The Normalization Approach to Disability and Its Deficiencies

• In Event: Disability and Its Challenges to Democratic Inclusion

Abstract

It is important to understand what methods have failed to fully include those with disabilities in such spaces before illustrating how theorists should respond to and include disability and its accompanying perspective in constructing theories of social and political spaces. To this end, I theorize the Normalizing Approach to disability in this paper and do two things. First, I explain what the normalizing approach is, how it results from models of disability often posed as competing, and what normative biases underlie the model. Note that I construct the normalizing approach to describe a social phenomenon; that is, it is a current approach to disability that imbues our social and political structures and not a model in itself. In the context of disability, I argue, normalization functions in two main ways. First, and perhaps most obviously, “normal” bodymind functions and formations are deemed normatively “best.” Variations are thus deemed abnormal, unhealthy, unnatural, lacking, and ultimately to be prevented, rectified, or excluded. “Normalizing” these bodyminds means “making them normal” by identifying their failings (labeling them as such either implicitly or explicitly), and offering “support” that ultimately focuses more on ensuring “normal” functioning on an individual basis rather than true “fit” in a particular environment. Second, normalization functions by valuing a particular kind of “fit” between one’s built and social environment over others. This results in an inflexible structure that reflects the above-mentioned normative evaluations of the bodymind. This structure is then only adjusted on an ad-hoc, by-request basis to allow periodic moments of access to aberrant bodyminds. This approach to disability is informed by elements of both the social and medical models of disability. The normalizing approach “sees” disability arise from social or physical barriers that prevent an individual from participating “normally” in employment, politics, or otherwise social spaces, following the social model. But like the medical model, the normalizing approach focuses on individual-level “cures” — accommodations — to socially imposed barriers that “create” disability. These “cures” are meant to promote and result in assimilation: so long as we can figure out a way to allow someone to participate at a level and in ways as close to normal as possible, we have solved the problem of disability. These accommodations are also medicalized, offered only when medical diagnosis justifies their need.

Second, I expose the consequences of adhering to a normalizing approach in political theory, focusing on the negative impact it has on folks with disabilities and methods of inclusion. These fall broadly under five categories: assimilationism, cost/benefits analyses and indebting the disabled individual, unfair distributions of vulnerability, the conflation of impairment and disability, and an artificially narrowed range of possible social structures. For example, by providing accommodations to “normalize” someone’s abilities and thus turn them into productive members of society, the normalizing approach assimilates those with disability into mainstream society by posing their unique characteristics and (in)abilities as an inherent lack or gap in abilities to be made up for via accommodations. Furthermore, people with disabilities are made to bear more of and contend with their vulnerability more often than those without disabilities. This mis-distribution also reifies the myth that only certain groups of people are vulnerable, where in reality all of us are vulnerable in some way or another.

Throughout this paper, I use current approaches to accommodations for disability as a paradigmatic example of the normalizing approach in modern society, especially modern interpretations of the ADA. This allows me to make clear how the normalizing approach functions to stigmatize those with disabilities. Ultimately, the normalizing approach recommends a particular set of tradeoffs for creating structures of inclusion for those with disabilities that do not meet basic thresholds for equal recognition in political systems. Because disability is viewed as an individual gap in ability created by various factors that prevent “normal” functioning, the normalizing approach limits our theoretical and practical imaginations regarding what is possible in designing social and political space and relations. This narrow understanding of disability renders us unable to see how difference can be built for and thus embraced, even celebrated.

Author

• Giulia Corno, University of California, San Diego