Social models of disability and other life
strategies

By Tom Shakespeare

Abstract: The UK social model of disability (SSM) originated within a political context,
which is both a strength and a weakness. Good social research has been conducted
prior to, and outside, the confines of the SSM. The SSM is above all a brilliant tool for
mobilising change. But it can be applied over-zealously. Since the 1990s, various
critiques of the SSM have been developed, exposing contradictions and inadequacies.
Equally, some of the parallels between disability and other social movements may
need to be tested. Identity politics and psychology explain some of the fervour of
SSM debates. To move forward, a social theory of embodiment is required.

Introduction

Having spent nearly fifteen years
arguing about the British social model,
it was a curious pleasure to arrive at the
2002 NNDR conference in Reykjavik
to continue the conversation with a new
group of colleagues. It was chastening
to realise that there had been a parallel
debate in the Nordic countries dating
back to the 1970s, and interesting to
hear similar criticisms and new insights
from across the North Sea. It is
arguable that the differences between
different British theorists are larger than
the difference between British disability
theory, on the one foot, and Nordic
disability theory, on the other. While
this paper follows the same broad

structure as my remarks at the
roundtable, it has benefited from the
discussions from the Iceland
conference, and I am grateful for both
the insights and the welcome which
were offered by our Nordic colleagues.

Part of the problem for scholars trying
to understand and develop the
theorisation of disability in any country
is the entangling of the academic and
the political. It could be suggested that
close connections between policy,
practice and activism are both the
strength and the weakness of the British
model of disability, perhaps also the
Nordic: much of what follows is aimed
at substantiating this claim. Much of
the analysis here is necessarily tentative
and hypothetical: a contribution to a
debate, rather than a final word.

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Social models of disability and other life strategies

The British social model, henceforth
called the strong social model (SSM),
originated within a particular stratum of
the UK disability movement in the 1970s.
In the document Fundamental Principles
of Disability (1976), UPIAS (Union of
Physically Impaired Against Segregation)
defined disability not as an impairment or
deficit of body or brain, but as a
relationship between people with
impairment and a discriminatory society.
The influence of Marxist thought and
labour movement traditions is clear in the
work of UPIAS and the theorists who
grew from its ranks (Finkelstein, 1980;
Oliver, 1990). In Capital, Karl Marx
defined capital and labour not as things
but as relationships. Similarly, the key
publications which developed the SSM -
Attitudes and Disabled People (1980) by
Vic Finkelstein and The Politics of
Disablement (1990) by Mike Oliver -
both developed the definition of disability
as a relationship between people with
impairment and a disabling society. The
SSM provided the ideological foundation
for the British disability movement which
burgeoned through direct action and local
community development throughout the
1980s and 1990s (Campbell and Oliver,
1996). After the formation of Disabled
People's International in 1981,
Finkelstein argued for the SSM on the
global stage. From the start, the SSM
was both a political and a theoretical tool.
The tensions between the needs of a
political movement and the requirements
of an academic theory became clear in the
mid-1990s, and continue to drive the
disability debate today.

Being only ten years old at the time of the
UPIAS formulation, I came late to these
debates. Similar to many disabled
activists and academics, I started trying to
apply social theory to my own personal
and political experiences before
discovering the existence of the social
model. In 1989, I wrote a Masters in
Philosophy dissertation about disability
without any awareness of the SSM. I
had already embarked on a PhD thesis
exploring concepts of disability when
Mike Oliver's seminal account of
disability was published in 1990. The
experience of exploring the social
scientific literature on disability and the
various definitions used in research led
me to three conclusions.

