Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
Interventions in Disability Politics
This year CAPPE is hosting a series of online talks on disability politics. All are welcome. The talks will take place every 4-6 weeks on Wednesday evenings 6pm-7.30pm. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements: z.sutherland@brighton.ac.uk
You can join this month’s talk using the Zoom link below:
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89351917921?pwd=U3UwWURSUk5pUnprbXBMdkdFSE1odz09
Meeting ID: 893 5191 7921
Passcode: 157823
Wednesday 14th December:
Ellen Clifford, ‘A Reinvigorated Social Model of Disability’
Disabled people in the UK have been subject to brutal and targeted attacks from the government since 2010, largely concealed from the wider public through a concerted effort of spin, lies and strategic U-turns. In 2016 The UN found the UK government guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights, as a result of their austerity policies and welfare reforms. Disabled people suffered disproportionately during the pandemic and were overlooked in official responses, forcing them to lobby and threaten legal challenges to get their needs recognised, and leaving mutual aid groups, DPO’s and peer support groups to fill the gaps. At least 59% of all Covid-related deaths have been those of disabled people, with mainstream narratives on the pandemic implying that their lives were disposable: it become more acceptable to openly voice opinions on the lesser worth of disabled people’s lives. We are now facing a severe ‘cost-of-living crisis’ and another round of austerity.
Originally conceived as a tool for collective action – rather than a comprehensive theory of oppression – it would seem that the ‘social model of disability’ is more necessary than ever. The social model has been the backbone of the Disabled People’s Movement in Britain for nearly three decades, providing a self-understanding around which disabled people have organised. But a watered-down version of the social model has also come to shape institutional ideas and policies on disability. It was instrumental in informing the development of the UN’s Convention on the rights of disabled people – which promotes a human rights approach consistent with a social model – and is accepted by the UK government, Scottish and Welsh administrations, and various regional and local authorities in England. Even critics of the social model acknowledge that it has played some role in driving forward living standards for disabled people through informing policy, but there are serious questions over what has been lost from the meaning of this term in the process. At the same time, the social model has divided disabled people and been beset by controversy. Not all disabled people identify with the model, with some worrying that it doesn’t speak to the reality of the real effects of certain kinds of impairments.
Barnes and Oliver warned against expending too much energy theorising about something that was designed to be a tool for action. In The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, I propose – contra Barnes and Oliver – a reinvigoration of the social model of disability. I argue for a return to the original understanding of the social model proposed by Oliver – a counter to the individualised model, underpinned by the medicalisation of disability – and for the development of an accompanying ‘social model of impairment’.
