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Abstract
This article presents results from a study based on archival data from periodicals published by three Swedish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in the field of deafness and hard of hearing. A sociohistorical analysis of the material, which covers more than a century, from 1890 to 2010, highlights that technologies have specifically impacted issues concerned with communication and identity. The article presents key topics that have been identified, as well as similarities and differences between the NGOs with regard to their views on and interest in visually oriented and audiologically oriented technologies and methods of communication. In addition, the analysis shows how deafness, based on different perspectives, can be understood as both identity and disability and how technologies and methods of communication impact identification processes.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge feedback received on earlier versions of our text from Rickard Jonsson at Stockholm University and members of the CCD/KKOM research environment at Örebro University, Sweden.
Notes
1 This study is part of Project CIT, Communication, Identities and Technologies. See: http://www.oru.se/Forskning/Forskningsamnen/HumUS/Pedagogik/Pedagogik/Forskningsprojekt-inom-Pedagogik/Forskningsprojekt-inom-Pedagogik/?rdb=515 [21 February 2012].
2 The field of deafness and hard of hearing is here understood to mean social and cultural practices that have deafness and impaired hearing as their common denominator.
3 See for instance. Padden and Humphries (Citation1988) for an in-depth discussion on the deaf community.
4 For an in-depth study of deaf communities internationally, see for example Monaghan et al. (Citation2003); Moores (Citation1987).
5 Concerning the term “visually-oriented”, see also Bagga-Gupta (Citation2004b); CitationHansen et al. (2009, submitted).
6 The empirical study covers the period 1977–2010, since DHB's archives are available for this period.
7 The Swedish concept ‘Barnplantorna’ translates literally to ‘Children Plants’. The organization's target group is parents with children who have received cochlear implants (CI) and other types of hearing aids.
8 From 1925 onwards, the two periodicals run in parallel, but in the 1940s they merge into a single periodical.
9 Research on American Sign Language began in the 1960s, which inspired research on SSL.
10 This can be gauged from different texts and documents that highlight, among other things, a battle for the right to SSL, giving rise to the term ‘deaf awareness’, etc. (see for example Jacobsson, Citation2000; SOU, 2006: 29).
11 The periodical material consists of articles, leaders' editorials, readers' letters, and notices. No distinction has been made in the present study between the different types of periodical data, and all archive data are referred to, for simplification, as ‘articles’.
12 The first trial broadcast in Sweden was conducted in 1954, and in 1956 a parliamentary resolution decreed the introduction of television in Sweden (see http://svt.se/2.60395/1.704445/tv-historia_i_artal, [6 September 2011]).
13 Literal translation: THE STRAWBERRY.
14 Literal translation: The Fruit Tree.
15 See for example http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/1/389.html [6 September 2011].
16 For example, during the 1920s there exists an interest related to ‘identification symbols’, such as markings on clothing. Interest in television was particularly prominent during the 1950s and 1980s, and an interest in information technology and multimedia increases during the 1990s.
17 Literally, people's community college.
18 See also Lucas and Schatz (Citation2003) concerning a similar situation in the United States.
19 For recent discussions on the issue of ‘inverted inclusion’ see Bagga-Gupta (Citation2007, Citation2011a, Citation2011b, Citation2012a) and Bagga-Gupta and de Clerk (2012).
20 An example of continued presence of the term today can be found at http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=3943&artikel=4452173 [28 November 2011]
21 Swedish: ‘hörselskadad’.
22 Swedish: ‘CI-opererad’.
23 Swedish: ‘implanterad’.
24 Literally ‘the child plants’.
25 The fact that the deaf community wishes to be regarded as a linguistic and cultural minority rather than as a disabled group is also discussed by researchers such as Jacobsson (Citation2000) and Christiansen and Leigh (Citation2002). These findings are in line with research reported internationally.
26 The disability discourse is concerned, among other things, with the right to financial support.
27 See also Leigh and Maxwell-McCaw (Citation2011) who study the relationship between CI and identity development.