First, the invention of the SSM was not
quite the watershed in disability research
that many accounts suggest. Looking at
the work of non-disabled researchers
prior to Oliver and Finkelstein shows that
many were coming to similar conclusions
during the 1980s and 1990s. For
example, David Locker (1983), Mildred
Blaxter (1976) and others were beginning
to argue that the social consequences and
social context of impairment were as
much or more of a problem than the
impairment itself:

"The immediate context is handicapping
where it presents barriers which must be
negotiated, consuming reserves of time,
money and energy in the process, or
where the effort is such that the person
decides not to bother and retreats into an
enforced passivity. It is also

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Tom Shakespeare

handicapping to the extent that it leaves
the individual with no option but to rely
on the help of others." (Locker, 1983: 90)

Substituting 'disabling' for
'handicapping' in this quotation produces
a fairly good fit with social model
perspectives. This literature cannot be
said to be based on the SSM, but
accounts often come pretty close to it. It
could be argued that the major distinction
is not adherence to the SSM, but the fact
that these authors were non-disabled
social scientists, rather than socially
engaged disabled activists.

Second, it is quite possible to have a
disability rights perspective without a
strong social model approach. My own
early work on disability in 1989 and 1990
used the term 'people with disabilities'
and referred to the social and cultural
dimensions of disablement, without
redefining disability as the social and
cultural dimensions of disablement.
Other UK groups contemporary with
UPIAS, such as the Liberation Network
of People with Disabilities, developed
understandings of disability oppression
which did not depend on the SSM
formulation. North American minority
group approaches, the Nordic relational
approach, and other international
perspectives have produced important
analysis and research without the strong
social model.

Third, the strong social model is not the
only social model in town. In fact, there
are all sorts of 'social models', as David

Pfeiffer (2001) has suggested. As other
contributors to this journal argue, the
Nordic relational model is not an
alternative to the social model, but
another type of social model. By
analogy, America was discovered over
and over again: by Asiatic nomads, by
Irish monks, by Leif Eriksen, by
Christopher Columbus and by Amerigo
Vespucci. Each had a valid claim to be
the first and each took a different route to
the prize. If a concept (or continent) is
important enough, then many people are
bound to reach it, eventually.

Ideologies are useful because they bolster
movements and inspire change agents.
For example, normalisation/SRV
provided the ideological backbone for
anti-institutionalisation, and for the
campaigning mission of families and
professionals working for the inclusion of
people with intellectual difficulties in the
mainstream. In a similar way, the SSM
provided the ideological backbone for
UK disability movement (Hasler, 1993).
In comparing the Nordic relational model
to these other approaches, perhaps the
Nordic perspective suffers in comparison.
When it came to policy, or to research,
the relational approach was not
operationalised: it is claimed that in
practice there was a 'decoupling' from
the relational understanding.

This perhaps provides a clue to some of
the international perceptions and tensions
in the disability debate. First, theories
need to be robust enough to make a
difference. Certainly, both the SSM and

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Social Role Valorisation (SRV) are
robust. Critics have claimed that SRV
and its practitioners can come across
like an evangelical cult. In the UK,
some have experienced the SSM
operating like an ultra-left ideology.
Perhaps the Nordic model never had
this dubious quality of inspiring
fervour. For example, Oliver has
dismissed competing approaches as
"intellectual masturbation" (Oliver,
1992), and others from the materialist
wing of the disability studies
community have frequently been just as
robust in their defence of SSM
orthodoxy. Second, a vital issue of
disability politics is whether the
leadership of the movement, and of
research, is in the hands of disabled
people themselves, or of non-disabled
allies and professionals. The
importance of the SSM was that it was
a disabled-led initiative, in contrast to
the largely non-disabled professionals,
academics and charities who had
hitherto dominated the disability field.
The UK disability movement has been
characterised by an intense suspicion of
the motives of non-disabled people who
want to work in the field of disability.
This derives from past experiences of
being patronised, spoken for, and taken
over.

Uses of the Social Model

It is not controversial to note the
robustness of the strong social model.
Frances Hasler (1993) talks about it as the

'big idea' of the disability movement, and
it had an extraordinary political impact.
This is partly because it was simple and
direct and effective. Political tools have
to be understandable, memorable and
relevant. But the SSM was also very
good for consciousness-raising. By
redefining the disability problem, it
enabled people who had felt in-valid,
incompetent and dependent to relocate
the problem of disability from themselves
to the discriminatory society in which
they lived. Rather than feeling shame,
self-pity and frustration, people with
impairments could legitimately feel
anger, resentment and solidarity with
others. As a result, it was adopted
fervently by self-organised groups of
disabled people across the UK.

