Geography Of Disability Research Paper

Critical geographers view disablement as a sociospatial process that marks mentally and/or physically impaired bodies as negatively ‘other’ and works to marginalize disabled persons within social space. Geographies of disability are, thus, as much about ableism as a regime of power based on able-bodied privilege and the sociospatial practices that sustain it, as about disabled persons’ experiences of trying to negotiate environments that physically and/or socially exclude and oppress them.

1. Why A Critical Geography Of Disability?

The recent shift toward critical geographies of disability is a response to changing conditions within society, and new perspectives on the differences disabilities make in how people are situated in society and space (e.g., in terms of access to basic necessities and acceptance in urban spaces). An increasingly vocal disability rights movement, particularly in the West, but also internationally, aging populations with higher incidence of disability, cutbacks in social programs for the disabled, and problems such as grinding poverty and inaccessible cities, have helped to encourage such research. New perspectives on disability issues have also been influential. The growth of disability studies has challenged conventional biomedical models of disability with ‘social constructionist’ ones, and offered significant insights into what it is like to be disabled in various spaces of everyday life (e.g., Oliver 1990, Morris 1991). These society-centered perspectives view disability as the outcome of social processes such as the economic devaluation of the disabled through lack of employment and low wages, and cultural representations of disabled people as inferior. Disability is thus a social rather than individual condition. This does not necessarily mean that disablement is entirely socially produced. Bodily impairments affect experiences of disablement. Visual impairment may result in difficulty moving within spaces such as sports arenas and negative reactions to such visible differences may help to make disabled persons feel ‘out of place.’ Similarly, chronic pain sufferers often find it difficult to negotiate spaces of daily life and interact with others. Scholars continue to debate how best to incorporate such bodily realities within conceptualizations of social processes of disablement.

Changes in the discipline have also encouraged critical geographies of disability. These include: greater use of critical social theory, feminist geographic studies of social differences (e.g., gender and sexuality) and marginalization in urban space, recognition of multiple bases of oppression in society and space, and desires to use geographic knowledge to help empower disadvantaged groups. Critical geographers studying disability have promoted related changes in the discipline: such as making conferences more accessible and promoting research through an international network of scholars (i.e., Disability and Geography International). They have challenged the invisibility of disabled women and men in the geographic literature; emphasizing disablement as a sociospatial form of oppression, exclusionary practices within spaces of academia, and the need to put gendered experiences of disability on Geography’s research map (e.g., Chouinard and Grant 1995).

What do critical geographies of disability offer? They offer the possibility of geographic research that empowers persons with disabilities (building on the legacy of radical geography). They promise more balanced accounts of the sociospatial production of disability as a place-specific condition of life, not a natural outcome of bodily impairment. They can help us understand how ableist social relations and practices are sustained over space and time, and how more enabling environments might be created. They can shed light on why resistance to ableism varies among places: of the significance, for example, of national differences in human rights law for disability activism. By providing critical causal explanations of the sociospatial production of disabling environments and of resistance to disablement, these geographies can help us create more enabling societies and spaces.

2. Research Topics And Directions

Some studies focus on how disability transforms experiences of personal space and individuals’ capacities to negotiate private and public spaces. Others examine the sociospatial production of disabling environments through analyses of the recursive relationship between regulatory institutions (e.g., the state and health care system) and disabled persons’ access to and experiences of urban space. Other studies investigate exclusionary attitudes and practices that help to isolate, stigmatize, and segregate disabled persons from others through, for instance, neighborhood opposition to group homes. Underlying much of this research is a concern with how and why inequalities in power give rise to social spaces that disadvantage and exclude disabled persons. This critical stance toward past and present social orders distinguishes contemporary geographies of disability.

Most studies to date emphasize how ableism shapes disabled persons’ lives and life spaces. Butler (1999) examines how the importance of visual cues in lesbian women’s negotiations of different life spaces disadvantages visually impaired lesbian women. Valentine (1999) discusses how masculine identity may be threatened by acquired physical impairment. Studies of the links between divisions of power within particular social orders, and sociospatial forms of disablement are relatively rare. Gleeson (1999), however, attempts to show how changing class relations and divisions of labor in the transition from feudal to industrial capitalist societies excerbated the sociospatial marginalization of physically impaired people. In a different vein, Chouinard (1999) suggests that phenomena such as sociospatial barriers to effective political action by disabled women can be understood as outcomes of a patriarchal corporeal class system that systematically devalues disabled persons in general and disabled women in particular, marginalizes and exploits bodies (especially women’s) which differ from Western racialized norms, and helps to sustain intolerance toward bodily diversity and regional disparities in resources and well-being.

