Disability Studies

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The Disability Studies (mutatis mutandis studies or disability ) is it is an interdisciplinary science , sees disability as a social, historical and cultural construction , and the social and cultural sciences research into the phenomenon disability dedicated. In order to establish a connection to the international discourse and to make the distance to the traditional rehabilitation sciences clear on the conceptual level, the English term is also used in German-speaking countries.

starting point

The basis of the interdisciplinary research area is the assumption that disability cannot be equated with medically diagnosable impairments, but rather arises primarily from socially constructed barriers. The people affected are prevented by these barriers from participating in social, cultural and economic life. According to this, disabled people are primarily members of an oppressed minority . Discrimination and hostility to people with disabilities are the main problems associated with disability. From the perspective of disability studies, the example of (non-) disability can be used to examine how social categories arise historically, how knowledge bases are arranged around them, and how boundaries along cultural evaluations become the starting point for power relations that determine everyday life and life chances of people .

History of Disability Studies

The Disability Studies (DS) received significant impulses from the political analyzes and findings of the international disability movements .

While disability movements with the goals of emancipation and social participation can be found worldwide today, disability studies as a scientific discipline only exist in a few countries.

They started out in the USA and Great Britain, where they have been taught at universities since the early 1980s. Today there are professorships, courses and doctoral programs at Anglo-American universities. In addition, disability studies are also taught in Canada, India, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Norway, France, Ireland etc. They have their own international infrastructure, which includes specialist societies and networks as well as specialist journals, mailing lists and conference series. The Society of Disability Studies was founded in 1982 .

The handicapped sociologist Irving Kenneth Zola (USA) and the handicapped social scientist Michael Oliver (Great Britain) are considered the founders of the research area . At about the same time, both developed the theory of the social model of disability and opposed it to the individual model of disability or the rehabilitation paradigm. According to the social model, disability is above all a socially constructed category, while according to the individual model it is above all a disorder that can be avoided through prophylaxis , or that can be overcome through rehabilitation , or cannot be overcome.

In German-speaking countries, too, attempts to develop teaching and research activities that are geared towards an emancipatory program have repeatedly been made in the vicinity of the disabled movement since the late 1970s. At first there were corresponding courses offered at various adult education centers; in the course of the 1990s it was then possible to conquer rooms at technical colleges and universities. However, one can only speak of German-language disability studies in the narrower sense from 2001. This year, the conference "The (im) perfect man" took place in Dresden, organized by the German Hygiene Museum, Aktion Mensch and Humboldt University Berlin, as part of the exhibition of the same name, at which representatives of North American disability took place for the first time Studies met with German scientists. A follow-up conference was held in Berlin in 2002 under the title “PhantomSchmerz”. The summer university “Disability Studies in Germany - Rethinking Disability!”, Which was held in Bremen in 2003, was an important starting signal. Since April 2002 there has also been a nationwide working group “Disability Studies in Germany”. In 2004 the International Research Center Disability Studies (iDiS) was founded at the University of Cologne. In 2005 the Center for Disability Studies (Zedis) was established at the University of Hamburg. Research and teaching in disability studies are now being carried out at various universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The first professorship for "Sociology and Politics of Rehabilitation, Disability Studies" in German-speaking countries was created at the end of 2008 at the Faculty of Human Sciences at Cologne University, and in 2009 Anne Waldschmidt was appointed . At the chair, disability is used as an analytical category to examine society. In addition, social and disability policy issues are dealt with from an international comparative perspective; the focus is on the analysis of “dis / ability” from a rehabilitation-critical and participation-oriented perspective.

