Major Research Papers - Critical Disability Studies

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10315/32386

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 48

Open Access
A Politics of Hope in the Narratives of People with Dementia
(2005-10-05) O'Brien, Jennifer; Barton, Len
The social model of disability challenges the notion of disability as a personal tragedy and reason for despair. Seven autobiographies written by people with dementia are analysed within the social model of disability for evidence of hope and hopelessness. Categories of hope and hopelessness delineated in this research include hope/despair for a cure, hope/despair for social inclusion and involvement, hope/despair related to voice (including being heard and taken seriously), hope/despair related to supports, hope/despair related to personal development, control, and survival, and other evidence of hope and hopelessness. An examination of how political hope expressed within these narratives contributes to the collective hope of people with dementia is included, as well as an exploration of implications for the larger disability rights movement.
Open Access
Disabling Accessing: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
(2020-08) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
This MRP is intended as a resource for parents, educators and support workers to identify systematic, financial, and training barriers for students. The research takes readers through Federal (i.e. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and provincial legislation (i.e. Education Act [1990], Ontario Human Rights Code, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act [2005]), disability support programs (i.e. ADP and SEA), as well as education policy (i.e. TDSB Accessibility Policy P069, TDSB Equity Policy P037, TDSB Special Education Plan [2017]) to highlight the government policy responses to disability in Canada and outlines how access to Eye Gaze technology encounters numerous barriers. The goal is to demonstrate the need for critical discourse focusing on the connection between historical discrimination and biases embedded in Canadian policy,and their role in perpetuating barriers to accessing assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Toronto District School Board is used as the setting, while Tobii Dynavox is the Eye Gaze technology vendor under review for analyzing how policy, programs and institutional practices enable or disable access for prospective students.Theoretical DiscussionAn analysis of the scientific (i.e. Biomedical, Functional) and social models of disability (i.e. Environmental, Human Rights) is used to illustrate how each perspective shapes understandings of disability differently, then moves to examining the dominant disability perspective guiding legislation, policy and programs affecting persons with disabilities in Canada. Both a human rights approach todisability and critical policy frameworks are used to analyze the context within which social and education policies are entrenched and administered in Canadian society, contributing to systematic, financial, procedural, and training barriers to accessingEye Gaze technology. ConclusionThe MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, proceduraland training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
Open Access
Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
(2020-08) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance.The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death.I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists intheir explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The secondpaper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional?Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.
Open Access
The Creation of Barriers and Isolation for Seniors Through the Increased Societal Dependence of Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic
(2021-09-28) Li, Jessica; Raume, Geoffrey; Ahmad, Farah
Research done in the past on senior technology and of the newer research done on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic provides deeper insights into the functional, structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal barriers that seniors face when dealing with technology. Not only have devices and platforms not been made user-friendly for seniors with age-related declines, but the continuous attempts to push seniors intousingthe newest technologies have only built-up fear, anxiety and negative attitudes in seniors. Both society and seniors themselves need to address the ageist assumptions that they have about the limitations and behaviours associated with old age. The results and suggestions from this research will further advance the pre-existing research and add a relevant COVID-19 lens. Hopefully, it will also advance the field of critical disability scholarship and draw more attention to the discrimination seniors face because of their age.
Open Access
‘Broken Trust’ –A critical policy analysis of the difficulties faced by disabled intergenerational families seeking education and accommodation
(2021-08-26) Lincoln, J N; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Parekh, Gillian
As a result of the presence of racialized, gendered, and socio-economic bias within educational policies intended to assist disabled individuals, many students and their families often encounter abusive and negative accommodation experiences. These failures are particularly damaging during the transition out of high school and even more so within post secondary institutions themselves.Employing the educational policy analysis model created by Diem, Young, Wilton, Mansfield, and Lee (2014) in their paper entitled “The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis” this major research paper explores several policies which impact students during these transition periods and highlights the failures that they repeatedly encounter. The personal story of the author is also woven into the analysis to show that there is a human side of this experience which must be included to truly expose the brutal nature of these policy failures. It is shown throughout that even though policy is crafted with rhetoric that may seem beneficial to the disabled recipient, the intent is often one of control, suppression, and reinforcement of the aforementioned negative biases.
