Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2011, Page 156

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James G. Rice
visions were made not as the result of the
wisdom of policy makers, but due to the
hard work and determination of parents
and the emergent parent organisations.
The “Pioneers“ (whose children were born
1984–1990) benefited from some of the
gains made by their predecessors, though
services remained mired in older ways of
thinking. The author builds the case that
the parents of children born between 1991
and 2000 (the ‘Settlers’) experienced a shift
in the issues from being viewed as a pri-
vate and individualised matter between
parents, doctors and educators to that of
a wider policy concern debated at a more
prominent level of public discourse and
media visibility. Subsequently, the ‘Citi-
zens’ (children born 2001–2007) have come
to perceive services and supports as rights
and entitlements as their due as citizens of
a modern welfare state and the discourse
has now become framed in the language
of human rights predicated upon interna-
tional agreements. The narratives that the
author incorporates into the text vividly
bring home the effects of policy shifts on
a human level that are often lacking in
policy studies. However, the choices of the
specific temporal brackets used to denote
these families (e.g. 1984–1990) are debat-
able. There were significant pieces of leg-
islation issued in 1979, 1992 and 2008 that
are relevant here and which could also
serve to mark such boundaries. I could
well imagine a scholar of policy or social
history demanding to know more about
the analytical choices underlying this
framework.
The book is also organised around what
the author calls three ‘big ideas.’ The first
is adapted from the sociologist Peter Berg-
er in order to argue that disability moved
from a “private problem“ to a matter of
public policy concern. In my interpretation
of the text, the material actually illustrates
that issues of disability were never a solely
‘private’ matter located within the home,
as doctors, practitioners and state officials
seemed to be intimately involved with all
stages of the life process and in governing
the lives and bodies of disabled children.
However, toward the end of the book I
found that I warmed to this framework as
it related rather well to the ways in which
policy and services are conceptualised and
practiced. Older parents tended to defer to
the knowledge and authority of special-
ists, whereas younger parents, through
their lobbying and organisations, forced
policy debates into the media and a high-
er level of social visibility. In that sense, I
agree that issues of disability became more
‘public’ in contrast to the earlier and less
visible struggles between parents and the
medico-governmental authorities. I was
initially concerned that the ‘explorer-pi-
oneer-settler’ framework would suggest
a linear evolution of policymaking and a
simplistic story of ‘progress.’ But the au-
thor deftly illustrates that this is not so,
and for every gain made there are forces
at work which suggest that there is always
an ongoing struggle against retrenchment
and set-backs.
The second ‘big idea’ is the use of so-
cial capital with which to explore the dif-
fering outcomes of variously situated par-
ents. Often associated with the work of