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From Charity to Human Rights
Abstract
Over the last two centuries, efforts to tackle the problem of lack of employment opportunities for people with disabilities (PwDs) have changed following shifts in the societal logics framing our understanding of the meaning of work. These logics are work-for-charity, rehabilitation, and human rights. The emergence and prevalence of each of these logics has shifted and evolved following the impact of historical events (e.g., the Industrial Revolution, World Wars, and civil rights movements) on three drivers framing attitudes towards disabled employees: discrimination, technology, and demographics. Opportunities for future research pertaining to the evolution of the meaning of work and disability are suggested.
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Social stress can be caused by many factors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) highlights many social stressors disabled people experience in their daily lives. How social stressors experienced by disabled people are discussed in the academic literature and what data are generated influence social-stressor related policies, education, and research. Therefore, the aim of our study was to better understand the academic coverage of social stressors experienced by disabled people. We performed a scoping review study of academic abstracts employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science, and a directed qualitative content analysis to achieve our aim. Using many different search strategies, we found few to no abstracts covering social stressors experienced by disabled people. Of the 1809 abstracts obtained using various stress-related phrases and disability terms, we found a bias towards covering disabled people as stressors for others. Seventeen abstracts mentioned social stressors experienced by disabled people. Fourteen abstracts flagged “disability” as the stressor. No abstract contained stress phrases specific to social stressors disabled people experience, such as “disablism stress*” or “ableism stress*”. Of the abstracts containing equity, diversity, and inclusion phrases and policy frameworks, only one was relevant, and none of the abstracts covering emergency and disaster discussions, stress-identifying technologies, or science and technology governance were relevant. Anxiety is one consequence of social stressors. We found no abstract that contained anxiety phrases that are specific to social stressors disabled people experience, such as “ableism anxiety”, “disablism anxiety” or “disability anxiety”. Within the 1809 abstract, only one stated that a social stressor is a cause of anxiety. Finally, of the abstracts that contained anxiety phrases linked to a changing natural environment, such as “climate anxiety”, none were relevant. Our study found many gaps in the academic literature that should be fixed and with that highlights many opportunities.
Burnout is a problem within the workplace including in higher education, the activity of activism, and in reaction to experiencing systemic discrimination in daily life. Disabled people face problems in all of these areas and therefore are in danger of experiencing “disability burnout”/”disablism burnout”. Equity/equality, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI) linked actions are employed to improve the workplace, especially for marginalized groups including disabled people. How burnout is discussed and what burnout data is generated in the academic literature in relation to EDI and disabled people influences burnout policies, education, and research related to EDI and to disabled people. Therefore, we performed a scoping review study of academic abstracts employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science with the aim to obtain a better understanding of the academic coverage of burnout concerning disabled people and EDI. We found only 14 relevant abstracts when searching for 12 EDI phrases and five EDI policy frameworks. Within the 764 abstracts covering burnout and different disability terms, a biased coverage around disabled people was evident with disabled people being mostly mentioned as the cause of burnout experienced by others. Only 30 abstracts covered the burnout of disabled people, with eight using the term “autistic burnout”. Disabled activists’ burnout was not covered. No abstract contained the phrase “disability burnout”, but seven relevant hits were obtained using full-text searches of Google Scholar. Our findings suggest that important data is missing to guide evidence-based decision making around burnout and EDI and burnout of disabled people.
While there have been several studies on overt forms of marginalization, few examine benevolent marginalization, where people may unquestioningly participate in their own paternalistic subjugation by following a prescribed identity. How might such individuals end up achieving emancipation from an infantilizing identity? To address this puzzle, we conducted a longitudinal study of a German sheltered workshop, an organization providing employment for disabled people. We observed that workers with disability initially maintained a regulating organizational identity based on paternalistic segregation. However, over time they constructed their own self-determining identity and co-produced a change in the workshop's identity from "shelter" to "inclusion." First, we show that in order to co-construct their preferred self-concept, benevolently marginalized individuals need to gain the support of those in power who change their role from a guardian to an ally. Second, while achieving liberation from overt marginalization is likely to involve confrontation with one's oppressors, we suggest that achieving emancipation from benevolent marginalization is a collaborative process of mutual consciousness-raising and sensitization. Third, while changes of identity may occur after exposure to alternative discourses, often involving the contentious performances of external activists, we show how insider activists mobilize collective action for change within a protectionist organization. Acknowledgements. We are sincerely grateful to Heather Vough and three anonymous reviewers who made such a significant contribution to the development of our work. We would also like to thank
This article explores the lived experiences of disabled men and women who work in sheltered employment. Specifically, it analyses how the entanglement of sociomaterial practices affects disabled workers’ co-constructions of work and disability. Theoretically grounded in posthumanist performativity theory, the article shows how embodied employment experiences within organisational spaces contribute to the materialisation of disability. Findings emerged from ethnographic participant observations and interviews with management and workers at a sheltered workshop. The data highlight how the entanglement of bodies, space, objects and discourses affects materialisations of disability in ways that appear more inclusive than in mainstream employment. However, these sociomaterial practices remain embedded in a productivity-oriented work logic.
