Disentangling disablism and ableism: The social norm of being able and its influence on social interactions with people with intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT

Critical occupational science reveals mechanisms of social inequality and differences between humans. One category of human difference is ability and the social norm of being able. In this paper I propose a deeper understanding of occupations through exploring ableism—the social norm of being able—and disablism—an excluding behaviour towards people with disabilities. Within a postmodern understanding of knowledge, the aim of this paper is not to demonstrate how people with intellectual disabilities are categorized as different in Austrian society. Rather, the aim is to enable a discussion about the influences of the social norm of being able on occupations, and how people, as members of a society, produce differences between humans in social interactions, due to this social norm. Three ethnographic vignettes introduce this discussion paper. They tell stories of social interactions of a person with intellectual disabilities who visits Viennese cafés with me. In order to encourage a discussion, the paper invites readers to reflect for themselves about the initial vignettes and to criticise the interpretations proposed. My study offers a situational approach to how everyday interactions produce differences in humans. Further, it explores how ableism influences these interactions, and discusses how to challenge the naturalized social norm of being able. I suggest that it is not enough to claim more social inclusion for people with (intellectual) disabilities; the objective should be to investigate how occupations could be performed in a way that deconstructs normality and which supports and values deviance.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical occupational science
• Critical disability studies
• Producing difference
• Normality
• Intellectual disabilities

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to reviewers of earlier versions of this paper for constructive and helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Translation by the author.

2 Melange is a typical Viennese coffee with milk and whipped cream.

3 This example was suggested by one of the reviewers.

4 The term dis/ability was coined by Dan Goodley (2014). It visualizes that all people can be categorized in this way, even if they do not have a disability right now, that is, the categorization of a person might change over time. He conceded that the term dis/ability can be criticized as binary, but “does some useful work in holding in tension the two phenomena” (Goodley, 2018, p. 7), disabled and not disabled.

5 I use the word doing difference and producing difference synonymously, because doing difference always produces difference between humans in a situational and practice theory sense.

6 ‘Kinds of people’ refers to Ian Hacking’s text (2007) with this very title about social classifications of people.