DEFINITIONS
Terms Defined
Disability Studies is a field that sees disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. This is in contrast to clinical or medical perspectives of disability. Disability Studies is a vibrant advocacy and academic field that focuses on how disability is defined and represented in society. It rejects the perception of disability as a functional impairment that limits a person’s activities. Disability is not a characteristic that exists in the person or a problem of the person that must be “fixed” or “cured.” Rather, disability is a social and cultural construct.
Disability
Disability is defined differently by different social groups. For medical and benefit purposes, disability is typically seen an impairment that may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, sensory, or some combination of these. It substantially affects a person's life activities and may be present from birth or occur during a person's lifetime. There are different definitions of disability that can serve different purposes. For example, in the USA, Social Security Administration defines it as a person who cannot work as before; the administration decides that the disabled person cannot adjust to the work because of medical conditions; and/or that the disability has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death. The UN Convention offers an important view that persons with disability have human rights. Specifically, "The Convention is intended as a human rights instrument with an explicit, social development dimension. It adopts a broad categorization of persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. It clarifies and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made for persons with disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced."
In my own work I have explained that “Although there is growing debate among disability studies writers about how to best define disability (see Finkelstein, French, and Oliver 1993; Oliver 1990, 1992; Morris 1991; Linton 1998; Watson 2002; Shakespeare and Watson 2001; Hughes 2007; Shakespeare 2006, and many others), this work supports a definition of disability that starts with an embodied subject and allows disability to be defined in relational terms. Using phenomenological and critical perspectives, I see disability as the complex interplay of body, environment, culture and personal characteristics ‘which serve to exclude certain people from becoming full participants in interpersonal, social, cultural, economic and political affairs’ (Marks 1999, 611; Shakespeare 2006). From phenomenology I use methodological and epistemic insights to listen to the lived experiences of disabled persons in order to learn about the experience of disability from those who experience it, rather than imposing theoretical categories onto experience. To this I add a disability studies or social model of disability perspective in order to expose the normative/oppressive features of living with disability and to show that (and how) re-embodiment after SCI is possible, thus seeing persons with disability as newly abled. In this way I stay faithful to the lived experience of disability and committed to identifying ableist attitudes that hinder the actual lives of disabled persons.” (2008 enwheeled paper)
Embodiment
Embodiment: Phenomenologists argue that rather than having a body, we are our bodies. Our experiences and meanings are grounded in the ways our bodies, social habits, relationships are involved in and with the world (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 1962; Crossley 1996: 28). This involvement in the world happens because embodied beings form a part of the world that they open onto. This also means that they open onto each other. Importantly, this perspective of embodiment states that it is meaningful behavior that opens them to each other, not their sheer visibility as embodied beings (Crossley 1996:30), nor their capacity to perceive and organize sense data. In this sense, human interaction is a dialogue between self and other within an intersubjective (meaningful) ground, not a raw physical world. Finally, existence is fundamentally dialectical and ambiguous (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 1962:198) and always and inevitably culturally immersed (Csordas 1994). Actions, ideas, choices are not the property of individuals but of the dialogue among embodied beings out into which and through which they exist. For more information on the current relevance on phenomenological embodiment see Hubert L. Dreyfus
Equity
Equity has to do with everyone having access to fair and equal treatment under the law, regardless of race, social class, ability/disability, or gender. In my work I use the principles outlined by the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) Principles for Global Health Research
Person-Centered Care
Person-Centered Care “Informs the work we do, provide guidance for decisions making, and improves outcomes.” Chris MacDonell from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), an international, non-profit organization, authors a clear, helpful, and in-depth diagram of Person-Centered Care
Phenomenology
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. For more information about phenomenology see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. For more information about phenomenology see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Social Justice
Social Justice extends the concept of Equity to include human rights as part of the social contract. Social Justice and Equity
