A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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Impairment: any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical
structure or function
Disability: any restriction or lack (resulting from impairment) of ability to perform
an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being
(WHO, 1981)
The terms loss, abnormality, restriction or lack of ability are heavily-laden with cultural
meaning and indicate a perception of impairment and disability as characteristics of
individual deficit. Disability is regarded as emerging as a consequence of impairment. Cure,
care, and therapy are regarded as appropriate social responses to what is identified as a
personal problem (Edwards, 2005:15).
The medical model is materialised in everyday practice through the myriad of behaviours,
decisions, and interactions taking place in the contexts in which disabled people experience
their lives. It is put into practice through the ways that services are delivered, plans are made,
words are spoken, texts are read. It is embodied in gestures and assumptions, thoughts
spoken and unspoken, hopes and expectations held, in conversations people have with each
other and in inner conversations they have with themselves. Because it is a dominant model
of disability, reflecting the view of the world of the non-disabled, its character as a model, as
a way of looking at things, is almost always overlooked. It is considered common sense to
regard impairment as misfortune.
Disabled critics, however, argue that the medical model represents an ideological position
and is a particular manifestation of what Michael Oliver has termed „the ideology of
normality‟ (Oliver, 1996:104). This is to use the term ideology in the sense proposed by
Antonio Gramsci, as having a material existence embodied in the social practices of
individuals and in the institutions and organisations within which these social practices take
place (Gramsci, A. 1996). Normality, Oliver argues, is a construct imposed on a reality
where there is only difference (1996:88). Lennard Davis points out that the term normal,
meaning conforming to, not deviating or differing from the common type or standard,
regular, usual, only enters the English language around 1840 (Davis, 1995:24). Disability
emerges as a social category with the advent of industrialisation, the rapid growth of
manufacturing towns and cities, and the arising need for a standard, replaceable able-bodied
worker who can meet the production requirements of the factory system. People with
impairments, excluded from employment on the grounds of being unable to keep pace with
these requirements, found themselves removed from the mainstream of economic and