Performance, purpose, and creation of encounter between people with and without intellectual disabilities

Urban geographers and sociologists use ideas about “encounter” and “conviviality” to understand ways of engaging with difference in cities and ways of enabling people to step outside a fixed identity and explore more transient shared identifications with strangers (Fincher & Iveson, 2008). In 2011 we set out to apply ideas about encounter to the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities, to see if this was a useful concept for furthering policy aims and support practices for social inclusion. We sought to explore ways that people with intellectual disabilities met and interacted with others in public and commercial places – when they were not simply present but were neither in full-blown relationships with people without intellectual disabilities (Bigby & Wiesel, 2011). In the intervening decade, much has been learned about the types of encounters people with intellectual disabilities experience, the props that facilitate or actions that disrupt encounters and the utility of encounter as a strategy to support community participation (Bigby et al., 2018; Bigby & Wiesel, 2019; Bould et al., 2018; Bredewold et al., 2016). This collection of papers brings together new directions of scholarship about the performance, purpose, and creation of encounter for people with intellectual disabilities. Its origins are a symposium at the world congress of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities held in Glasgow Scotland in 2019. The contributions, originating from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States of America, from disciplines of social work, geography, sociology, and political science, span issues of theory, policy, and practice and illustrate the value of opportunities for cross-disciplinary international exchange of ideas. This collection pushes the boundaries of existing scholarship and sets out questions for another decade of encounter research.

To draw together the threads of these papers we follow a long history of using theatrical metaphors in encounter literature. Goffman (1959, 1961) theorised encounter, and social interactions more generally, as a theatrical performance of gestures and props. Some papers consider the front stage performance of encounter: the minute nuance of gestures, words, and actions that make the difference between conviviality, recognition, exclusion, freedom, and oppression. Others focus on the backstage work – the planning, preparation, and maintenance – carried out by support workers or municipal authorities “behind the scenes” to make convivial encounters happen. Several move between front and backstage.

The front stage of encounter

Urban geography literature on encounter has turned primarily to the front stage of this performance. One reason was an emphasis on random unexpected encounters between strangers without attributing much significance to backstage preparation and planning. Another reason was the desire of scholars to escape the pessimistic shackles of structuralist framings that leave little room for the possibility of change. Rather than merely pre-determined expressions of structural oppression operating in some elusive depth or backstage, the frontstage events of an encounter are understood as following their own internal logics and dynamics, thus leaving open the potential for transgression and transformation (Hall & Wilton, 2017; Wilson & Darling, 2016; Wiesel et al., 2020). Similarly in disability studies, empirical research on encounter between people with and without intellectual disability has focused on the frontstage performance using direct observations of encounter or analysis of discourses and narratives about such encounters. (Bigby & Wiesel, 2015; Bigby & Wiesel, 2019; Bredewold et al., 2016; Bredewold et al., 2020; Wiesel et al., 2020).

Blonk (2020) adds a new dimension to the study of encounter study and intellectual disability by exploring non-encounters and asking whether they are all the same. She draws on Goffman’s (1963) concept of “civic inattention” and Horgan’s (2012) ideas about strangerhood to interrogate subtle differences of non-encounters. She argues that non-encounters are a form of social interaction aimed to maintain social distance and avoid more convivial or social contact. Blonk asserts that the form a non-encounter takes depends on perceptions of the actors. A person may simply be perceived as a biographical stranger, a person one has not met before. Or, alternatively, they may be perceived as a cultural stranger, a person, such as someone with intellectual disability, seen as having a stigmatised identity and thus from whom distance should be maintained. Non-encounters with biographical strangers are characterised by verbal or non-verbal cues, signalling micro-recognition but intent to avoid encounter. In contrast, non-encounters with cultural strangers lack micro-recognition but are characterised by invisibility, where the person is rendered invisible and not worthy of attention. A third form of non-encounter is characterised by hesitation and discomfort and may also occur when a person is perceived as a cultural stranger. Blonk’s analysis reveals the enduring significance of finding ways to remove stigma associated with difference, so often attached to people with intellectual disabilities, and finding ways “to transform social culture to tackle difference” (Blonk, 2020, p. 8).