But the most important reason for the
impact of the SSM was the instrumental
value of a barriers analysis. Mike Oliver
presented a paper at a University of Leeds
ESRC disability seminar entitled 'If I had
a hammer' (Oliver, 2003), in which he
argued that the social model should be
regarded as a tool, an effective tool for
remedying the injustices faced by
disabled people, and relocating the efforts
of service providers from individual
solutions to the removal of barriers to
participation in the mainstream.

A social model analysis shows the key
priorities for action: barrier removal;
citizenship rights; anti-discrimination
legislation. The SSM mandates structural
change in society, rather than medical or
psychological correction of individuals.

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Tom Shakespeare

As well as being robust, the SSM was a
tool wielded by a self-organised
movement of disabled people, who were
fed up of being ground down, and who
had begun to celebrate resistance and talk
of disability pride. This suggests an
implicit tension within the UK disability
movement. On the one foot, a
commitment to barrier removal and social
model analysis, and on the other foot, a
more conventional minority group
politics, based on a strong disability
identity, and arguing for a better deal for
the disabled constituency: higher benefits,
more provision, a louder voice. These
two strands have always co-existed, and
may often blur into one, but are subtly
different in their emphasis and
implications. A similar tension can occur
in disability studies: is it about studying
disabling barriers, or studying the
experiences of disabled people? Some
argue that the latter takes research back to
the bad old days of top-down and
unaccountable social science. But of
course, the effect of disabling barriers is
the restricted life chances of disabled
people. In order to document exclusion,
hearing the voices and demonstrating the
impoverishment of people with
impairment is vital. Structures impact on
the lives of agents, as both Karl Marx and
Anthony Giddens would remind us.

Despite clear limitations, some of
which are outlined below, the SSM
rapidly became disability orthodoxy in
the UK. It has been the litmus test of
disability correctness. Organisations
and individuals are judged on whether

they use the correct social model term
'disabled people' or the outdated
medical model term 'people with
disabilities'. An entire government
public information campaign ('See the
Person, Not the Disability') was
boycotted by the disabled people's
movement because it implicitly defined
disability as impairment, not as the
barriers placed on people with
impairment. Even a vigorous defender
of the SSM such as Mike Oliver has
conceded that over-zealous disability
equality trainers may have gone too far
in applying a crude and deterministic
version of the social model. The SSM
has ostensibly supplanted the traditional
models of disability within many areas
of health, social care and research. But
many professionals and agencies
profess allegiance to the SSM while
continuing with business as usual,
while others have been frustrated and
confused by the implications of such a
starkly environmental rendering of the
disability problem: captured in Marten
Soder's memorable phrase "contextual
essentialism" from the 2002 NNDR
conference.

Critiques of the Social Model

Proponents of the social model have
always accepted that it is not a social
theory of disability. But even as a basic
definition, it began to be criticised
during the early 1990s. Simple and
direct also meant simplistic and
possibly misleading.

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Feminist disability scholars such as Jenny
Morris (1991), Liz Crow (1996) and
Sally French (1993) argued that the SSM
excluded many dimensions of personal
experience, particularly issues relating
to impairment and identity. I have
argued that the strong social model fails
to correspond to the everyday
experience of disabled people, many of
whom experience physical and mental
difficulties, as well as social barriers
and exclusion. It would be wrong to
claim that the SSM is sexist or gender
blind: however, it undoubtedly
recapitulates the public/private split
which feminists have criticised. The
application of the SSM has often failed
to deal with the ways in which the
'personal is political'.

SSM proponents rejoinder that there is
nothing to stop anyone developing a
social theory of impairment, that the
SSM was never intended to explain
everything about disability, that it is a
heuristic not a formal definition, and so
forth. While this may be true, it could
be suggested that the SSM is a victim
of its own robust coherence, and that it
does not leave much space for a
consideration of personal issues.

In a political/psychological sense, the
SSM became ideologically dominant
precisely because it moved away from
the individual and the personal and the
psychological and the bodily: activists
wanted to disown the tragedy theory
and the victim-blaming explanations,
and any feeling that they were flawed

or frail. How could the SSM then
expand to include what had been
disavowed?

