The Bell-Shaped Curve: Alive, Well and Living in Diversity Rhetoric

DePoy, Elizabeth; Gilson, Stephen

doi:10.18848/1447-9532/cgp/v07i03/39389

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Of particular historical importance to understanding contemporary disability theory and practice responses were the abstract creations of Quetelet, who invented the mathematical constructs of the normal or bell-shaped curve and measures of central tendency. These two ideas form the foundation of contemporary empirical knowledge and fabricated the dissection of humanity into the two categories of "normal" and "abnormal" (DePoy & Gilson, 2007a). Applying the bell-shaped curve to human variation, Quetelet extrapolated the concept of "the normal man,"…”

Section: What Came Before Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Observation, therefore, turned to prescription, and anyone with observed phenomena on the tail ends of the curve was categorized as "abnormal." Fields of study and professions (with medicine in the lead) that espoused and reified these positivist approaches to inquiry as truth (such as normal and abnormal psychology, medicine, special education, social work, and so forth) all distinguished between normal and abnormal and claimed the "abnormal" as their epistemic and ontological property as well as their axiological obligation (DePoy & Gilson, 2007a;.…”

Section: What Came Before Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2008

J SW Values and Ethics

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Social work practice and research are too often situated in an unexamined conceptual space whose fundamental assumptions go unquestioned. The values undergirding human rights and accessibility for persons with a disability may seem uncontroversial today-commonplace, if not universal. As is so often the case, however, easy virtue founders on the particulars-the ramp by the loading dock, the assistive learning technology in the wrong language, the reliably late paratransit bus. Accommodations are seemingly estranged from the principles upon which they are based. The three very disparate articles in this special issue share a common purpose-to reconcile the contradictions between our espoused and operant values toward the citizenship of persons with a disability in North American society. In broad terms, the articles collectively raise our sights and serve as a call to consciousness, supported by elegant reasoning, compelling arguments, and poignant examples. This special issue was a project of CSWE's Council on Disabilities and draws upon some of the latest thinking about values and ethics in social work practice and research.Tasking our basic assumptions about parental genetic screening and the role of social workers as genetic counselors in health care settings is the focus of Ajandi's article. Drawing upon the research literature, social work placement field notes, and archival data from a communitybased agency in Ontario, she triangulates on the lag between public debates on prenatal genetic screening and advanced diagnostic tools that raise a slew of unanswered ethical and rights issues in their wake.Explanatory legitimacy theory is the basis for the analytical framework advanced by DePoy and Gilson, situating disability in the context of human variation, in a space of unqualified personhood, or better still, humanity, freed from the captivity of normality-other nomenclature and thought, as in "persons" qualified by "disability." The authors provide an historic perspective on the philosophical and intellectual foundations of explanatory legitimacy theory as a pluralist and pro-human rights alternative to essentialist and deficit-focused lens for understanding the full spectrum of human variation.The ethical dilemma presented by having recourse to self-defeating labels to the selfdetermination of persons with a disability is the focus of Hill and Lightfoot's article, the

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Section: What Came Before Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Came Before Usmentioning

confidence: 99%