Contemporary geographies of disability vary in analytic approach and geographic scale. Studies of disablement within personal life spaces emphasize the ‘micro’ scale of everyday life. They tend to be descriptive and use personal narratives to illustrate changing geographies of daily life. Golledge’s work on vision-impaired populations, wayfinding and navigational systems for the vision-impaired (1993) adopts a behavioral conceptualization of disability as an individual condition which can be compensated for through assistive devices and environmental design. Recently, Gollege’s work has taken a more critical turn; reflecting on the barriers, such as print, which he and other vision-impaired professors face in academic environments (Golledge 1997).

The differences disability makes in women’s abilities to negotiate individual life spaces has been the focus of Dyck’s (1995) research on women, chronic illness, and healthcare. Dyck has shown how chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis translate into shrinking lifeworlds and sociospatial isolation. Her work examines how professional services, practices, and evaluation procedures, particularly in healthcare, affect chronically ill women’s capacities to negotiate spaces of daily life. Her recent research investigates how racial and cultural differences affect women’s access to medical knowledge and care, and capacities to negotiate spaces outside the home (Dyck 1997a, 1997b).

Feminist theories of the body have helped to inspire geographic research on cultural codings, readings of and responses to disabled bodies in various life spaces. Butler and Bowlby (1997) examine the disciplining of visually impaired bodies in public spaces through practices such as misinterpreting awkward bodily movements as inappropriate behavior in public space (e.g., intoxication). Complementing geographic studies of experiences of disability are studies of how discriminatory practices within the state and design professions, for instance, perpetuate disabling environments. Some also consider disabled persons’ resistance to such practices. An early example is Dear’s (1981) analysis of the role of bureaucratic power and practices in the sociospatial segregation of the mentally ill within urban areas. Wolch and Dear’s (1993) work on homelessness in the United States and Canada shows how policies of deinstitutionalization, community care, and urban renewal resulted in growing problems of homelessness, the ghettoization of social services and service-dependent populations in central cities, and the loss of affordable housing to gentrification and redevelopment. They examine local geographies of homelessness; for example, the fragile support networks that homeless women establish along daily life paths. Imrie (1996) has examined how urban planning and design practices in Britain and the US have contributed to inaccessible urban builtenvironments. He argues that architects and planners largely have failed to address the access needs of disabled persons and that attempts to legislate more accessible urban and building designs have had limited success. Historical geographic studies of the development of asylums for the mentally ill and challenged (Philo 1989, Parr and Philo 1996), and contemporary studies of psychiatric survivors’ struggles to challenge mental health services that are organizationally and spatially fragmented and unresponsive to needs (Parr 1997), have advanced our understanding of changing geographies of care, discipline, disablement, and resistance in institutional and community settings. Interest in disablement in academic environments is increasing, but has yet to receive systematic attention.

Cultural aspects of sociospatial exclusion are addressed in studies of community attitudes toward persons with disabilities and related geographic phenomena such as NIMBY (Not in My Backyard syndrome). Dear et al. (1997) examine how hierarchically structured attitudes of acceptance and rejection influence levels of community opposition to the siting of group homes in US urban neighborhoods. They find that attitudes toward disabled persons labeled as mentally ill, homeless, or AIDS sufferers are especially negative, and result in stronger desires for spatial separation from and greater community opposition to group homes for these persons.