As the movement matured and wider
issues were added to the agenda, such as
impairment, sexuality, and genetics, the
social model has not proved adequate to
analysis in these areas. Back to Mike
Oliver's talk (2003), we can think of the
old saying: 'if you give someone a
hammer, all they see is nails'. The social
model is a wonderful tool for identifying
social barriers and mobilising many
downtrodden people, but perhaps the
wrong tool for the other tasks which a
progressive disability politics requires.

Nor is the SSM able to motivate or
mobilise all disabled people (Shakespeare
& Watson, 2002). The disability
movement has been dominated by people
with physical and sensory impairments.
There have been difficulties in including
other groups in the disability community,
for example people with mental health
issues, people with intellectual
difficulties, Deaf people, and people with
AIDS/HIV. While important social
model analyses have been developed in
these areas, it could be suggested that
sometimes the social constructionist/
relativist approach has gone too far. For
example, in contradistinction to Szasz,
Laing, Cooper, Goodley and others, the
bulk of medical evidence suggests that
many people labelled with mental illness,
or learning difficulties, or dementia, have
an underlying cognitive or psychological
dysfunction. They are undoubtedly

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Tom Shakespeare

further disabled by society, but there are
also organic pathologies in brain anatomy
or physiology which cannot be wished
away by a social modellist redefinition.
Equally, many people with HIV/AIDS
have become treatment activists,
lobbying for more and better medical
research and development, and other
disabled people have major personal
investments in medical research. None
of this is to say that a disability
coalition cannot and should not be built
including all these diverse experiences,
only that the 1976 version of the social
model is not adequate to capture the
complexities of every impairment and
the social relationships and identities
which arise from it.

As well as differences between
impairment groups, the relationship
between impairment and disability is
also very complex. Marx predicted that
the proletariat would inevitably become
radicalised, as capitalism developed and
society became polarised into two
classes, and it was the (Hegelian)
destiny of the working class to
overthrow the bourgeoisie. History
shows the errors and omissions in this
analysis, as social democracy and right-
voting workers and the rise of the
middle class complicated the original
model of identity formation. The
implication of early disability activism,
that people with impairments were
oppressed and their salvation came with
collective identification and
mobilisation, has also proved over-
optimistic. Only a tiny proportion of

people with impairments have ever
signed up to the radical campaign, and
many have actively disowned it.

Aside from this problem of politics, there
are theoretical difficulties with the model.
For example, are all people with
impairment disabled? What if an
individual does not experience
disablement, because their impairment is
hidden, or they experience no barriers?
What if, because of other dimensions of
their experience, for example their
wealth, they do not need to rely on public
transport, public housing or welfare
benefits? If they are not oppressed, are
they then still disabled? Disability does
not have the same salience for everyone
with impairment. If used too crudely, the
SSM risks ignoring other dimensions of
people's experience, such as class, race,
gender and sexuality.

The implication of the strong social
model is that there is the possibility of a
world without disablement. Society
could be constructed without barriers, and
people could be equal, despite their
impairments (cf. Finkelstein, 1981).
Disregarding the difficulties of reaching
Utopia, could such a situation actually
exist? Could people ever not be disabled
by society? One important response to
this question has been formulated by Paul
Abberley (1998). He points out that
several dominant versions of the
progressive project rely on removing
barriers to disabled people's workforce
participation. While many people with
impairments who do not currently work

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may, in a better world, be able to be
productive, this cannot be a possibility for
everyone. Therefore, Abberley argues
that achieving Utopia also means
challenging the role of paid work in our
society, and creating alternative ways of
valuing and rewarding people. A sceptic
might say that this sounds even more
difficult than the construction of a barrier-
free society.