Open Access
Interrogating Safeguards Under the Mental Health Act: Criticizing the Decision in Thompson and Empowerment Council v. Ontario (2013): Towards an Alternative Understanding of Psychiatric Disability From the Perspectives of Critical Disability Theories and Crispitemology
(2021-11) Han, Yoonmee; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Vorstermans, Jessica
Open Access
Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services Through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
(2020-08) Fernandes, Sabine; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examinationof the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare lifein conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM –white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal,eugenic,and ableist ways of knowing–I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporealityas a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.
Open Access
Ableism, Intersectionality, Power and Knowledge: The Complexities of Navigating Accommodations in Postsecondary Institutions
(2020-10-27) Brown, Zahra J.; Gorman, Rachel; Isrealite, Neita
Although post-secondary educational institutions have been mandated by law to accommodate, the issue of students with disabilities receiving accommodation remains problematic. One factor that is relevant, but often overlooked, is how power functions in the process of seeking and receiving accommodation. My interest is to critically examine selected parts of my lived experiences with accommodation at three post-secondary institutions to shed light upon how power, knowledge and intersectionality function for students seeking and receiving accommodation. I argue that a successful navigation of accommodation at postsecondary institutions does not depend only on the institution’s duty to accommodate but also on these factors. My literature review employs constructs proposed by several scholars to explain the complexities of accommodation. These include: 1) Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Black Feminist conceptualization of intersectionality and the need for a multiple axis framework to understand the dilemma that Black women present, 2) Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought and its emphasis on categories of analyses that address unequal power relationships between parties, 3) Richard Clark Eckert and Amy June Rowley’s notion of audism as embodying supremacy, 4) Michel Foucault’s articulation of discourse analyses of knowledge and power, and 5) Teri Hibbs and Dianne Pothier’s analysis of how power functions in the accommodation process. I apply these notions to an auto-ethnographic case study of my own experiences in postsecondary institutions as black, woman and student with disabilities. The results of my analysis as well as my recommendations will advance scholarship in the area of accommodation and disabilities.
Open Access
Youth Disability and the Post-conflict Justice Reform: A Case Study of Sierra Leone
(2020-08-31) Sesay, Hassan; Sesay, Mohamed; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
Disabled youth encounter systemic social injustice, social exclusion, social inequality, bias, anti-discrimination, and unjust incarceration within society and the justice system. In Sierra Leone, a developing country emerging from a decade-long civil war (1991-2002), these challenges, attitudes, and perceptions towards disabled people have persisted, despite the implementation of a post-conflict peacebuilding agenda that included justice sector reforms. Although Sierra Leone ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability on October 4, 2010, and the Persons with Disability Act entered into force in March 2011, there remains a challenge in addressing issues affecting disabled people. To date, as a significant number of youth with disabilities roam the streets, the country still lacks an effective mechanism of restorative justice to help those with disabilities in conflict with the law. The MRP argues that the challenges have persisted in Sierra Leone because of a confluence of social, institutional, and capacity problems which were compounded by the civil war and neglected in post-conflict reform efforts. At the institutional level, Sierra Leone has a weak sociolegal and justice framework, incapable of addressing the welfare and concerns of people with disability, particularly youth who come in conflict with the law. While there are desirable policies and rules at the formal level, the justice system lacks the requisite training, facilities, and resources to uphold the rights of disabled people and its operation often exacerbates their plight. The failure to prioritize these concerns has also meant that societal prejudices, reinforced by poor socioeconomic conditions, have prevailed with little social assistance to families and communities. Since the war ended, successive governments have devoted their limited resources to the pressing issues of security and justice, often at the expense of the concerns and needs of disabled people. This lack of attention to the peculiar needs and circumstances of disabled people must, however, are placed within the context of a weak post-conflict economy, collapsed infrastructure, and the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes and practices in society. In this context, cultural belief systems and policies which stigmatize disabled people thrive as communities and families look for excuses not to devote their limited resources to society’s most vulnerable members.
Open Access
Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
(2020-08-24) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance. The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death. I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists in their explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The second paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional? Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.
