Rupturing Concepts of Disability and Inclusion

CHAPTER 2
CONCEIVING A QUILT: CREATING A METHOD
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Inclusion, as is being explored in this research, is deeply embedded within cultural
and intellectual understandings of intellectual disability. The nature of inclusion,
within a Judeo-Christian context, for example, has been directly related to the
values of biblical references, philosophical interpretations, and medical and service
practices. Different interpretations and trends in the disability context directly
influence notions of exclusion and inclusion. In the past twenty years, the subject
of disability has undergone major shifts. Normalisation theories espoused by Bengt
Nirje and Wolf Wolfensberger in the 1960s and 70s, and the International Year of
Disabled People in 1981 provided catalysts for the increased momentum of
the disability rights movement. Situated contemporaneously with other social
movements such as the civil rights movement and the current women’s movement,
these influences have resulted in ideological and legislative changes in the Western
world about people with disability. Ideologically, and enacted through legislation
and social policies, the most prominent practical outcomes have been processes of
deinstitutionalisation and expectations of community inclusion. These have had
significant impacts on the translocation of care, accommodation, housing,
educational, employment and recreational options for people with disability and
their families.
So called ‘care’ for disabled people in a post-Enlightenment and post-industrial
Western Judeo-Christian society has predominantly been provided in segregated
contexts, often resulting in a physical placement in institutions. The insidious
relationship between social worth and productivity has been fostered on foundations
such as capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic, and scientific disciplines (such as
medicine and statistical analyses) in the construction of normalcy. 41 As a
consequence, people with intellectual disability were systematically categorised as
unproductive and excluded from the concept of ‘mainstream’ community. 42 Under
the disguises of ‘care’, the segregative and institutional process (performed then in
the public realm) often perpetuated notions of hegemonic dependency and social
control, social devaluation, and deprivation of autonomy and power. 43
Traditionally, there has been an emphasis on effective ways of managing such a
phenomenon by bureaucratic, administrative and professional procedures without
closer analysis of how this social segregation legitimates continual denial of
societal membership.
This research contends that the dominant socio-symbolic ordering of Western
Judeo-Christian society has been prefigured with, and by, the assumptions of
orthodoxy, characteristic of patriarchal theology and patriarchal philosophy. Such
an ordering is contemporarily configured by an Ethic of Normalcy and an Ethic of
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