Learning disability and the limits of liberal citizenship: interactional impediments to political empowerment

Abstract

Recent policy initiatives have moved decisively toward empowering learning disabled citizens, recognising ability over disability, and promoting people's political empowerment and voice in the design of public services. While laudable and encouraging, these initiatives raise an important question: to what extent can a group of service users, whose very entitlement to state-sponsored assistance is justified by putative intellectual impairment, be empowered according to an exclusively liberal model of citizenship that presumes and requires, as its very defining features, intellectual ability and independence? In this paper we consider this question by means of an ethnographic analysis of an innovative advocacy group: the Parliament for People with Learning Disabilities (PPLD). We first document both an institutional and an interactional preference for clients to speak actively for themselves. We then describe three types of interactional trouble that emerged in the PPLD as obstacles to realising this preference in practice and the strikingly similar remedies that were generated to overcome these troubles. We conclude by discussing the limits of an approach to empowering learning disabled individuals that is cast too exclusively in terms drawn from liberal models of citizenship that prioritise voice over care, security, and wellbeing.

Review of Interventions to Enhance the Health Communication of People With Intellectual Disabilities: A Communicative Health Literacy Perspective

“…() call ‘health rights violations’ can be a real challenge for all patients, especially when in poor health (Enthwistle et al ., ). When they do ‘have the floor’, people with intellectual disabilities may find that that their contribution is overlooked or steered in the direction of institutional concerns, rather than personal preferences (Redley & Weinberg ).…”

“I Am Human Too!” ‘Probeerruimte’ as Liminal Spaces in Search of Recognition

“…For many within disability studies, particularly intellectual disability studies, contestation about the state of being human is related to human rights and specifically citizenship (Cockburn, 2007;Curtice, 2010;Frawley & Bigby, 2011;Jinnah, 2006;Meininger, 2013;Mertens, Sullivan, & Stace, 2006, cited in Laliberte Rudman, 2014Redley & Weinberg, 2007;Siebers, 2007;Taylor, 2013). Inherent to this line of thought is the idea that being 'awarded' citizenship status is one of the ultimate confirmations of being considered human.…”

Participatory and Inclusive Approaches to Disability Program Evaluation

“…It is well recognised that inclusive approaches are often limited to people who are skilled, resourced, and supported (Boxall, 2010;Redley & Weinberg, 2007). At the same time, some people will not contribute to evaluation-either through preference, social circumstance, or through capacity.…”