Introduction
The future of work is characterized by changes that could disrupt all aspects of the nature and availability of work. Our study aims to understand how the future of work could result in conditions, which contribute to vulnerability for different groups of workers.
Methods
A horizon scan was conducted to systematically identify and synthesize diverse sources of evidence, including academic and gray literature and resources shared over social media. Evidence was synthesized, and trend categories were developed through iterative discussions among the research team.
Results
Nine trend categories were uncovered, which included the digital transformation of the economy, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning-enhanced automation, AI-enabled human resource management systems, skill requirements for the future of work; globalization 4.0, climate change and the green economy, Gen Zs and the work environment; populism and the future of work, and external shocks to accelerate the changing nature of work. The scan highlighted that some groups of workers may be more likely to experience conditions that contribute to vulnerability, including greater exposure to job displacement or wage depression. The future of work could also create opportunities for labor market engagement.
Conclusion
The future of work represents an emerging public health concern. Exclusion from the future of work has the potential to widen existing social and health inequities. Thus, tailored supports that are resilient to changes in the nature and availability of work are required for workers facing vulnerability.
The institutional logics perspective has the explanatory power and potential to further contribute to our understanding of some of the most pressing societal concerns of our time. In this article, we develop the logics perspective along four analytical dimensions – macro-level positioning, contextuality, temporality and value plurality – which, we argue, can be leveraged to research and address grand challenges. We elaborate the currency of these dimensions in the context of the grand challenge of climate change. In doing so, we demonstrate the overall value of a logics perspective for engaging grand challenges.
Responding to recent calls to extend our understanding of ableism as a powerful organizing principle of the workplace, this study examines how ableism operates as a form of symbolic violence, constraining the career opportunities of disabled employees in a financial services company. Drawing on Bourdieuan theory, we analyze how the ‘rules of the game’ structuring the organizational field and the habitus of disabled individuals jointly shape those individuals’ ability to accrue economic, social, cultural as well as symbolic capital, as well as up different positions in a particular social space. A Bourdieuan approach centered on social practice allows us to develop a fuller understanding of the mechanisms through which valued forms of capital are unequally distributed within an arbitrary social order that privileges certain competences favoring able-bodied over disabled workers, and of disabled workers’ own role within such mechanisms.
Information technology can be an important facilitator of social inclusion for people with disabilities into society. However, the goals specified in this area by organizations such as the European Commission have not yet been achieved in their totality. The aim of this paper is to explore which types of information communication technology-based applications and/or digital services have been suggested to facilitate the social integration of people who suffer from different types of disabilities. We performed a literature review that included studies published during a period of 6 years (2010–2016). The results show that, in the data we have had access to, no concrete patterns can be identified regarding the type of technology or technological trends that can be used to support the social integration of individuals with disabilities. This literature review is of relevance to the identification of further research areas and to the identification of issues which have to be considered in the context of the development and implementation of technological innovations that are aimed at promoting or facilitating social inclusion of individuals with disabilities.
Rehabilitation is a controversial subject in disability studies, often discussed in terms of oppression, normalisation, and unwanted intrusion. While there may be good reasons for positioning rehabilitation in this way, this has also meant that, as a lived experience, it is under-researched and neglected in disabilities literature, as we show by surveying leading disability studies journals. With some notable exceptions, rehabilitation research has remained the preserve of the rehabilitation sciences, and such studies have rarely included the voices of disabled people themselves, as we also demonstrate by surveying a cross-section of rehabilitation science literature. Next, drawing on new research, we argue for reframing access to rehabilitation as a disability equality issue. Through in-depth discussion of two case studies, we demonstrate that rehabilitation can be a tool for inclusion and for supporting an equal life. Indeed, we contend that rehabilitation merits disability researchers’ sustained engagement, precisely to ensure that a ‘right-based rehabilitation’ policy and practice can be developed, which is not oppressive, but reflects the views and experiences of the disabled people who rehabilitation should serve.