Research fields

Disability Studies are an interdisciplinary field of research. They are dedicated to historical, economic, cultural, political, legal, psychological etc. issues. Historians in Disability Studies examine e.g. B. the social position of disabled people in different historical epochs; Legal scholars research the legal construction of disability. From a theoretical point of view, especially in Great Britain, the boom in the critical social sciences contributed to the justification of disability studies. Another source to be mentioned is the “cultural turn”, the establishment of the cultural studies paradigm as a concept that integrates the various humanities and social sciences. And last but not least - especially in the US discourse - the post-structuralist approaches to difference and discourse inspired by French philosophy, the discovery of body, subject and knowledge as historical and culturally formed phenomena, play a role. The constructivist approach and the political roots connect the DS with the thematically related gender studies and with the critical race studies widespread in many English-speaking countries . Like these other cross-cutting disciplines, Disability Studies is not just about conducting academic research and teaching. Disabled people as members of a social fringe group should also be “made visible” through research and be able to participate in research. The topic of disability should be brought out of the impasse of the special sciences ( curative and disabled education special or rehabilitation ) and brought into the center of the general scientific discourse. The DS is also dedicated to the history and culture of the disabled movement or individual historical personalities such as Frida Kahlo or Theodore W. Roosevelt who were disabled. The development of one's own 'disability culture' (films, theater, poetry, dance, etc.) is an integral part. In contrast to the traditional special sciences, the focus of the DS is not on perceiving disability as a defect, but as a constituent factor of normality.

Disability History

The Disability History examines historical processes of perception and production of 'disability' or 'normality'. The research approach is constructivist and emancipatory; it offers space to conduct basic scientific research as well as to prepare special studies. Approaches and methods from political history, social history and organizational history, history of science and technology, cultural history and art history, etc. are used. The basic perspective is based on social and cultural models of disability; the rehabilitation approach is viewed critically. The first introduction to the German-language disability history discusses conceptual principles and methodological questions; Case studies deal with science and subjective experiences, institutions and politics, the body, art and culture.

Empirical research

In German-speaking countries, it is more of a smaller research project that is assigned to disability studies. An exception to this was the project financed by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and led by the educational scientist Gottfried Biewer on the professional participation of people with intellectual disabilities. In this 5-year project (running from February 1, 2008 to January 31, 2013), the experiences of Participation and exclusion of two groups of people examined by means of biographical interviews. It was young people who left school and were looking for a way into the labor market, but also people who had been mainly working in a replacement labor market for many years. For the first time in a larger research project in German-speaking countries, experience was gained on how people with intellectual disabilities can be included in the interpretation of qualitative data via a reference group. At the International Research Center for Disability Studies at the University of Cologne, various research projects are carried out which, with the help of social and cultural sciences, empirically examine the difference category “dis / ability” and the living situations and worlds of people with disabilities. In addition, Anne Waldschmidt's department at the University of Cologne offers doctoral opportunities in Disability Studies.

practice

Criticism of rehabilitation

In January 2010, Theresia Degener demanded that the previously prevailing medical model of disability in rehabilitation should be replaced by a human rights model. This must be actively accompanied by “change management” with external incentives, and rehabilitation must be understood in the future as a diversity approach in which human diversity is addressed with individual approaches. In 2005 Anne Waldschmidt called for a cultural model of disability to be developed in addition to the well-known social model of disability. This model is about a deeper understanding of the social categorization processes. The cultural-scientific perspective does not - like the social model - assume the universality of the disability problem, but reveals the relativity and historicity of disadvantage and exclusion. The social status of non-disability / disability is used as a heuristic moment, the analysis of which reveals general cultural and societal practices and structures that would otherwise have gone undetected. This approach was further developed in an article (Schneider / Waldschmidt 2012).