Open Access
Disabling Access: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
(2020-08-12) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
The MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, procedural and training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
Open Access
Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
(2020-08-24) Fernandes, Sabine A.; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examination of the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare life in conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM – white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, eugenic, and ableist ways of knowing – I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporeality as a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.
Open Access
Lights, Camera, Representation and Direction: How Hollywood, Netflix and other Media Empires Represent Race and Disability
(2020-04-08) Sandhu, Amrit; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Reaume, Geoffrey
Throughout history, racialized people, and people with disabilities have been harmed by negative stereotypes, especially through the intersection of ableism and racism, which is still going on today. This Major Research Paper is about the lack of representation and the misrepresentation of People of Colour and people with disabilities. Through the portrayal of various tropes, such as ‘super abilities’ in mass media culture, this paper will discuss how stereotypes hinder racial and disability justice. The research paper analyzes how mass media producers of film and television, like Marvel and Netflix, including international media content such as Bollywood, employ portrayals of negative stereotypes to further marginalize disabled people of various racialized identities. Through the analysis of selected media, this paper explores the way oppressive narratives have evolved toward inclusion and a more disability-positive outlook, for example disabled characters are not only playing the role of victim, or the narrative is not only about the character suffering from a disease. However, the paper argues improvements in narrative to be less racist or ableist are not enough, much more can be done to make media more inclusive, diverse and disability-positive. For example, film and television political organizations such as unions could promote and advocate for the roles of disabled characters to only be played by disabled actors.
Open Access
"Can't Nobody Even Spread Their Wings Here": Thinking Disability Alongside Environmental Racism, Collectively Acquired Impairments, and Injustice in Flint, Michigan
(2019-08-14) Kovesi, Caroline; Scott, Dayna; Dryden, Jane
The unjust production of impairments has historically posed a theoretical and political problem for a Disability Studies committed to normalizing and de-stigmatizing disability. This discursive schism serves to reinforce the discipline’s tendency towards “epistemic whiteness” (Puar, 2017, p.xix). However, it is imperative that the field consider situated experiences of disability inextricably linked to contexts such as environmental racism currently invisibilized and/or overlooked in the field. The following paper attempts to address some of these gaps by studying the water crisis in Flint, Michigan that began in 2014 - and resulted in 30 000 children being exposed to lead poisoning, along with a Legionnaire’s Disease outbreak that killed twelve people - as a case study on collectively acquired impairments. How does the Flint water crisis challenge Disability Studies theory to better account for impairments acquired – or more accurately, imposed - through environmental racism? I pay particular attention to the phenomenology of living with collectively acquired impairments, and utilize the concepts of disorientation, disposability, and debility in my analysis to foreground the varied implications involved when already marginalized and racialized populations acquire impairments. Experiences of Flint residents call on the discipline of Disability Studies to pay greater attention to how situations of injustice affect embodiment in ways that may not neatly fit into the rubric of impairment.
Open Access
"The Carpet Felt Five Inches Thick!" A Socio-Spatial Analysis of the Judge Rotenberg Center
(2019-05-23) Shields, Raya; viva davis halifax, nancy; Reaume, Geoffrey
Referencing Foucault, Goffman, and the lived experiences and testimony of survivors of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), Canton Massachusetts, read alongside the writing of geographers, architects and sociologists exploring the design and space of theme parks and institutions, my research will explore the ways in which institutions and theme parks utilize similar methods to control the experience of those within in their manipulation of space, to (re)direct bodies. My MRP seeks to examine the juxtaposition between the abusive practices and the bizarre Disney-esque design of the space of the JRC, which bears many of the hallmarks of the theme park. Referencing the history and functions of the theme park, I read alongside the history and functions of institutions for those labelled with autism and intellectual disabilities through the case study of the JRC, I draw upon Sara Ahmed (2006) to ask what it means to be oriented (spatially, psychically, bodily, and temporally) in institutional spaces. I use Ahmed’s (2006) Queer Phenomenology to explore the ways in which autistic bodies are (re)(dis)oriented by the fantastical space of the JRC.
