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

oppressive practices‟, but almost seems to put forward as legitimate the suggestion that if
disabled people do not like the word „oppressed‟ and do not want to call themselves or think
of themselves as „oppressed‟ then they will not be „oppressed‟. If disabled people do not like
the word „disabled‟, Shakespeare argues, it is a valid position to refuse personal association
with the word.
One of Shakespeare‟s key claims for questioning the value of the social model and disability
identity is that in the three decades since its development as an idea it has never progressed
beyond being a minority position:
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The implication of early disability activism that people with impairments were
oppressed and that salvation lay in collective identification and mobilisation has
proved over optimistic: only a tiny proportion of people with impairments have ever
signed up to the radical campaign and many have actively disowned it (Shakespeare,
2006:74).
This can, however, be read rather differently. That only a minority of disabled people have
actively identified with the disabled people‟s movement, or have taken on a political
disabled identity, can be regarded as an indication of the depth of disability as cultural
oppression. Shakespeare‟s argument can be likened to a suggestion that because more
women read The People‟s Friend or Take A Break than read Ann Oakley or Judith Butler,
feminist perspectives are therefore invalid.
As a disabled person I have found the social model bears a truth previously unavailable to
me as a narrative on which to build a personal and social identity. The social model is a
reasonable proposition. Media portrayal, and representation by writers like Tom
Shakespeare, of this position as radical does not make it radical, but reflects a conservative
position. Lack of media support for this position limits the possibilities for this to be taken up
by disabled people.
In the research paper cited by Shakespeare above, Nick Watson states that:
Being disabled, for many of these informants, is not about celebrating difference or
diversity, pride in their identity is not formed through the individuals labelling
themselves as different, as disabled, but it is about defining disability in their own
terms, under their own terms of reference (Watson, 2002:521).
Returning to Elias‟ and Bourdieu‟s positions outlined above, the weakness in Watson‟s
position is clear. Social reality is never defined in our own terms as if these are original to us,