Exciting directions are emerging in recent critical geographies of disability. Cultural codings of public space as able-bodied and ways of contesting such inscriptions is one emerging theme. Kitchin (1999) examines British disability activists’ use of confrontational tactics, such as chaining themselves to inaccessible public transit vehicles, to draw attention to the denial of disabled citizens’ rights to mobility within cities. Stanley (1999) is investigating how the use of sports wheelchairs challenges negative cultural images of disability by associating users with athletic identities and activity spaces. Dorn’s (1997) historical geographic study of a nineteenth-century medical practitioner examines medical professionals’ roles in defining disability (including the moral causes of conditions such as alcoholism) and shaping healthcare practices in the Western US. Stables and Smith’s (1997) study of media portrayals of and public attitudes toward disabled parents who rely on their children for care raises issues of cultural representations of disability within the home. They find that, in Britain, people demonize disabled parents who have child care-givers; regarding this arrangement as exploitative and even unnatural. Their work raises interesting questions about how outsiders and the media read departures from normal (i.e., able-bodied) parental and child caregiving relations in the home. In light of drastic changes in social programs for disabled persons, it is surprising that the impacts of state restructuring on disabled women and men has not received greater attention in the critical geographic literature. Few studies consider the interactive effects of multiple social policy changes on disabled persons’ lives and life spaces. Systematic studies are needed which will explain related changes in disabled peoples’ status as citizens and dependents of the state, and their capacities to struggle for enabling environments from local to global scale. Disabled peoples’ access to recreation spaces is another topic in need of critical geographic research. Methodological and ethical issues in studies of disability and space are another emerging theme Researchers are exploring questions such as how the disabled might be empowered through geographic research, how efforts to make research inclusionary are complicated by the places in which research is conducted (Dyck 1997b), and whether ethical aims such as full disclosure of study objectives should be compromised in situations where this furthers the political objectives of the disabled (Wilton 2000).

3. Future Challenges And Directions

Where should geographies of disability go from here? One important challenge is explaining how the uneven development and dynamics of global patriarchal capitalism perpetuates social and spatial exclusion of the disabled. Systematic studies of how sociospatial restructuring of state institutions and programs is shaping the geographic boundaries and conditions of disabled peoples’ lives in different places, and how different ways of organizing workplaces and labor processes (e.g., differences in accommodating special needs) affect disabled persons’ access to paid employment, would help to address such challenges. Geographic variations in the design, production, availability, and consumption of disability aids, and their impacts on disabled peoples’ abilities to negotiate life spaces is another topic for future research. Studies of the sociospatial production of disabling conditions; examining, for instance, how unsafe, stressful conditions of work and the hyperexploitation of female labor in places such as export zones influence the incidence and severity of different disabilities, would also help to address this challenge.

Another challenge is understanding the differences that cultural practices and images make in disabled persons’ lives. Do negative images of disabled parents restrict their own or child care-givers’ access to spaces outside the home? How do conditions of life in particular places influence ideas about where disabled people do and don’t belong? Are urban neighborhoods with a history of disability activism less likely to view the disabled as nonproductive and hence out of place in local labor markets? Future studies could explore geographic variations in the political culture of disability struggles. Why do activists in some places adopt radical, confrontational strategies demanding collective rights, while others favor actions such as sponsoring stage appearances by famous disabled ‘heroes’; events which reinforce cultural notions that only exceptional disabled persons succeed?

Theoretical challenges include developing dynamic, deeply geographic conceptions of the regulation of bodily differences in space; conceptions which allow for multiple, diverse bases and processes of oppression as disabled women and men move through space and time. How do shifting bases of exclusion, for instance, sexist discrimination within the disability movement and ableism, homophobia, and class differences within the women’s movement, constrain disabled women’s abilities to promote collective action on issues such as reproductive rights? How important are such processes of exclusion in the lives of disabled women in the Third World; where inabilities to walk to distant paid employment, to farm, or to care for family members often translates into dependency and isolation within the home? We have only just begun to tap the feminist theories of bodily oppression that can help us to understand such geographic processes of disablement.

Methodological challenges include gathering data on neglected aspects of disability such as spatial variations in employment and accommodation practices in workplaces, and developing accessible research formats. Ethical and political challenges include ensuring that research empowers disabled persons.

Perhaps the key challenge is promoting restless geographic imaginations about disabling environments. Such imaginations will be open to surprise about patterns and processes of disablement over space and time, and willing to learn from disabled peoples’ knowledges. With creativity and commitment, future geographies of disability can help to create environments that enable all members of society.

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