Sheltered work and related practices remain a prevalent service for people with intellectual disabilities. However, as a result of being placed in these, participants overwhelmingly remain segregated and excluded from their wider communities. This paper explores whether, with the advent of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we can at least begin to assess the equality implications of such placements and argue that the experience of segregation itself represents numerous rights violations and discrimination. Having considered traditional equality mechanisms and their bearing on people with intellectual disabilities, this discussion explores how far the Convention’s re-envisioning of the basic principles of equality can perhaps provide a more promising outlook and ideological stance. Indeed, during the Convention’s inception, the negotiations circled around the conflicting opinions as to the purpose, usefulness, and future of sheltered work, revealing the existing tensions between protection and autonomy, shrouding all disability policy discussions. As a result, the question of sheltered work is not explicitly addressed in the treaty and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have been unable to definitively declare that the practice of sheltered work constitutes an act of discrimination. However, the Committee does as times demand that sheltered workshops be phased out where it is obvious that the practice of sheltered work is directly linked to the exploitation of workers. Moreover, certain provisions in the Convention might help in determining wrongful discrimination in some, if limited, instances.
The aim of this article is to explore how able-bodied co-workers engage in the ‘othering’ of colleagues with impairments. Taking a discursive analytical approach, the article examines interviews with 19 managers and 43 colleagues who all worked closely with an employee with cerebral palsy in 13 different work organizations. The primary finding of the article is that co-workers spontaneously refer to other ‘different’ people (e.g. transvestites, homosexuals, immigrants) when talking about a colleague with visible impairments. This finding suggests that disability is simultaneously a discursive category (i.e. the discourse of ableism prevents co-workers from talking about the impairments of a colleague) and a material phenomenon (i.e. employees with impairments are a distinct category of employees in the eyes of the co-workers). Othering of employees with disabilities thus demonstrates contradictory discourses of ableism (which automatically produce difference) and tolerance and inclusiveness (which automatically render it problematic to talk about difference).
This article explores how disabled workers engage with the ableist discourse of disability as lower productivity in constructing positive identities in the workplace. Disabled employees inhabit a contradictory discursive position: as disabled individuals, they are discursively constructed for what they are unable to do, whereas as employees they are constituted as human resources and expected to be able to produce and create value. Our discourse analysis of 30 in-depth interviews with disabled employees identifies three types of discursive practices through which they construct positive workplace identities: (1) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity as commonly defined; (2) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity by redefining productivity; and (3) practices reaffirming the discourse of lower productivity yet refusing individual responsibility for it. The study advances the disability literature by highlighting how disabled speakers sustain positive workplace identities despite the negative institutionalized expectations of lower productivity both by challenging and reproducing ableism as an organizing principle.
L'A. decrit les formes de pauvrete dans l'Europe preindustrielle ainsi que les mesures prises a son encontre. Il montre une relation d'interaction entre les elites et les pauvres en fonction de leurs interets respectifs. Mais au-dela de la lutte contre le crime engendre par la misere, une regulation sociale a ete operee. Celle-ci s'inscrit en termes de morale sociale, de marche du travail, d'ordre social et de prophylaxie. La charite a ainsi pu representer une strategie de survie pour les pauvres et une strategie de controle pour les elites
The aim of this article is to explore disability and the digital divide using a quantitative methodology. The research investigates what impact digital technologies have had in improving the life-chances for disabled people from deprived neighbourhoods in the northeast of England. The study explores how disabled people engage with digital and assistive technologies in order to overcome disabling barriers and social exclusion. Unfortunately, the analysis found no evidence that digital and assistive technologies had any impact on reducing social exclusion for disabled people. In fact, the research discovered that these technologies seemed to construct new forms of disabling barriers as a consequence of the digital divide.
This paper explores the implications for economic analysis, societal well-being, and public policy of the movement of care services (such as child and elder care) from home to market. A broad empirical overview sets the stage for the argument that this process cannot be properly evaluated using only a priori judgments about the suitability of marketization. The context in which markets operate is crucial, and while the growth of market provision poses some risks, it also offers some potential benefits.
