Towards Economic Empowerment for Disabled People: Exploring ...

professional and voluntary ‘helpers’, exerting influence and control over
disabled people in modern industrial society, which has in turn led to growing
numbers of disabled people that are able to function independently in society.
The paradox, according to Finkelstein, is that:
On the one hand there is the appearance that disability implies a
personal tragedy, passivity and dependency. On the other hand
disability can be seen as a form of group discrimination, involving
constant struggles and independent action” (ibid, p1)
Finkelstein divided the history of disability, in the modern era, into three
distinct phases. Phase one represents the period before the industrial revolution
in Europe, when disabled people where at the lower end of the social scale, but
not segregated from society. Phase two represents a period when, as a result of
industrialization, disabled people were considered surplus to the needs of
industry, and often segregated as a result. Phase three, which was just
beginning, in his view, marked a time when disabled people would finally be
liberated from social oppression and reintegrated in society. In his own words,
“phase three heralds the elimination of disability” (ibid. p8).
In the early eighties, a number of other disabled writers articulated their own
experiences of social oppression and discrimination (see, for example,
Campling’s (1981) collection of essays written by disabled women in the UK,
entitled ‘Images of Ourselves’). Sutherland captures the feeling of optimism
among disabled people that seems to have been created by the new way of
conceptualizing disability:
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