic hardships of disabled persons, in a manner which situated such struggle within differential access to the means of production (Hahn, 2001, p. 59). The original social model aimed, thus, to forge an attack on social disadvantage based in group solidarity, and a rigorous – at times orthodox – adherence to theoretical "policies" on the "real" nature and origins of disability. Both viewpoints, though, have faced massive obstacles to liberation and progress (Hahn, 2001, p. 59). Not least of the social forces retarding the propagation of a fresh, emancipatory view, is the fact of disability in the developed world as a multi-billion dollar industry, incorporating an elaborate web of professional, organisational and cultural concerns (Albrecht & Bury, 2001, p. 586).
One strand of the orthodoxy attributed to social model theorists pertains to the (at times) acrimonious controversies concerning terminology. One significant quarrel amongst many others is that between advocates of so-called "people first" language (preferred within the US "minority model" tradition), and UK-based social model theorists who volubly denounce this usage (Albrecht, Seelman & Bury, 2001, p. 3; Stone, 1999). "People first" language is of the form of "persons with disabilities" rather than "disabled people"; it is intended to recreate the idea of disability as one human characteristic amongst others, not something inherent and all- encompassing. In addition, the usage interfaces with an American capitalist emphasis on the
importance of the individual within society, and concurrently with the US disability movement's opting for a litigation-based counter-oppression strategy (ibid.). Social model authors favour the term "disabled people", here connoting the anti-medicalising idea of "people who have been disabled by society". These writers testily assert that "people first" language naively accommodates the prevailing cultural impression of disability as a defective aspect of the individual, rather than an exogenous social force.
The project of re-authoring the disability concept as a shared, group-based characteristic of oppression, in opposition to the splintering, diversifying medical view, involved the adoption of a certain "strategic essentialism" (Thomson, 1997a, p. 283); the (initially) self-conscious illusion of homogeneity amongst members of the disability movement. Hence, the need to underscore a common predicament led to the papering over of a mosaic of diverse experience, of both societal and bodily origin. The reluctance of social model adherents to engage with the confounding multiplicity of impairment within their ranks was later to form the thrust of a key critique of their standpoint. Interestingly, this criticism of social modelist zeal – of which there will be more detailed discussion later – brings the wisdom of an early disability studies pioneer, Irving Zola, into clearer relief. Zola, ever cautious regarding the distorting influence of political expediency, proposed a model of disability as a continuum, rather than a categorical absolute (Altman, 2001, p. 100; Williams, 1998; 2001; Zola, 1988).
Within all social movements bent on uncovering and delineating suffering, as well as directing accountability at those elements within society held to be responsible for such troubles, disputes over "politically correct" terminology seem ever-present. Sinason (1992) argues that the constant flux and change in what nomenclature is "permissible" relates to the intolerable nature of those unconscious evocations (within the observer) with which such provocative ideas as disability are associated (Sinason, 1992, p. 42). For her, the clamour of shifting positions regarding the acceptability of terms for sexual orientation, mental illness, race, disability, and the like, reflects an obsessive, insatiable hunger for euphemisms able to momentarily thwart the reality of human difference (ibid.). The wish to deny such difference, always only temporarily gratified, recreates the need for new ideals, and new villains – the world of learning disability (or, mental handicap / intellectual impairment / mental retardation) is an instructive case in point. The lack of flexibility and nuance which characterises the social model will, along with a range of related criticisms, be considered in the following three sections.