This study tests a theory of how a craft- and profession-based industry adopted multidivisional organization, examining higher education publishing from 1958 through 1990. 1 combined interviews and historical analysis to identify two institutional logics, an editorial and a market logic. Hazard rate models of differences in the effects of these logics showed a decrease in the importance of professional determinants of organization structure and an increase in the salience of its market determinants, The covariates explaining the rate at which firms divisionalized changed as a consequence of their strategic and structural conformity with the prevailing institutional logic.
This article studies the formation and regulation of individual identities among a group of people who after long periods of unemployment are put in a specialized work program for so called ‘occupationally disabled’ individuals. In contrast to its official aim to activate and rehabilitate participants back to the labour market, the study suggests that the work program constitutes the participants as passive and unable to meet the criteria of employability on the labour market. The term ‘occupationally disabled’ emerges not as a medical label referring to already existing, inner characteristic of the individuals concerned, but as an identity that they take on as they pass through the work program. The article contributes to existing research of the formation and regulation of individual identities in organizations in two regards: first, by showing how medicine participates in the formation and regulation of individual identities in organizations, and second, by relating the formation and regulation of individual identities to broader societal issues concerning neoliberal government. Our study suggests that there is a tendency in neo-liberal societies to combine medical and economic expertise into a ‘medico-economic discourse’ within which issues concerning individuals’ activity and agency are transformed into matters of illness and disability. That is, whereas active and self-governing individuals are governed as parts of a high-performing segment of the working population, our study suggests that passive and dependent individuals tend to be governed not just as parts of a low performing segment of the working population, but also as a disabled segment.
Born-deaf, sign-language-using people have for the past two centuries been placed within a succession of externally constructed models, notably the traditional "medical" or pathological model. This perceives them primarily as biologically deficient beings in need of cures or charity in order to be successfully assimilated into society. This paper proposes that the concept of colonialism is the one that most appropriately describes the "existential" reality of deaf communities, and offers instead a deaf-constructed model. Utilizing recent confirmation of the existence of bona-fide feaf cultures, it highlights the extent to which these communities have resisted such models, maintaining their own beliefs concerning their validity and quality of their existence, and what they offer to non-deaf societies. This "vulnerability as strength" is manifested through the concept of deafhood, which is presented as the first move towards a formal narrative of decolonizing and liberatory possibilities.
Public financial support for intellectual disability in the United States grew from 2.3 billion in 1955 to 82.6 billion in 2004, and the federal government emerged during this period as the principal provider of such support. Notwithstanding this unprecedented growth in financial support, many inequities persist today in the distribution of financial resources and services across states, communities, families and to individual disabled consumers. Moreover, tens of thousands of persons with intellectual disabilities continue to live in institutions and nursing homes, waiting lists and aging caregivers are growing rapidly, and family support and supported employment programs receive limited funding. Research and training support has declined significantly in comparison to the growing financial commitments for services and income maintenance. To address these and other issues, the author suggests commissioning a new "President's Panel on Intellectual Disability" modeled on President Kennedy's landmark 1961 Panel on Mental Retardation. The new panel would be appointed during the first months of the new presidential administration in 2009 and deliver its report to the President in 2011, commemorating the 50(th) anniversary of the original President's Panel.
The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics is the first systematic and comprehensive reference on clinical research ethics. Under the editorship of experts from the National Institutes of Health of the United States, the book offers a wide-ranging and systematic examination of all aspects of research with human beings. Considering historical triumphs of research as well as tragedies, the textbook provides a framework for analysing the ethical aspects of research studies with human beings. Through both conceptual analysis and systematic reviews of empirical data, the textbook examines issues ranging from scientific validity, fair subject selection, risk benefit ratio, independent review, and informed consent as well as focused consideration of international research ethics, conflicts of interests and other aspects of responsible conduct of research. The editors of The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics offer a work that critically assesses and advances scholarship in the field of human subjects research with human beings.
