Social model of disability
THE social model of disability acknowledges that disability is socially constructed.
This means societies have different ways of understanding disability, influenced by, among other things, their cultural belief systems.
For example, people in some Asian countries believe in the concept of rebirth, thus perceiving disability as a temporary phase of the recreation process.
In addition, people in certain African communities fallaciously believe some children are born with albinism because their mothers would have been intimate with white men or ghosts. They are also of the view that cleansing of the children by traditional healers will cure the impairment.
Such normative cultural “scripts” influence the beliefs that inform people’s behaviours and the manner in which they conduct themselves.
In illustrating the role culture plays in the lives of persons with disabilities, some writers state that cultural interpretations of disability are much more limiting than the impairment itself.
The social model of disability was formulated in the 1970s by a small group of activists from the United Kingdom — the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS). Such activists were challenging the dominance of the medical model of disability, whose focus was on curing impairments, alongside the notion that failure to get a cure would reduce or eliminate a person’s chances of earning full social inclusion.
Contrary to such a perspective, the social model of disability argued that the answer to challenges surrounding disability did not lie in the medical curing of impairment, but from attaining positive change at family, community and societal levels, given the fact that persons with disabilities live within such organisations.
The exclusion of persons with disabilities from complete participation in all aspects of social life was, therefore, deemed preventable, and not as something that could not be avoided due to impairments of affected individuals. Impairment is, therefore, related to the condition of the body, which is personal and private, whilst disability is regarded as a condition that is embedded in prevalent social organisations.
The social construction of disability relates to experiences of disability to barriers that are created by society, and not to the human body.
For example, failure to access a built environment due to the non-availability of lifts and ramps may be disabling to a person with a physical impairment in a society that is organised around the needs of those who are able to walk.
The argument that the impairments of individuals are not the ones that disable them but societal practices was advanced by UPIAS as follows: “. . . it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society . . .”
The social model of disability has, therefore, been progressive in directing attention from the personal body of the person to society.
Whilst I embrace the emancipatory and participatory tenets of the social model of disability, I question its applicability in the African context, particularly in rural areas.
It is an urban model of disability. It is crafted and upheld by disability theorists who live in urban settings of developed countries.
I question the social model’s neglect of disabling social relations in sexuality in its illumination of the key characteristics of exclusion. Such neglect is shown by the prevalence of barriers in, for example, the area of family and sexual affection, pregnancy, childbirth, parenting and child raising.
The reality is that a person’s life cannot be wholly framed and understood using disability as a single characteristic of his or her identity.
There is, therefore, a need to use a lens that illuminates how disability intersects with other identity markers such as culture, religion, gender, age, geographical location and sexuality to frame the life experiences of persons with disabilities.