Time, Place and Competence: Society and History in the Writings of Robert Edgerton

ABSTRACT

This is an article by an historian about the work of an American anthropologist and social scientist who has for many years observed, recorded and participated in the lives of the mentally handicapped. It had its origins in a dissatisfaction with existing histories of retardation and a desire to seek out twentieth century sociological perspectives with relevance to and resonances for earlier periods.

The paper falls into three sections. The first describes and analyses the polarity–social competence and incompetence within given cultures–which is central to Edgerton's conception of what he terms ‘socio-cultural retardation’. This is followed by an evaluation of The Cloak of Competence [1], which concentrates on the interactions between deinstitutionalisation, stigma and passing for normal. A concluding section returns, by means of an examination of the validity of the notion of a ‘retarded community’, to a final interrogation of the causes as well as the meanings and contradictions implicit in ‘socio-cultural retardation’. Attention is also briefly given to the ways in which historians, and explicitly historical methodologies, can contribute to further research within the general paradigm which Edgerton has pioneered.