Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2011, Page 157

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Exceptional waves: Parents of disabled children negotiating 30 years of Icelandic social policy
Pierre Bourdieu, one’s location within the
larger socio-economic order and the abil-
ity to make things happen and influence
outcomes is argued to be contingent upon
access to differing forms of social capital.
However, barely a page is spent discuss-
ing the author’s take on social capital until
Chapter 7, which serves as the conclusion.
The author’s formulation of the notion
of social capital appears to be influenced
more by Robert Putnam than Bourdieu,
but this is not much discussed. The third
‘big idea’ is the attention paid to fathers
who, as the author argues, are often left out
of studies on disability and parenting and
ignored by doctors and service providers,
who focus on the mothers. Yet I find it cu-
rious as to why fathers receive a dedicated
chapter (Chapter 6). A key strength of the
text, in fact, is its careful attention to gen-
der and how the author skilfully compares
and contrasts the voices and views of
mothers and fathers throughout the book.
This brings me to the last and perhaps
most serious point. There seems to have
been limited editorial support for this
book from the publisher. The text would
have benefitted from the involvement of
a stronger editorial team, considering the
range of issues that need to be addressed
from errors of spelling, grammar and
punctuation to the order and organisation
of the text. A brief perusal of some aca-
demic forums and internet postings sug-
gest that the publisher (Nova Science Pub-
lishers) has been criticised for a number of
dubious practices, one of which is the lack
of editorial support for their publications.
A good editor would have also fine tuned
the focus of this book for commercial pur-
poses, as I remain unclear of the intended
market. It does not appear to be intended
to engage with local scholarship or policy
debates, given that it is published in Eng-
lish via an American publisher. Its focus is
also somehow both wide (disability policy,
family, parenting, gender, education, ser-
vices) yet at the same time restrictive (Eng-
lish text, Iceland, 1974–2007). However,
there is a lot of engaging material here. I
have already decided to use the section
‘Stories of abortions’ for my own teaching
purposes. The decision to abort foetuses
upon the detection of impairment is a rare-
ly researched issue, yet the author is able
to present the conflicting and anguished
positions of mothers, fathers and even
doctors on these issues to a degree that I
have not encountered before. This is testa-
ment to the author’s skill as a researcher
and interviewer. That being said, I remain
hesitant if I would put the book in its en-
tirety on a course syllabus. And that is a
shame, as a good deal of the material has
the potential to make an important contri-
bution, but which the attention of a good
editor is needed to make shine.
Social Policy and Social Capital: Parents and
Exceptionality 1974–2007 by Dóra S. Bjarnason
is published by Nova Science Publishers, New
York, 2010.