Open Access
Sexuality and Visible, Physical Disabilities: A Scoping Review
(2019-07-29) Brooks, Stephanie; Gilbert, Jen; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
The historical and ongoing desexualization of people with disabilities (PWDs) along with the pervasive ableist narrative in Western societies have led to the equation of disability with asexuality. Although some members of the disability community may identify as asexual, labelling all PWDs as asexual serves to infantilize these individuals, deprive them of an appropriate sexuality education, and prevent them from accessing their sexual rights. In many Western countries, schools are required to provide their students with a sexuality education, which I believe could help dispel certain myths about the disability identity and promote a more unified society provided that it establishes disability awareness from a non-ableist perspective. Presently, this is not the case for Ontario’s sexuality education, and the discrimination continues to go unrecognized. In order to determine whether a disability-positive program already exists, a scoping review was conducted, focusing on sexuality and physical, visible disabilities. Out of 4,432 articles, only 13 met the inclusion criteria. The most common type of teaching interventions were didactic sessions/presentations, group discussions, roleplaying exercises, films, and independent learning modules. Seven of the programs were primarily designed for healthcare professionals, whereas six were designed for PWDs. The findings highlight a lack of research on individuals living with congenital disabilities, a focus on the rehabilitation setting, and the need for a more holistic definition of sexuality. Additionally, the lack of inclusion of disability perspectives illustrates the need for PWDs to be involved in the development, implementation and/or evaluation of a disability-positive sexuality curriculum.
Open Access
The Ghetto-to-Prison Pipeline: Racialization, 'Reactionary Psychoses', and State-Sanctioned Violence
(2019-07-29) Ghani, Rukiyah; Chapman, Chris; da Silva Gorman, Rachel
The ghetto-to-prison pipeline echoes Nirmala Erevelles’ conception of ‘institutional arrangements’ whereby marked bodies are removed “from public generative spaces, such as schools, to restrictive spaces of isolation, violence, and shame, such as prisons.” (20: 81) In essence, these processes of qualifying, measuring, appraising, and hierarchizing of people (Foucault, 1980: 144) perpetuate contemporary manifestations of colonialism. In this paper, the school will be replaced with the ghetto wherein regularized police patrols mirror territorial occupation, hyper-surveillance legitimizes notions of civility and inferiority, and through these modalities, generational grief and trauma are annulled by pathologized notions of criminality, whereby the people of the ghetto are held accountable for their own communal vulnerabilities.
Open Access
Once Upon a Time Was Disability: Disability in Fairy Tales from the Nineteenth Century to Disney
(2019-08-08) Doberstein, Jessica; Reaume, Geoffrey; Neill, Natalie
Disability has been a part of fairy tales from the beginning. The Western world and literature changed greatly in the nineteenth century, including how disability was used in fairy tales. In the twentieth century, Walt Disney started animating stories, some of which were fairy tales. This paper looks at the representations of disability in nineteenth-century fairy tales and the Disney versions of those same fairy tales to understand in what way disability was portrayed in the nineteenth century and within the Disney versions.
Open Access
The Negative Stigma Associated With Learning Disability In Educational Institutions Nigeria
(2019-08-13) Enoma, Gift; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
There is a lack of understanding related to the way that the stigma of having a learning disability impacts students in Nigeria (Abang, 1988; Fuchs, Mock, Morgan and Young, 2003). The objective of this qualitative, autoethnographic research was to explore personal experience and engage in self-reflection through the theoretical lens of the social model of disability. Based on the current body of research it was determined that there are gaps that influenced the establishment of the problem at the core of this research and that there is a lack of understanding of the social, cultural and schooling factors that lead to the stigmatization of students with learning disabilities in Nigeria. An autoethnographic methodology was employed in the research as a means of exploring the problem as it would support greater depth and breadth based on the narrative of the primary investigator. Stigma plays a substantial role in the lifestyle of people with learning disabilities in Nigeria and is a factor that limits access to services that could improve quality of life. Intellectual impairments are not well understood and the assumptions of people in the community as well as educational professionals make obtaining accommodations difficult for people with intellectual disabilities. Teacher education in Nigeria must place greater focus on facilitating the development of special needs students.
Open Access
"Can't Nobody Even Spread Their Wings Here": Thinking Disability Alongside Environmental Racism, Collectively Acquired Impairments, and Injustice in Flint, Michigan
(2019-08-14) Kovesi, Caroline; Scott, Dayna; Dryden, Jane