literature

  • Gary L. Albrecht, Katherine D. Seelman, Michael Bury (Eds.): Handbook of Disability Studies. Sage, Thousand Oaks, USA 2000.
  • Gary L. Albrecht (Ed.): Encyclopedia of disability. Sage, Thousand Oaks, USA 2006.
  • Lennard J Davis (Ed.): The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge, New York 2006.
  • Elsbeth Bösl, Anne Klein, Anne Waldschmidt (Eds.): Disability History. Constructions of Disability in History. An introduction. Bielefeld 2010.
  • Lennard J Davis: Enforcing Normalicy: Disability, Deafness and the Body. Verso, London / New York 1995.
  • Markus Dederich : Body, culture and disability: an introduction to disability studies. Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-641-0 .
  • Gisela Hermes, Swantje Köbsell (Ed.): Disability Studies in Germany - Rethinking Disability! Documentation from the summer of 2003 (= Bifos series ). Bifos, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-932951-74-3 .
  • Gisela Hermes, Eckhard Rohrmann : “Nothing about us - without us!” Disability studies as a new approach to emancipatory and interdisciplinary research on disability. (= Materials of the AG SPAK. Volume 187). AG-SPAK books, Neu-Ulm 2006, ISBN 3-930830-71-X .
  • Swantje Köbsell, Anne Waldschmidt (Eds.): International Section: Disability Studies in German Speaking Countries. In: Disability Studies Quarterly. The first journal in the field of disability studies, USA. 26, 2, 2006. dsq-sds.org (March 24, 2006)
  • Torsten Junge, Imke Schmincke (Ed.): Marginalized bodies. Contributions to the sociology and history of the other body. Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-89771-460-1 .
  • Simi Linton: Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. NY University Press, New York 1998.
  • Petra Lutz, Thomas Macho , Gisela Staupe, Heike Zirden (eds.): The (im-) perfect person. Metamorphoses of normality and deviation. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar 2003.
  • David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder: Narrative Prothesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 2000.
  • Michael Oliver: Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. St. Martin's Press, New York 1996.
  • Werner Schneider, Anne Waldschmidt: Disability Studies. Think (non-) disability differently . In: Stephan Moebius (Ed.): Culture. From cultural studies to visual studies. An introduction . transcript, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-2194-5 , pp. 128-150.
  • Tom Shakespeare (Ed.): The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives. Cassell, London 1998.
  • Anne Waldschmidt (Ed.): Cultural-scientific perspectives of Disability Studies. Bifos, Kassel 2003.
  • Anne Waldschmidt: Disability Studies: Individual, social and / or cultural model of disability? In: Psychology & Social Criticism. 29th vol., H. 1, 2005, pp. 9-31.
  • Anne Waldschmidt: Social problem or cultural difference? On the history of “disability” from the perspective of “disability studies”. In: Traverse. History magazine, Revue d'Histoire. Bern. 13th vol., H. 3, 2006, pp. 31-46.
  • Anne Waldschmidt: Disabled Bodies: Stigma Theory, Discourse Theory and Disability Studies in Comparison. In: Torsten Junge, Imke Schmincke (ed.): Marginalized bodies. Contributions to the sociology and history of the other body. Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-89771-460-1 .
  • Anne Waldschmidt: Embodied Differences - Normative Views: Foucault in Disability Studies. In: Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr (eds.): Foucault in the cultural studies - an inventory. Synchron, Heidelberg 2007, pp. 177-198.
  • Anne Waldschmidt, Werner Schneider (Eds.): Disability Studies, Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Disability: Explorations in a New Field of Research. transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-486-7 .
  • Anne Waldschmidt, Hanjo Berressem, Moritz Ingwersen (eds.): Culture - Theory - Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies , transcript, Bielefeld 2017.
  • Stefan René Buzanich: from matur [!] And birth effortlessly - people with physical and mental disabilities in the villages of the Litschau rule in the first half of the 18th century. A contribution to the "Disability History" , in: Das Waldviertel 4/2018 (pp. 520–526)

Trade journals

  • Disability Studies Quarterly. Society for Disability Studies c / o Professor Carol Gill, Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago (MC 626). 1640 Roosevelt Road # 236, Chicago, IL 60608-6904, USA
  • Disability & Society.
  • AGE. European journal of disability research, journal europeen de recherche sur le handicap. Elsevier Masson, Amsterdam ( ISSN  1875-0672 )

See also

Publications

Web links

International

  • World Institute on Disability : www.wid.org (June 20, 2012)

German speakers

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Disability History. Constructions of Disability in History. An introduction (publisher's website ) ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.transcript-verlag.de
  2. ↑ Professional participation of people with intellectual disabilities University of Vienna, accessed on September 19, 2018.
  3. ↑ Oliver Koenig: Employment as a goal of identity. A model of opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities. Springer Verlag, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-05426-7 .
  4. ↑ Helga Fasching, Gottfried Biewer : Constructions of knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities in educational science. In: Journal for Educational Research. 4 (3), 2014, pp. 289-302. doi: 10.1007 / s35834-014-0100-1
  5. ^ Anne Waldschmidt: Research International Research Center Disability Studies. University of Cologne, Faculty of Human Sciences, accessed on September 19, 2018.
  6. ↑ The rehabilitation system must be put to the test. kobinet news. January 15, 2010.