Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2014, Page 89

Uppeldi og menntUn/icelandic JoUrnal of edUcation 23(2) 2014 89
Kristín Björnsdóttir, dan goodley & hanna Björg sigUr jónsdóttir
the disabled person’s capabilities and the functional demands made by society which
does not assume the full range of human diversity. A person is, therefore, defined as
disabled if s/he confronts barriers in everyday life due to limited ability, diseases or
impairment (Tøssebro, 2002, 2004). Disability is also viewed as situational rather than
as an always-present essence of the person; for example, a person can be perceived as
having intellectual disabilities in some situations and not in others (Tøssebro, 2002,
2004).
Second, the narratives from the UK (introduced by Dan) are understood from a
British disability studies perspective. The discussion about disability refers to people
who have the ascribed identities of ‘disability’. Such a term of identity includes vari-
ous people who have been historically situated in a myriad of impairment groupings
including physical and sensory impairments, intellectual disabilities and people with
mental health issues. A British disability studies stance endeavours not to embrace
impairment specific considerations – as have many charities and organizations for
disabled people – but instead considers disabled people as a heterogeneous group,
with many impairment labels who face a number of overlapping experiences of
exclusion or disablement. The disability studies perspectives are sometimes described
as emancipatory disability studies. This concept is tied to the development of the dis-
abled people’s movement and many of the writers within the field are themselves
disabled activists and ‘organic intellectuals’ in Gramsci’s sense of this term (Oliver,
1990). Crucial to the development of British disability studies has been the ubiquitous
use and reuse of the term the Social Model of Disability which has turned attention away
from a preoccupation with people’s impairments. Instead the focus has been on the
ways in which disability is created through the social, economic, political, cultural,
relational and psychological exclusion of people with impairments (Barnes, 1991;
Oliver, 1990, 1996; UPIAS, 1976).
Although our research practices and theoretical interpretations on impairment and
disability are rooted in a social perspective, we also draw from other theoretical work
to inform our analysis and assist with our reflection. These include Bakhtin’s (1984,
1994, 2005) notion of the carnival; Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) cultural
trajectory and legitimate power; and Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) celebration of
nomadic subjectivity. We build on these ideas when reflecting on the growing body of
narrative research conducted with people with intellectual disabilities.
BEHinD tHE CAnOn Of nArrAtiVE rEsEArCH
One of the pioneers in transforming research about people with intellectual disabilities
was the American scholar Robert E. Edgerton with his study The cloak of competence:
Stigma in the lives of the mentally retarded (1967). Although the study was ground-break-
ing at the time, in recent years attention has been drawn to the lack of authority given
to participants’ voices on the representation of their experiences by others (Gerber,
1990). Bogdan and Taylor’s (1976) work marked a shift in research with people
with intellectual disabilities, which placed emphasis on understanding how ‘people