Rupturing Concepts of Disability and Inclusion

CONCEIVING A QUILT: CREATING A METHOD
literature. 97 However, I assert that there is an implicit requirement to also understand
notions of profound exclusion – exclusion practised ontologically as well as
socially. To examine the notion of inclusion within an ethical framework allows for
expanding such analyses by exploring two underpinning ethics, previously
identified as an Ethic of Normalcy and an Ethic of Anomaly. How these ethics
have been applied to address issues of what is good or bad, right or wrong, just or
unjust, beneficent or maleficent commands consideration. It is also imperative to
explore how these ethics are sustained by Selvedges of Definition which define
membership and non-membership.
An ethical engagement is evident within the rights-based discourse contemporarily
driving the disability agenda. However, inclusion, as a concept, implies a process
of transition and transformation – a process of spatial movement and change. The
ethical approach applied in this research will allow for a much deeper inquiry to
accommodate a fuller understanding by exploring further previously stated ethical
concerns. It will highlight and explore the following:
– the historical socio-political context of theories and practices in which the
discussion is embedded, and the complexity of factors such as definition,
language, hegemonic power, the economy and productivity, the construction of
disability and normalcy;
– the dualistic structure of modern Western society which legitimates and sustains
hierarchical oppositions of such notions as ability and disability, normal and
anomalous; and
– the self-other relationships in terms of individual identity and collective
community in the context of intellectual disability.
It is asserted that these contextual considerations are as necessary in the ethical
inquiry of inclusion as are nominations of abstract ethical principles traditionally
called upon. It is also contested that these considerations are absent from contemporary
acontextual rights-based discourses.
2.5 SETTING A METHODOLOGY
2.5.1 Exploring A Methodological Process
This research will undertake a conceptual theoretical analysis of the ethical
significance of the notion of inclusion for people with disability as conceptualised
in Western Judeo-Christian society. Conceptual theoretical research, a stipulative
term coined by Peter Isaacs, umbrellas a number of different research techniques.
These techniques share the common feature of critically appraising existing
conceptual frameworks which traditionally underpin research, and which render
and sustain invisibility of certain notions which command consideration. Therefore,
conceptual theoretical research seeks to identify implicit assumptions and prior
understandings of existing research frames; and to explore the possible inadequacy
and incoherence of these frames. Conceptual theoretical researchers raise questions
formed by suspicions that existing frameworks and assumptions are problematic in
that they, as accepted and not challenged categories of thought, not only shape the
questions and answers of the research, but often the research outcome.
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