Objectives: The digital transformation of the economy is characterized by the rapid advancement and wide-spread workplace application of digital technologies. Our study aimed to unpack how the digital transformation of the economy contributes to challenges and opportunities for the sustainable employment and health of persons living with disabilities. Methods: One-on-one semi-structured interviews with policy makers, disability employment service providers and future of work specialists were conducted. Interviewees asked about the implications of digital technology advancements for persons with disabilities. Participants were also asked about the strategies that could be used to support inclusive employment within a digitized working world. An iterative and flexible grounded theory methodological approach was taken to analyze the qualitative data and to develop a conceptual understanding of the digital transformation of the economy for persons living with disabilities. Results: Forty participants were interviewed from across Canada. The digital transformation of the economy was seen as disadvantageous to persons living with disabilities and could impact their ability to find and sustain paid work, advance within their career, and remain productive. Labelled as the digital divide, participants frequently referred to sources of inequities faced by persons with disabilities that shaped their ability to fully participate in a digital working world. The digital divide was characterized by three intersecting concepts which included disparities in digital technology access, personal resources, and job skills. Participants highlighted the importance of equity and inclusive design considerations in the development and dissemination of digital technology and more responsive skilling initiatives for a changing work environment. Conclusions: Findings provide an important conceptual foundation for scholarship on work and health inequities that can arise from the digital transformation of the economy and bring greater attention to the design of targeted disability employment support programs and policies that are relevant and inclusive for a digital working world.
Existing literature on disability inclusion in the workplace has done little to confront the structural inequalities facing people with disabilities and has instead focused on ideas of assimilation strategies. As a result, in HRD there is a conflation between disability research and research that is “critical.” The purpose of this conceptual article is to examine the persisting influence of ableism on the marginalization experiences of people with disabilities in organizations. Specifically, the present article conceptualizes the effects of ableism on the hiring, retention, and promotion of people with disabilities in organizations. The critical analysis of everyday work experiences of people with disabilities in ableist organizations as offered in this article calls for organizations to fundamentally rethink how they can better support this world’s largest minority group. Implications for HRD research and practice will be discussed.
During the COVID-19 pandemic many countries enforced mandatory stay-at-home orders. The confinement period that took place may be regarded as a multi-domain work-life shock event, severely disrupting both the professional and the family sphere. Taking an identity lens, this study examines whether and how identity changed during confinment by drawing from a diary study consisting of 14 working parents who filled out a daily diary over a period of seven weeks of mandated home confinement in France. The findings suggest how both work-related and family-related identity change may occur when individuals are confronted with a multi-domain work-life shock event such as the pandemic. Further, the findings point to three identity responses to this event: work-life identity threat, work-life identity reflection, and work-life identity reconstruction. For most participants, the seven-week period resulted in significant and positive shifts in their work and family identities to better align with their internal beliefs rather than relying on societally imposed expectations about what it means to be a good parent and worker.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an inevitable surge in the use of digital technologies due to the social distancing norms and nationwide lockdowns. People and organizations all over the world have had to adjust to new ways of work and life. We explore possible scenarios of the digital surge and the research issues that arise.
An increase in digitalization is leading firms and educational institutions to shift to work-from-home (WFH). Blockchain technology will become important and will entail research on design and regulations. Gig workers and the gig economy is likely to increase in scale, raising questions of work allocation, collaboration, motivation, and aspects of work overload and presenteeism. Workplace monitoring and technostress issues will become prominent with an increase in digital presence. Online fraud is likely to grow, along with research on managing security.
The regulation of the internet, a key resource, will be crucial post-pandemic. Research may address the consequences and causes of the digital divide. Further, the issues of net neutrality and zero-rating plans will merit scrutiny. A key research issue will also be the impact and consequences of internet shutdowns, frequently resorted to by countries. Digital money, too, assumes importance in crisis situations and research will address their adoption, consequences, and mode. Aspects of surveillance and privacy gain importance with increase digital usage.
People with disabilities face a dilemma in dealing with patronizing help: Although accepting unsolicited assistance can incur psychological costs, confronting the helper has been shown to incur interpersonal penalties. The present research explored whether the consequences of confronting patronizing help vary across target gender and disability type. A vignette paradigm introduced participants to various interactions between adults with and without disabilities. Study 1 (N = 137) showed that, when blind targets confronted help that was clearly patronizing, they were rated as ruder and less warm after (vs. before) confronting regardless of their gender. Study 2 (N = 368) showed that, although both blind and wheelchair‐using targets were rated as less warm and ruder after (vs. before) confronting, blind targets were penalized more, and patronizing behavior toward blind targets was perceived as more appropriate. These results highlight the importance of considering intersectionality and cross‐disability heterogeneity when examining the multifaceted experience of ableism.
