Disability activisms: social model stalwarts and biological citizens

Abstract

The Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in the UK rejects the view that disability is an illness. For the DPM it is the social processes of discrimination and oppression that create the material circumstances out of which solidarity and politicisation arise. The DPM has also been shy about impairment, arguing that it is generally irrelevant to the issue of disability and that a clear distinction between impairment and disability is necessary if disability is to be understood as a basis for identity politics. The biological citizens that support embodied health movements use impairment, genetic status, biomedical diagnosis and classification as calling cards that signal their claims to identity. Whilst the DPM has challenged medical hegemony and scientific ideas, many ‘biosocial’ groups embrace the specialised medical and scientific knowledge associated with their ‘condition’, particularly where it might be used to enhance their claims to citizenship. This paper argues that disability activism in the UK is bifurcating. It addresses the difference in perspective and action between the ‘social model stalwarts’ of the DPM and biological citizens that organise politically around particular diagnostic labels.

Keywords:

• social model
• biological citizens
• activism
• Disabled People’s Movement
• social movement

Notes

1. ‘Suffering’ it should be pointed out is not a word that is commensurate with a social model discourse. Whilst it would not offend a biological citizen, a social model stalwart would suggest that the term ‘suffering’ reduces disability to individual embodiment and distracts attention from the collective and social causes of disability.