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

conversations. The fact that I felt able to carry out unstructured interviews perhaps also
reflected growing confidence in my ability as an interviewer. These interviews were carried
out between January and June 2008. Interviews took place in a variety of settings: in homes,
at workplaces, at Queen Margaret University and at Coventry University Students Union.
Third interviews
The third series involved observations as participants carried out a variety of everyday
activities. I also carried out short unstructured interviews before and after these activities,
asking participants to tell me about what they anticipated in an event and, afterwards, how
they felt about what had occurred. In this I wanted to explore tensions experienced by
participants as they were experienced and before there had passed any time for real
reflection.
I took a slight risk with this as a strategy, for it might have been the case that no tensions
were experienced during the course of what followed. It could have turned out to be the case
that during these observations there was nothing encountered to give participants cause for
angst. Everything might fall into place in terms of access and impairment might have been
regarded by all met with as an ordinary part of human life. The point, however, was not
actively to go out looking for tensions where none existed, but to consider these as they
might typically be experienced.
I aimed to look at everyday life situations, at the private narratives and the sorts of stories
disabled people tell themselves as they go about their routine business. Through this I hoped
to challenge the validity of the personal tragedy model of disability and its underlying
assumptions, for example:
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that any work or pursuit we undertake, is done so as „therapy‟ with the sole intention
of taking our mind off our condition
that we don‟t have any real or significant experiences in the way that non-disabled
people do
that we are naïve and live sheltered lives
that we desire to emulate and achieve normal behaviour and appearance in all things