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

general public acceptance of the position that disability is an unequal social relationship and
a concerted effort to remove disabling barriers.
This approach is limited, Markell contends, in that it offers too simplistic an understanding
of how real life really happens. While he contrasts recognition approaches favourably with
individualistic approaches to addressing social injustice, he suggests that the politics of
recognition is limited by its very specific focus on the influence of individual background or
past experience within the present as identity.
Individualistic approaches to the empowerment of disabled people can, for example, be
characterised in attempts by disability industry professionals to increase individuals‟
everyday life choices through, for example, what is known as Person-Centred Planning.
These approaches, however, do not take account of the historical injustices by which
disabled people‟s experiences have been and continue to be structured. In other words, they
do not recognise the existence of what I have termed the disabled habitus. To see the remedy
to the disadvantage experienced by disabled people as lying simply in offering more choice
within unchanged structural relationships is to ignore the wider picture.
It is an individualistic approach which is represented in the position of Stevens‟ disabled
people „too busy getting on with their lives‟ to understand the social model or to become
involved in the politics of disability. The business of getting on with life does not take into
account what Markell describes as „the moral weight either of unchosen attachments and
memberships... notwithstanding efforts to will them away‟ (Markell, 2003:12).
Measured against individualistic approaches to social justice, Markell identifies the politics
of recognition as progressive in that it acknowledges the impact of background as structuring
experience of the present by understanding this history as identity, where
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identity is understood specifically as an antecedent set of facts about who we are,
telling us what acting authentically means for us (Markell, 2003:12).
If it is our identities that determine our thoughts and words and actions then it is clear why it
is important to have our identities recognised by other people. If we think and talk and
behave in certain ways because we are disabled people, gay men, black women, or old age
pensioners, then it is a crucial matter in terms of empowerment that our identities are
validated and respected in these terms.
However, Markell contends, this is an unpersuasive picture of the relationship between
identity and action. The weakness of recognition politics is that it can lead to situations in