Despite the recent growth of scholarship on parent activism related to disability, the existing literature tends to focus on specific organizations and time periods and draw on a social psychological approach to examine the motivations of parents in becoming activists. This paper considers disability activism as a field of social movement organizations and focuses on disability organizations led by parents and their relationship to organizations led by activists with disabilities. Using qualitative methods informed by theoretically focused coding and grounded situational analysis, we examine the public framing of four national parent-led organizations that are politically prominent. Through this field approach, the analysis reveals the diversity of parent-led organizations, commonalities and the fault lines among these organizations, and the factors which effect the likelihood of alliances between organizations led by parents and those led by activists with disabilities.
Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where the disabled live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world-and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of the disabled across time and place.
Fruitful connections can be made between Disability Studies and post-conflict transitional justice, two areas of scholarship concerned with human rights and the impacts of violence that have rarely been brought into critical dialogue with one another. For over a decade, one of the world's largest and best-known autism organizations, the US-based Autism Speaks, has been subject to criticisms and boycotts by autistic self-advocates and their allies. This article describes the forms of harm attributed to the organization, arguing that these harms can be viewed through the lens of what transitional justice scholar Jill Stauffer calls "ethical loneliness": "the experience of being abandoned by humanity compounded by the experience of not being heard" (2015b, 1). I argue that Autism Speaks's recent reforms and responses to criticism, in focusing largely on present-day organizational policies and structures, fail to grasp the full temporal dimensions of ethical loneliness or the importance of addressing past injustice.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans with all sorts of disabilities came to be labeled as "unproductive citizens." Before that, disabled people had contributed as they were able in homes, on farms, and in the wage labor market, reflecting the fact that Americans had long viewed productivity as a spectrum that varied by age, gender, and ability. But as Sarah F. Rose explains in No Right to Be Idle, a perfect storm of public policies, shifting family structures, and economic changes effectively barred workers with disabilities from mainstream workplaces and simultaneously cast disabled people as morally questionable dependents in need of permanent rehabilitation to achieve "self-care" and "self-support." By tracing the experiences of policymakers, employers, reformers, and disabled people caught up in this epochal transition, Rose masterfully integrates disability history and labor history. She shows how people with disabilities lost access to paid work and the status of "worker--a shift that relegated them and their families to poverty and second-class economic and social citizenship. This has vast consequences for debates about disability, work, poverty, and welfare in the century to come. © 2017 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
In England during the late nineteenth century, intellectuals, especially Francis Galton, called for a variety of eugenic policies aimed at ensuring the health of the human species. In the United States, members of the Progressive movement embraced eugenic ideas, especially immigration restriction and sterilization. Indiana enacted the first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and the US Supreme Court upheld such laws in 1927. State programs targeted institutionalized, mentally disabled women. Beginning in the late 1930s, proponents rationalized involuntary sterilization as protecting vulnerable women from unwanted pregnancy. By World War II, programs in the United States had sterilized approximately 60,000 persons. After the horrific revelations concerning Nazi eugenics (German Hereditary Health Courts approved at least 400,000 sterilization operations in less than a decade), eugenic sterilization programs in the United States declined rapidly. Simplistic eugenic thinking has faded, but coerced sterilization remains widespread, especially in China and India. In many parts of the world, involuntary sterilization is still intermittently used against minority groups.
Organizational theory and research has increased attention to the determinants and consequences of attention in organizations. Attention is not, however, a unitary concept but is used differently in various metatheories: the behavioral theory of the firm, managerial cognition, issue selling, attention-based view, and ecology. At the level of the brain, neuroscientists have identified three varieties of attention: selective attention, executive attention, and vigilance. Attention is shaped by both top-down (i.e., schema-driven) and bottom-up (i.e., stimulus-driven) processes. Inspired by neuroscience research, I classify and compare three varieties of attention studied in organization science: attentional perspective (top-down), attentional engagement (combining top-down and bottom-up executive attention and vigilance), and attentional selection (the outcome of attentional processes). Based on research findings, I develop five propositions on how the varieties of attention in organization provide a theoretical alternative to theories of structural determinism or strategic choice, with a particular focus on the role of attention in explaining organizational adaptation and change.
In this paper it is argued, on the basis of an analysis of data from interviews with practitioners, that the rhetoric of partnership and the 'holistic' approach employed by Occupational Therapists is to be understood as an ideology which serves the occupation's professionalising project. It functions to distinguish Occupational Therapy from other health and welfare specialisms, to perpetuate the notion that disability is an individual problem to which professional intervention can provide the solution, and to ascribe responsibility for any perceived failure in therapy to the client rather than the practitioner.
