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

Chapter 3: Methodology
Why am I researching this?
While I have already outlined why disability identity is an issue that interests me, I need to
say more about my interest in the affirmative model. At the time of the publication of
Towards an Affirmation Model in 2000, I was working closely with John Swain at
Northumbria University and enjoyed many discussions with him about this idea in the bar at
Coach Lane campus. Since then I have considered that it holds promise as a tool of use to
disabled people in making sense of personal disabling encounters in everyday life
comparable to the social model as a tool for making sense of structural disadvantage. I argue
here that a framework is needed to allow disabled people to talk of this personal experience –
while still recognising disability as a structural relationship - and that the affirmative model
could provide a useful tool for making this possible.
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If theories are stories about the way the world (or some portion of it) works, then
they are always in a state of revision, and there are always other, alternative stories
that could be told (Esterberg, 2002:9).
While Mike Oliver has stated emphatically that he does not regard the social model as a
theory (Oliver, 2004:9), the social model is at least a theoretical abstraction. It is certainly
the foundation of a story about the way the world works. It seemed to me that the affirmative
model was another story, a story which built upon the social model but was able to say
something about the reality of being disabled that the social model missed.
The affirmative model was further discussed briefly in the chapters „Celebrating difference?‟
in Controversial Issues in a Disabling Society (Swain, French and Cameron, 2003) and
„Whose Tragedy? Towards a personal non-tragedy view of disability‟ in Disabling Barriers
– Enabling Environments (Swain and French, 2004). On a personal level I considered the
affirmative model a very positive development in Disability Studies theory but through
discussion with other disabled people, principally in the context of delivering training for
Disability Equality in Education, I was aware that not everybody shared this view. Some
thought it was an unnecessary diversion, adding nothing the social model did not already
say. Others were unclear about what the affirmative model actually is. I sensed this might be
the result of a lack of clarity in Swain and French‟s writings on the subject, or that it may
have been their intention to avoid trying to pin down meaning on this matter.