In a similar vein to Blonk, but drawing on empirical data, Bredewold and colleagues explore how people with and without intellectual disabilities respond to difference in public places. They characterise responses as othering, reinforcing difference, similiarising, emphasising sameness and conformity to social norms, and romanticising, patronisingly overemphasising differences. People with intellectual disabilities themselves reported that as well as invisibility they experienced bullying, ridicule, impatience, fear, and condescension from members of the public. For some, such treatment had led to withdrawal from social interaction or retreat to the safety of their own peer group. The second part of Bredewold et al.’s paper goes backstage, and discusses the success of neighbourhood projects specifically established to manage difference and encourage contact between people with and without intellectual disabilities. Their findings suggest that places with shared purpose, built in boundaries, and the freedom to engage or disengage were catalysts for convivial encounter in these projects. The authors argue creating special places for encounter with features such as these may increase community members’ experience of interacting with people with intellectual disabilities and in the long run reduce othering responses in public places more generally. Nevertheless, they strike a warning note that constructing special places for encounter removes the spontaneity and serendipity associated with encounter in everyday public places.

Clifford Simplican’s (2020) paper extends the significance of studying encounter beyond social inclusion. She argues there is greater value for people with intellectual disabilities and support worker practice if encounter is linked to ideas of freedom rather than social inclusion. Using feminist theorists Marso (2017) and Arendt (1960), to unpick research-based scenarios portrayed by actors with intellectual disabilities in a training program, Clifford-Simiplican illustrates the differences between inclusion and freedom. Too often, she argues, inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities is facilitated by their adherence to social norms. In contrast, freedom is to act spontaneously or against the status quo and create something new that did not exist before. Her analysis demonstrates how a focus on inclusion leads supporters to smooth over transgressions of social norms by people with intellectual disabilities. In doing so, they constrain freedom, by curtailing the spontaneity, unpredictability, ambiguity and risk that Fincher and Iveson (2008) suggests are central to the transformative potential of encounter. By thinking about encounter as a catalyst for freedom rather than inclusion Clifford-Simplican challenges us to think more deeply about the role and purpose of supporters. Are supporters allies to enable people with intellectual disabilities to act spontaneously and to realise potential friendships with others? Or is their role to manoeuvre people through established and monotonous social routines limiting rather than furthering freedom?

The paper by Wiesel et al. (2020) develops further Clifford-Simplican’s theme of valuing the unpredictability and risk of encounter. Drawing together the growing scholarship about managing risk in social care and an already substantial body of literature about risk more generally, the paper illustrates for the first time the risks and rewards encounters hold for people with intellectual disabilities, their supporters, and others without intellectual disabilities. This analysis suggests that encounters are shaped by the complex interaction of diverse risk frameworks, organisational logics, individual perceptions, and behaviours requiring careful judgement to navigate. Yet support workers are too often left to set their own priorities for deciding whether to avoid, manage, or enable risk. Echoing earlier work by the authors and Bredewold and colleagues (2020) about conditions for encounter created backstage, the final part of this paper proposes place-based characteristics that enable risk without constraining the spontaneity of encounter. These are places which have familiar or knowable elements that reduce the need for reflexivity and negotiation around social interactions; where there is trust in the people or institutions who exercise control, often achieved through co-design; where there is freedom to engage and disengage; where there is the ability to see and be seen by other people; and where there is a shared but non-competitive purpose.

The backstage of encounter

Bigby and Anderson’s paper (2020) takes the understanding of convivial encounter a step forward through exploration of its backstage workings, i.e., the planning, preparation, and maintenance work undertaken by organisations and support workers “behind the scenes” to make first encounters happen, and to sustain repeat encounters. Their study expands earlier work on conditions and practices that facilitate inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in community groups, recognising their participation in groups more closely resembles repeat encounters and being known by name than friendship, given that social contact rarely occurs beyond the group context. Bigby and Anderson (2020) identify many different approaches to creating convivial encounters and contexts where repeat encounters might occur. They have in common five backstage processes: getting to know a person well; exploring possibilities for encounter in existing community places and activities; negotiating access to existing or creating new places or activities; supporting and maintaining these opportunities for repeat convivial encounters; and underpinning enabling processes of team working and supervising staff. This analysis shows not only the importance of backstage work but also how little recognition it receives, even by support workers themselves, who tend to downplay and underestimate the time, effort, and skill involved. Echoing comments about supporters being left to make complex judgements and navigate risk alone, this paper provides a further reminder about the skilled support that is necessary but too often overlooked to realise policy ambitions of social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities.

