Disability, family and technical aids: a study of how disabling/enabling experiences come about in hybrid family relations

Abstract

Research regarding disabling situations generally focuses on disabling situations within a public society ‘out there’. In our research, however, the intimate family setting itself appears central to the emergence of dis/enabling experiences. Moreover, the relationships that shaped these experiences not only involve human family members but also the technical aids associated with people’s specific impairments. Biographical narratives with users of three different technical aids including hearing aids, arm prostheses and incontinence products demonstrate that studying the making of (dis)ability in hybrid family settings is essential for understanding the emergence of (dis)ability in general.

Keywords:

• technical aids
• family
• disability
• home

Acknowledgements

This article is part of a research project financed by Disability Studies in The Netherlands (DSIN) and The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw).

Notes

1. Even though important research has been conducted on physical and mental abuse of people with impairments in family settings (for example, Kendall-Tackett et al. 2005), this does not cover the more subtle and everyday techno-social constructions of disability and ability in people’s private lives.

2. As Titchosky (2000) analyzes, Goffman also looks at disability from the perspective of a ‘normal-bodied’ and assumes his readers share this bodily status. The development of an interdisciplinary and politically engaged field of disability studies has broadened the research agenda to concerns of disabled people that, of course, still include being confronted with stigmas.