Introduction
DAO editor, Colin Hambrook, interviews Colin Cameron to discover how Cameron’s work is defining and redefining models of disability
Photo of Colin Cameron by Maggie Cameron
You are currently writing up your thesis at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. How did the PhD research looking at an Affirmative Model of disability come about?
In 2000, an article by John Swain and Sally French entitled Towards an Affirmation Model was published in the journal Disability and Society. The authors proposed a new model of disability drawing upon the spirit of the disability arts movement and the whole notion of disability pride.
Their starting point was that even if the Social Model was put into practice and all the barriers around were removed to give equal access to employment, inclusive education, public transport, housing, leisure, information and so on, it would still be possible for impairment to be seen as a personal tragedy and for disabled people to be regarded and treated as victims of misfortune.
If the Social Model was disabled people’s political response to the Medical Model, Swain and French’s idea was for a new model which addressed the personal tragedy model of disability.
This personal tragedy model can be seen as the cultural materialisation of the Medical Model. Current cultural representations for example still go right back to the old stereotypes - the pathetic victim, the plucky crip, the monstrosity, the burden, the scrounger, the object of comedy.
So the Affirmative Model was initially proposed as a counter to this personal tragedy narrative of impairment. It is expressed in the voices of people who say, 'Deafness is normal for me. I wouldn’t want to be other than Deaf.' Or, 'I’ve been blind since birth. Why would I want to change? This is who I am.' Or, 'I have learning difficulties. I have Down’s Syndrome but I don’t ‘suffer’ from Down’s Syndrome. This is who I am as a person. This is me.'
In many ways, there’s not exactly anything new about it but it’s about putting a name to a perspective developed within the disabled people’s movement and the disability arts movement.
And I’d say it’s important because all this is stuff that’s easily forgotten in the face of the ongoing negativity and patronisation disabled people encounter on a daily basis. Talking about ‘little acts of degradation’, Cal Montgomery says that it’s impossible to go for more than a few hours at a time without someone somewhere reminding her of what they see as her proper place in the world.
It’s also important, I’d say, because very often, still, disabled people find themselves under pressure to keep quiet about their impairments, to try and assimilate as if their impairments weren’t part of who they are or are just a minor part of who they are and to regard their impairments as embarrassing hindrances to be overcome.
The Affirmative Model was proposed as an idea to enable us to recall that, actually, our impairments are a core part of our being and of our experience.
Comments
Antonio
/Thank you for such a positive insight. I I will no doubt be passing the positive message and ideas shared here with my colleagues and modelling such an approach with all my students. This is a clear picture on the path we all search in trying to find who we are - it is never about what we are but who we are - there is no such thing as 'normal' and the greater we celebrate an understanding of self pride and awareness and pass this message on to our children, then maybe the less prejudice will rear its face as discrimination and the greater understanding we may all begin to have.
Eddie
/Stumbled on this. Ah'm jist gobsmacked. Wish I'd known about this stuff years ago. Would've given me a framework for thinking. Then again nobody told me I was "disabled" until diagnosis. If you don't know your "disabled" - are you "disabled"? Easy reading and clear understanding. Magic! Well done Mr. Cameron.
rich
/http://detrich.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/putting-myself-in-the-picture-to-evaluate-the-affirmative-model-of-disability/
the way i seeit
laurentius rex
/Hi Colin I am revisiting your site today, because I am recommending it to a researcher colleague.
It really was a pleasure to do business with you, and I think you have a well earned doctorate. I am much concerned with the ethics of research these days, and I consider your research as a very good example of ethical and emancipatory research
Monique Newbury
/I think that your definition of impairment is beautiful.
Maria
/The Affirmative Model of Disability needs to be written about and shared. The social model has been a great tool to introduce the issue of barriers in the environment and discriminatory attitudes towards disabled people. But it has never been enough to explain the difficulty of living with pain for example, or fear. I hope that more is written and published about this - disabled people need it, the whole of society needs it.
Marian
/Well done, Dr Cameron :) I worked with Colin on preparing the final piece for publication. It was so enlightening and gave me much to ponder.
Dave Everitt
/When I was a child I had unusual perceptual distortions, including the experience that my surroundings were very far away or tiny, and I was huge. This would come on apparently at random, but I only found out this year that it is a 'syndrome' called AIWS ('Alice in Wonderland Syndrome'). Later, I had out of body experiences and waking visions where I would be reading from a book of coloured symbols. No doubt, if my doctor had been able to make a diagnosis (I was taken to see if 'anything was wrong') my path through life would have been somewhat different. Luckily for me, he didn't, and my parents - although - concerned - weren't worriers and left me to it.
Generally, I enjoyed these experiences and found them inspiring although for some, I know they are frightening and undesirable; later, I myself became socialphobic, alienated and withdrew from all avoidable interaction for 3 years. But I did use that time to write, play music, tinker with music technology and paint.