The final paper by Milot et al. (2020) reports on the first stage of study aiming to apply the strategy of Active Mentoring to support inclusion and repeated convivial encounters between people with and without intellectual disabilities in mainstream community groups in Canada. Scoping likely facilitators and obstacles to the action stage of their study, they conducted focus groups with people with intellectual disabilities who participated in mainstream groups and their supporters. Their findings resonate with similar studies elsewhere, identifying person-related factors, such as difficulty decoding social rules, environment-related factors, such as features of groups or cost, and support-related factors such as the availability of paid or informal supporters to provide individualised assistance with participation. The difficulty in finding participants with intellectual disabilities in mainstream groups, and heavy reliance on family members for support in times of budgetary constraints on disability services, emphasises the need for large projects that build the capacity of members of mainstream groups to support inclusion through training in Active Mentoring. Notable too, in this paper, are the negative experiences of encounters with other community members reported by people with intellectual disabilities in this study, similar to those reported by Bredewold et al., from the Netherlands.

On face value, consideration of the backstage work by several papers in this collection (Bigby & Anderson, 2020; Bredewold et al., 2020; Wiesel et al., 2020) rather than frontstage performance seems a sharp contrast to the emphasis on the accidental, unpredictable, or spontaneous nature of encounter by other contributors and the broader literature. We argue, however, that deliberate planning and the unpredictability of encounter are complementary rather than contradictory. Firstly, for many people with intellectual disabilities, if opportunities for encounters are not deliberately planned by supporters, they quite simply will not occur. In urban geography literature, in towns or cities where one is surrounded by thousands or millions of strangers, opportunities for encounter are sometimes presumed to be infinite. Yet, for people with intellectual disabilities, both disability support practices and avoidance by other community members, limit opportunities for such serendipitous encounter with strangers, let alone opportunities for convivial encounter. Thus, as demonstrated by several of these papers, deliberate planning does not contrast the “accidental” nature of encounters, but is a necessary condition for it.

Secondly, while planning and preparation are necessary to create the opportunities for encounter, once an encounter is initiated, it can still unfold in unpredictable and unplanned ways that leave possibilities (and risk) open (Wiesel et al., 2020). Thus planning for encounter involves disability support workers treading a fine line between sufficient backstage preparation and planning to make encounters happen, and – unless there is a good reason to intervene – stepping back and making space for the spontaneous and unexpected at the moment of encounter itself (Bigby & Wiesel, 2015). As one supporter commented in Bigby and Anderson (2020, p. 5), “if staff were present when an encounter occurred, they were “in the background” making it happen rather than being the focus of attention.” This careful balance aligns with Fincher and Iveson’s (2008, p. 146) notion of “planning for disorder.”

Thirdly, the backstage work of planning and preparation for one encounter, is at once also the frontstage for many other encounters experienced by support workers. The serendipity, unpredictability, and often conviviality that occurs in some of these “backstage encounters” is evident in the wide array of encounters support workers experience with other team members, service users, staff in various businesses and community services, and other members of the community, when they negotiate opportunities for a person with intellectual disability to join an activity or group.

More in-depth analysis of the kinds of encounter experienced by disability support workers as part of their behind-the-scenes negotiation has the potential to generate new insight into the backstage work that is necessary to promote convivial encounter for people with disability. These encounters follow their own logics of conviviality, recognition, and exclusion, and represent an important key to understanding the backstage work that goes into support for encounter, the skills that are required, and the pathways to develop such skills. While the concept of “encounter” in research with people with intellectual disability was initially introduced to explore encounters between people with and without intellectual disability, it can be fruitfully used more widely in our field to consider myriad other encounters, including those in which people with intellectual disability do not directly participate, and yet which can have major impact on their lives.

Another key area of research, evident from this collection, requiring further work is understanding the subjective experiences of convivial encounters by people with intellectual disabilities. To date, most front stage research has relied on observation but innovative methods such as walk along and photo voice interviews could throw further light on what people with intellectual disabilities value about convivial encounters and whether the inherent risks are worth the rewards. Such work may be important in weighing up investments that should be made in the backstage work of creating opportunities for convivial encounters against investment in peer- or interest-based groups that foster a sense of identity and belonging among people with intellectual disabilities (Anderson & Bigby, 2020; Wilson et al., 2017).

Finally, as we write at the end of 2020, the COVID 19 pandemic and its likely aftermath are posing a whole new set of issues about non-encounters and encounter as a means of social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities. Across the English speaking world “social distancing” is the new norm – understood as maintaining physical distance of 1.8 metres between oneself and others – and in some countries mask wearing has become mandatory in public places. The terminology itself confounds social with physical distance, and masks obscure subtle cues of micro-recognition or preparedness for encounter. New social norms are evolving to signal willingness or otherwise to engage socially at a distance. A challenge for the future will be understanding how people with and without intellectual adapt to norms of physical distancing and interpreting social cues about social closeness from a physical distance and how these impact their experience of encounter.