In the United States, rehabilitating disabled veterans generated new systems of medical, military and social management. The Reconstruction Division of the War Department as well as volunteer organisations conducted campaigns to educate not just veterans but the public too, in the role and benefit of rehabilitation, creating powerful discourses to accompany the new systems. Close collaboration between military and voluntary sectors disseminated the discourse of ‘overcoming disability’ in the public domain. Postwar reconstruction was hinged to an ideal that prewar normalcy could be restored. Whilst surgeons, rehabilitators and policy-makers attempted this with disabled soldiers under their care, they encountered resistance from veterans. Some men felt that the focus on employment retraining was at the expense of convalescence; others argued that provisions were inadequate. Disabled veterans often conceptualised the idea of ‘physical restoration’ more fully than governments and rehabilitators. Physical remedy was not just crucial in relieving pain, but also implicated a veteran's sense of self and belief in his future. This paper argues that although successful recovery was measured by the extent to which the disabled were grateful for treatment and retraining, veterans could be critical and resistant.
Sign Language Studies 2.4 (2002) 356-379
RECENTLY I asked a colleague, a university professor I'll call Archibald, whether he thought that Deaf people have a disability. "Of course they do," he answered, "it's common sense." I believe that most hearing people and some Deaf people, too, would say the same thing. When my colleague called the conclusion common sense, he implied that the meanings of the words themselves answered my question. A disability is a limitation of function because of an impairment. Deaf people are limited in some functions because of an impairment of hearing. Therefore, Deaf people have a disability. That nicely closes the issue for my colleague, but it closes it too soon for us. To travel this issue with the common sense meanings of the words is to travel with too much a priori baggage. In particular, these meanings take deaf and disability to be physical attributes of individuals, like their blood pressure or eye color. A great deal follows from this biological understanding of deaf and disability, including much that Deaf people find hurtful and inimical to their interests. I propose, therefore, to suspend common sense on this issue long enough to explore the concepts of deaf and disability so we can see what was buried in both the question and the answer.
How did the concept of disability arise and what purposes does it serve in our societies? In several of his works, the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1980) showed how "bodies are the battlefield"—that is, how political and economic forces in the history of the Western world have fought for control of the human body and its functions. By the eighteenth century, the Western tradition of esteeming the poor was replaced by a political analysis of idleness that continues to the present. To make productive citizens out of idle burdens on the state, it was necessary to distinguish those who could not work (the sick and disabled) from those who would not work (beggars, vagabonds, and thieves). In 1994 presidential aspirant Phil Gramm, a senator from Texas, confirmed this policy objective of separating the infirm from the indolent: "[We want able-bodied] people riding in the [welfare] wagon," he said, "to get out ... and help the rest of us pull." The incoming Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, agreed (Welfare Helps Kids 1994). Likewise, the British government has stated that the products of special education "should be productive if possible and not a burden on the state" (Department of Education and Science 1978). A 1993 Japanese law similarly aims to make people with disabilities independent and thus employable (Nagase 1995).
To reduce the numbers of those who could not work and must be given a free ride, the state, starting in the eighteenth century, assumed great responsibility for ensuring the health of the population and could even penetrate the tightly knit family unit and prescribe what should happen to the child's body: hygiene, inoculation, treatments for disease, and compulsory education (Foucault 1980). These practices are generally quite desirable, and they thus formed a continuing basis for the state's claim on the control of bodies. During this era of the rise of modern medicine and the growing intervention of the state in the health of the family, the first national schools for Deaf people were founded. In order to ensure that those who could work would do so, a central purpose of those schools was to teach the Deaf pupils a trade, removing them from their families where they were poor dependents and converting them into productive members of society. The Deaf schools in Europe contained shops to teach trades such as printing, carpentry, masonry, gardening, tailoring, and so on. When schools for Deaf people were founded in the United States, they followed this model (Lane 1984).
With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, much larger numbers of people were marginalized; machinery, buildings, and transportation were designed for the normative worker. To separate the able-bodied who could work in these settings from those with disabilities who could not and to regulate the health of children and adults, it was necessary to measure, evaluate, create hierarchies...