So I could never say "I'm happy to be disabled", since it would imply that the failures of society to understand my needs are immaterial; I'd simply say I'm happy to be what I am because of these conditions. I never 'knew' I was disabled until I became politicised when someone in the disability Arts movement told me "It's obvious you're disabled", which began another journey I'm happy with.
If I was completely unaware of 'being disabled' as a child, there are echoes of that attitude returning, but with one huge difference: this time, I'm much more confident in stating my access needs. There's a paradox.
Brian
/Can I have some normality training please?
sarah p
/This reminds me how important it is to not apologising for who you are in any way - I remember refusing to apologise for being a woman and a mum at a job interview in the 80s
Peter Kearns
/As an Irish disabled academic, artist and activist I feel that the language of creating other models of disability can muddy the waters when we here in Catholic strangled Ireland are still just arguing the necessity of the Social model. The 'affirmative' model just needs to be addressed through terminology building on the bedrock of the Social model. It is also primarily concerned with an antithesis capacity built response to medical model cultural & social experiences. Although these medical model experiences are very real, the affirmative 'strategy' is only viable if it is part of a disability equality superstructure built up from the Social model, informed by equality values and effective advocacy principl,es and practice.
Alexandar
/Nobody has explained to me what the disabled peoples' movement is. Where, specifically, do I find it?
rich
/Thanks for the article. I hope people read through the following pages too.
However, i think that the affirmative model has described here is no more and no less a consequence of the social model - a model built on a model. And it is at that point that we need to value it.
We must always return to the social model and look at where we have come as a consequence of pursuing it. We have a very rich history of achievement in this the 21st century already. We are moving forward as a consequence.
If we take up the affirmative model and build it on the social model as yet another consequence then we are enriched again.
I would like to see some suggestions as to how this can be built on to disability equality training.
Mary Marshall Fowler - FaceBook
/The Affirmative Model would be particularly important for people with autism. People need to see that there are other ways of behaving, of seeing things, of understanding things, etc.
Well, probably most parents of people with autism wish their child were "normal", but most of the parents don't know what it feels like to have autism
Janet Taylor - FaceBook
/I alreay do this when I disclose my dyspraxia & dyslexia some poeple say theres no need to tell us we would never had known if you hadnt mentioned it.
Brave New World
/Well, finally someone has had the courage to highlight the lack of a sense of history and perhaps politics within disability arts. I had a rather heated argument with a young disabled artist about the legacy of people such as Alan Holdsworth, Ian Stanton et al and the impact that they had on the disability movement and effectively his life and his work. Our clamouring to fit in as artists/creators/activists within the mainstream has had a detrimental affect. We have adapted but 'society' and politics has not and we still clamour whether we like it or not to be 'normalised'. The person interviewed that highlighted that the 21st century has individualised 'impairment' once again is correct. There are no representations of disability as the systematic oppression of disabled people. Quite frankly, I believe this has something to do with the de-politicisation of the movement per se. Bear in mind that the 'social model' and disability arts has a materialist/working class background and we now live in the era of neo-conservative/liberality and the movement is just a reflection of the era within which we live. Also bourgoise ideology as expoused by many a disability theorist has done very little to 'liberate' or emancipate at the grassroots level. Everybody is clamouring to belong to the mainstream with some fairly unremarkable art; a bit like the Emperors New Clothes and is more about self promotion rather than a deep seated commitment to disabled people around the globe! It is all about the individual artist rather than creating radical art that speaks to disabled people, gives them a sense of belonging and enables them to feel that it is ok not to 'normalise'. The article also speaks about disabled feminists and discussions about 'embodiment'/pain etc. Again this is a fairly individual/liberal discourse but please correct me if I am wrong but there appears to be a difference between those born with a genetic impairment and those who acquire an impairment. I regard myself as a disabled working class feminist with indeed an acquired impairment with experience of pain but I still subscribe to the social model through a materialist analysis of history as the only tool for liberation. This article with the affirmative model however, does speak to me as an individual woman with an acquired impairment - time for us to re-politicise, explore our past again and once again come together to create some true political art.
pinkpjs
/Thought provoking stuff.
Personally, I think that people who experience mental distress ('mad' folk, service users, survivors etc. we don't agree on what to call ourselves, and maybe we shouldn't as for each of us it is a personal choice) have a lot to gain from uniting with the disability movement. However, the problems with this seem to be summed up, in a way, through two reactions I have witnessed recently: When asked about how they felt about embracing the social model and identifying as a Disabled person, a mental health user involvement representative replied, "I have had so many labels why should I want another one?" Whereas, a wheelchair user with physical and speech impairments said, "People think I'm mental, I am not mental."
I don't think normality should be either aspired to or celebrated and the feminist Disabled activists seem to have a point.
Perhaps controversially, even if there were no barriers, I believe that because of depression, there would be days when I would love to be someone else.
However, because of my impairment, my life has been a journey which has been so rich at times it has brought riches which I doubt would have otherwise have been the case and cannot be measured in terms of our society's 'normal' definitions.
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