UQ Disability Collaboratory: Beyond the Barrier: Reassessing the Social Model of Disability

How might disability research better account for the materiality and diversity of disabled lives? How might ideas of community, interdependence, creativity and care reshape theoretical and political priorities?

These questions will be negotiated in this interdisciplinary and collaborative 2-hour workshop, organised by the UQ Disability Collaboratory, where we explore the limitations of the ‘social model’ of disability. This influential model, popularised in the 1980s and 90s, was a reaction against the ‘medical’ or ‘individual model’ of disability which saw disability as a detrimental variation from a ‘medically healthy’ body. However, despite its popularity with policy makers, the social model has also faced sustained criticism since its inception, because of its blindness to the embodied experience and the real physical pain endured by many disabled people, alongside relationships that emerge around them, and there have been many calls for models that allow space for more experiential and collaborative perspectives.

What possibilities emerge when disability is understood not only in terms of the barriers disabled people encounter, but through the contributions, relationships and forms of knowledge disabled people make possible? Although the true spectrum and range of relational and shared experiences of disability are infamously difficult to define, we must not abandon attempts to reconceptualise the current models of disability to be more inclusive, especially at a time in Australia when we are facing an increasingly unstable landscape of disability policy and support. However, such an attempt would require an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, informed by the experience of disabled people and communities from its inception.

We welcome researchers, clinicians, teachers, students and community members from all disciplinary backgrounds with interest in disability inclusion and innovation and/or experience of disability to join us as we explore the advantages old models have provided, and the possibilities a new framework may offer.

In this workshop, which will be the first theoretical session in a Series of Disability Collaboratory Workshops on Disability Theory and Practice, we will start with a roundtable discussion, followed by general conversation based on short pre-circulated readings (see list below). Our confirmed speakers are:

Mikel Van Dyken (HASS, Philosophy)

Dr Karin Sellberg (HASS, Medical Humanities)

Dr Michelle King (HMBS/BEL, Sociology/Law)

Associate Professor Merrill Turpin (HMBS, Health Sciences)

In-Person or Online Participation will be available, and if you email us we will do our best to accommodate your accessibility requirements. Afternoon Tea will also be offered to all in-person participants.

Organising Team: Dr Karin Sellberg, Mikel Van Dyken, Dr Michelle King, Associate Professor Merrill Turpin, Alejandro Aparicio-Gomez & Olivia Mullins

Short Theoretical Texts Pre-Circulated to Participants (with short summaries in case you don't have time to read them!)

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Critical Disability Studies: A Knowledge Manifesto.” (7pp). In Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies, ed. K. Ellis, R. Garland-Thomson, M. Kent & R. Robertson, 11-19. Routledge, 2018.

Brief Summary: In this 7-page article, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson gives a short overview of the emergence, evolution, and aims of critical disability studies. She then outlines the books she considers to be canonical in US humanities focused disability studies before calling on theorists and practitioners to embrace a sense of wonder.

Shakespeare, Tom. “The Social Model of Disability.” (8pp). In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. L.J. Davis, 197-204. Routledge, 2006.

Brief Summary:In this 8-page essay, Tom Shakespeare outlines how the social model of disability differs from the over-medicalised models that preceded it. He highlights some political strengths of the social model, including its ability to unite disabled people for political action, before examining some of its weaknesses, such as how the social model neglects impairment as part of many disabled people’s lived experiences. Finally, Shakespeare calls for more sophisticated and complex ways of theorising disability.

Oliver, Michael. “The Social Model of Disability: Thirty Years On.” (3pp). Disability & Society, vol. 28, no. 7 (2013): 1024–1026.

Brief Summary: In this 3-page article, Michael Oliver reflects on the social model’s origins, political achievements, and limitations. He argues that academic preoccupation with the model’s theoretical limitations has obscured its original purpose as a practical tool for dismantling disabling social barriers, undermining its political effectiveness amid austerity and cuts to disability services.