Purpose:
As paid work is the occupation that people spend the most amount of their time doing, it is an important provider of personal meaning in their lives. This meaning has been shown to vary from person to person and to be important to health and well being. When a person is unable to work due to a disabling condition, it is unclear whether this meaning remains or is replaced by other meanings. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore what was known in the existing literature on what work means to those with work disability.
Methods:
The review involved identifying and selecting relevant studies, charting the data and collating and summarizing the results.
Results:
Fifty-two studies explored the meaning of work for those with cancer, mental illness, musculoskeletal disorders, brain injuries, paraplegia, and AIDS. The studies revealed that, for most, work continued to be meaningful and important. Common themes across all types of disability included work being a source of identity, feelings of normality, financial support, and socialization. These meanings were found to be both motivating for return to work and health promoting. Conversely, a small number of studies found that the meanings and values ascribed to work changed following disability. New meanings, found either at home or in modified work, replaced the old and contributed to new identities.
Conclusions:
The exploration of the meaning of work has been shown to provide important understanding of the experience of work and disability. This understanding can guide rehabilitation professionals in their interventions with the work disabled.
Policy leaders and public health experts may be overlooking effective ways to stimulate innovative antibiotic research and development. I analyzed archival resources concerning the US government's efforts to produce penicillin during World War II, which demonstrate how much science policy can differ from present approaches. By contrast to current attempts to invigorate commercial participation in antibiotic development, the effort to develop the first commercially produced antibiotic did not rely on economic enticements or the further privatization of scientific resources. Rather, this extremely successful scientific and, ultimately, commercial endeavor was rooted in government stewardship, intraindustry cooperation, and the open exchange of scientific information. For policymakers facing the problem of stimulating antibiotic research and development, the origins of the antibiotic era offer a template for effective policy solutions that concentrate primarily on scientific rather than commercial goals. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 14, 2012: e1-e9. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.300693).
The design and use of wheelchairs significantly changed during the last half of the twentieth century, enabling greater mobility,
independence, and social inclusion for the user. Among many innovations was the development of special or adaptive seating.
Emerging in the last quarter of the century from a multifaceted and multidirectional movement, special or adaptive seating
transformed wheelchairs from simple mobility tools into postural aids. They afforded the possibility for people with learning
disabilities and/or severe physical impairments to leave the confines of institutional life and access the wider community.
This article explores the social and technical processes involved in the rise and formation of this movement and resulting
technology. We chart early developments in special seating and show how the wheelchair developed, both as a response to and
as a catalyst of social change.
Eldercare, like other forms of care work, is often taken for granted and undervalued. The burdens as well as the failures of providing care for the elderly are often borne disproportionately by women. This paper documents inequality of access and low quality of care for the elderly in the United States. It argues that public funds used to subsidize nursing homes are poorly spent and that profit-maximizing competition in the nursing home industry adversely affects the quality of care provided. In seeking to address these problems, policy-makers can learn important lessons from several different sources. The experiences of several European countries, current regulatory efforts in the state of Massachusetts, and more decentralized volunteer efforts to promote humane visions of eldercare all offer some hope for the future.
Although the disability rights movement consists of a small portion of all Americans with disabilities, activists have pressed claims on behalf of that entire population. The nascent movement in the early and mid-1970s drew upon policy goals of other civil rights movements, particularly at the federal level, to gain political and legal objectives. Disability rights activists achieved mixed results over the past decade despite joining broader coalitions to fight social budget cuts and a conservative civil rights agenda. If the disability rights movement is not yet fully autonomous and faces an uncertain future, it has established itself as a presence in American social welfare politics.
To examine the assumed association of war and the development of rehabilitation through a review of the pertinent literature.
Search in the Medline databases from 1942-2002 for papers that described the impact of war on rehabilitation services and their practice, and the study of the relevant identified reports. The following search terms were used: history of rehabilitation, medicine and war, rehabilitation and war, rehabilitation of war casualties.
In WWI physical and occupational therapy became adjuncts in the treatment of military orthopaedic casualties, artificial limb services were set-up and workshops and factories for vocational rehabilitation were created. During WWII further developments occurred, mainly in the field of amputation of limbs and spinal cord injuries. Additional advances took place in all armed conflicts after WWII, particularly in the field of brain injury.
The literature review indicates that the assumed association of rehabilitation and war is correct. Rehabilitation services have developed partly in association with war and the experience of rehabilitating war casualties supplied valuable principles and practices to rehabilitation medicine enriching the specialty and contributing to the health care systems of the involved countries.