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

Introduction
I offer here a critical exploration of tensions experienced by disabled people in the
construction of positive identities in everyday contexts in which self-understanding is shaped
both by social structural relations of inequality and unique individual experience. Following
Pierre Bourdieu (1990) I contend that everyday life is constrained by social structures and is
at the same time an active process of production which transforms social structures.
Regarding identity as a project to be worked at rather than as a fixed characteristic, and
borrowing from Margaret Archer, I would suggest that explaining what disabled people do
involves reference to their „subjective and reflective formulation of personal projects – in the
light of their objective circumstances‟ (Archer, 2003:5). As John Swain and I have argued,
for example, in „coming out‟ and claiming identity as disabled, people with impairments not
only subvert dominant disability discourses but „change the very meaning of disability‟
(Swain and Cameron, 1999:77).
My purpose as a disabled researcher is to do more, however, than just develop critical
awareness around these matters. Drawing on the insights of the sixteen disabled people I
have interviewed in my research, and building on an idea originally proposed by John Swain
and Sally French in 2000, I have developed a clarified affirmative model of disability. This I
intend as a tool to be used by people with impairments in making sense of the disabling
social relations they encounter in everyday life contexts; to be used among other tools in
gaining knowledge to unsettle and challenge mainstream assumptions which can only
recognise impairment as personal tragedy. I regard this as part of a wider political and
cultural struggle through which people with impairments are increasingly able to come to
understand and name disability as oppression and to rename themselves as people who have
a right to respect on their own terms.
In order to explain my meaning by the term „tensions‟ I draw on a statement made by Donna
Reeve:
1
Someone may be disabled by a flight of steps or by being given information in an
inaccessible format – these are examples of the structural dimensions of disability
which restrict activity. On the other hand, psycho-emotional dimensions of disability
would include being stared at or patronised by strangers, actions which can leave
disabled people feeling worthless and ashamed, and may end up preventing them
from participating in society as effectively as physically inaccessible environments
(Reeve, 2006:96).