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

55
disability also must be defined as a more complex social construct, one which
reflects not a benign evolution of acceptance but a dynamic set of representations
that are deeply embedded in historical and cultural contexts (Barton, E.L. 2001:169).
While barriers to access to shops on Princes Street may be being removed, there exists an
ambiguity around meaning and an entrenchment of perceptions that continue to reflect a
medical/personal tragedy model of disability. For example, Jane Campbell argues that the
current debate on legalising assisted suicide carries a set of implicit assumptions rooted in
fears of pain, of disability, and of being a burden to others (Campbell, 2006(a): unpaged).
She has stated that the background noise to current discussions around assisted suicide:
is reinforcing negative perceptions of disability. It feeds into desires for a body
beautiful and a perfect life untroubled by illness. It promotes premature death as a
choice option, especially for people with severe disability or terminal conditions
(Campbell, 2006(b):14)
My thesis is that while certain barriers to participation in ordinary community life may be
being removed, perceptions of impairment as something „wrong‟ with the bodies of disabled
people, and as a signifier of personal tragedy, remain embedded in dominant disability
discourse. There is a structural purpose to the continued representation of impairment as
unfortunate aberration from normality rooted more deeply than can be addressed by simple
injunctions to „change attitudes‟. Subjection to disabling discourse on an everyday basis can
have a confusing and demoralising impact on disabled people‟s self-perceptions. The
affirmative model holds promise as a tool for use in reflecting on and addressing this
subjection. To this purpose, the affirmative model requires clarification.
Why critical social research?
At the heart of critical social research is the idea that knowledge is structured by
existing sets of social relations. The aim of a critical methodology is to provide
knowledge which engages the prevailing social structures (Harvey, 1990:2).
As Lee Harvey has explained, critical social research is not constrained by its data collection
methods. It is not these that characterise critical social research so much as the ways in
which data are approached and the framework within which they are analysed. Critical social
research does not concern itself with discovering the „causes‟ of observed social phenomena