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

acknowledgement of disability as an imposed role, a challenge is thrown out to those
involved in imposing that role to reflect upon what meaning for themselves is constructed
through their own actions. A requirement is placed on non-disabled people to acknowledge
their own temporality and the structures which support the myth of their invulnerability.
Final words
Other writers in Disability Studies have made similar points to mine. Bill Hughes (2007), for
example, has discussed the invalidating ways in which non-disabled people relate to disabled
people. Sally French has described the disabled role as involving expectations and
assumptions that disabled people will strive to be physically independent; that they will take
responsibility for the feelings of non-disabled people; about normality; about acceptance and
adjustment (French, 1994) These arguments, however, have been made in the context of a
continuing discussion and debate around the social model. Even among critics who see it as
being in need of adjustment, there is a settled will that the social model can provide the
answers to the problems of disability.
My position is that the social model does not need adjustment as it is well able to do what it
was intended for. I accept, however, that as a theoretical framework it has limitations. It
should not be expected to do what it was not intended for. There is room in the field for other
tools developed by disabled people that are designed to make sense of disability. My original
contribution to knowledge has involved the clarification of the affirmative model, an idea
originally suggested by John Swain and Sally French in 2000. I have sought to clarify this
term so it can be made useful for disabled people rather than remain a good but under-
developed idea. I have grounded my version of the affirmative model in the statements and
insights of sixteen disabled people I have talked with during my research. I have,
furthermore, scrutinised the affirmative model in the light of participants‟ discussion of
media representations of disability as narratives to draw on in constructing identities, and in
the light of their everyday experiences. Having subjected the affirmative model to such
scrutiny, I feel able to confirm its validity. I am, of course, aware that my version of the
affirmative model may depart in some details from Swain and French‟s original intentions
but I am confident that its substance is in tune with their meaning.
I accept, as well, that my argument is built on my analysis of conversations with sixteen
particular disabled individuals at a particular point in time. I do not suggest that my version
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