Purpose: EU policy documents and health scholars point out that in order to understand the complexity of modern health systems, as well as to devise appropriate policy responses, considering micro, meso and macro levels is indispensable. This article aims to develop an analytical framework for how rehabilitation as an interdisciplinary field can be framed in such a three level framework. Methods: This is a conceptual paper based on recent contributions to the development of a theory of rehabilitation. The paper applies sociological theory to build an analytical framework for a holistic understanding of rehabilitation. Results: Three groups of agents in the field of rehabilitation are identified: individuals with disabilities, professionals, and governmental authorities. The paper systematizes how these agents are positioned and act at micro, meso and macro levels. In the intersection between the three levels of society and the three groups of actors, a nine-cell table emerges. In the cells of the
Recent research has highlighted how parental narratives can be important in the resistance against disabling processes. This article contains analyses of enabling language in narratives published by Scandinavian disability rights organizations. First, drawing on the work of Fisher and Goodley, I point out that the material constitute a threefold: normality narratives, resistance narratives, and narratives that demonstrate an appreciation of the present and the child's individual alterity. Second, I demonstrate that the last narrative draws on Romanticism rather than linguistic resources from disability culture. Third, I show that these narratives are hyperboles -texts that strengthen and emphasise the valuation to the point where the narrative structure transcends narrative consistency. Fourth, drawing on the work of Kristeva, I argue that this form of narration constitutes an intimate politics of love.
The increasing focus on disability rights---as found, for instance, in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)---challenges philosophical imaginaries. This article broadens the philosophical imaginary of freedom by exploring the relation of dependence, independence, and interdependence in the lives of people with disabilities. It argues (1) that traditional concepts of freedom are rather insensitive to difference within humanity, and (2) that the lives of people with severe disabilities challenge philosophers to argue and conceptualize freedom not only as independence and interdependence but also as dependence. After tracing this need through a Hegelian understanding, via Julia Kristevas work on disability, and finally the CRPD, it concludes that a unified solution might not be possible. Hence, it argues that disability issues necessitate philosophical modesty.
When discussing present issues, vulnerable groups often compare such issues to historical atrocities, thereby injecting histories of vulnerability and oppression into contemporary debate. In 2006, the Norwegian health authorities introduced a program for registration of information about the level of functioning and the care needs of care receivers in the municipal service system, where mostly disabled people and elderly people were registered. The project triggered strong protests. The central charges were that such registration was humiliating, violated the subject's integrity, and reduced human beings to their biological (dys)functions. At one point, the protesters related the registration program to the story of the Holocaust, evoking the historical fact that registration of deviation was fundamental to the ''euthanasia'' killings in Nazi Germany. Numerous scholarly works discuss the legitimacy of such comparisons, but none discusses how the agents in debates think about their own use of such comparisons. In this article, we describe how the disability activists and health professionals who participated in the controversy understood, framed, and legitimated the rhetorical use of the Holocaust. Referring to Bauman's normality perspective, we try to understand the logic behind the evoking of the Holocaust in debates on the situation of vulnerable groups in general. This case serves for discussion on the communication strategies (and possibilities) of minority movements within their historical and cultural legacy.
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