Turning to the enviromnental question,
operationalising the SSM approach
raises difficulties. It is undeniable that
an environment or communication
method can enable or disable an
individual. The problem is that
environments are built for entire
societies, and often it is the case that
removing barriers for some means
imposing them for others. Steps may
be better than ramps for some people.
Pavement kerb cuts for wheelchair
users may be dangerous for blind
people. Typefaces which work for
partially sighted may not work for
people with dyslexia. Is the concept of
barrier removal always better than the
concept of special provision? Context
is important. But different people have
different requirements, bringing us back
to the individual's impairments, and
their own way of dealing with these,
and their individual interaction with the
landscape. These are the simple cases.
What would barrier removal mean for
people with intellectual difficulties,
particularly social impairments such as
autism (Singer, 1999), and to what
extent is such a Utopia possible?

Elsewhere, Carol Thomas seeks to go
beyond the social impasse, by replacing
the 'barriers' version of the social
model with a 'relational' interpretation
which distinguishes between
impairment and disability, the latter of
which she argues should be defined as
social oppression. This ingenious way
of resolving the problem is not however
an effective solution, in my view. It
ignores the dominance of the barriers
interpretation of the social model, both
to the original framers and most
subsequent applications of the strong
social model. And by linking disability
definitionally with social oppression, it
begs the question which research is
designed to test, as well as implicitly
ignoring the fact that disabled people
are oppressed to different extents and in
different ways.

This is a brief summary of some of the
more obvious critiques of the strong
social model: each has been debated at
length, and there may be ways of
resolving some of these problems. But
the conclusion which I reach is that the
SSM is too universalising and too
simplistic to serve as a model for the
way in which disability works. The
strong social model may well be
practically and politically effective, but
social theories of disability need a
toolbox, not a single tool. As argued
elsewhere (Shakespeare & Watson,
2001), the problems of the social model
paradigm have accumulated to the
extent that it is unworkable. We need a
new paradigm.

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Tom Shakespeare

The social model and its parallels

Implicit in this paper is the validity and
value of certain parallels between social
phenomena and social movements.
Perhaps the time has come to question
some of these assumptions.

A parallel has already been drawn
between Marx's formulations of capital
and class and the social model. Early
theorists of disability drew, implicitly or
explicitly, on the Marxist tradition. It
might be noted that after Marx came a
century of refinement, elaboration and
development of Marxism, which was
partly a reaction to the failures,
inadequacies and lacunae of the original
conception.

Another parallel which has important to
my own work and that of others in
disability studies has been with feminist
theory. In thinking and talking about
the social model of disability, I have
often suggested that the
impairment/disability relationship is
analogous to the sex/gender relationship
as conceived in the early 1970s
(Oakley, 1972). Sex (male/female
distinction) is biological and bodily and
fixed, while gender (men/women,
masculine/feminine) is a social
relationship, which is historical and
dynamic.

If this is a valid parallel, it points up a
problem with the social model. Gender
was defined in early feminist theory as
the socio-cultural dimension, which in

practical terms has often meant
women's experience of the oppression.
But oppression is not implied by the
sex/gender distinction, which is neutral
as to the socio-cultural experience of
being masculine/feminine. But
disability, in the social model, is
defined as the experience of
oppression, not just the socio-cultural
implications of impairment. People are
disabled by society, which is always
implicitly negative. In other words,
what will disability mean in a barrier-
free society? Will there only be people
with impairment, not disabled people?

This gives a clue as to the second
problem when thinking about this
parallel. The simple sex/gender
distinction of early second wave
feminism has been largely demolished
during the 1980s and 1990s, because of
the reliance on a dualistic separation of
the biological and the social. That is,
many theorists pointed out that sex is
always already social. Judith Butler,
for example, claims that sex is always
perceived through the lens of gender
(1990). What we take to be simple
sexual difference - male or female - is
always a product of our ways of
thinking about gender.

Without generating unnecessary levels
of complication, the simple point is that
impairment is never just biological, but
that impairment is created, defined and
understood in social contexts. The
danger of a strong social model
formulation is that it accepts the

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medical model of impairment, and fails
to include the social and cultural
dimensions of embodiment.

Impairment and disability are on a
continuum, as are sex and gender. We
cannot think in terms of dichotomies.
Impairment and disability are not
distinct social phenomena. In practice,
it is difficult to know where impairment
stops and disability starts, as anybody
who has done qualitative research with
disabled people rapidly realises: it is not
a case of either/or but of both/and.
Perhaps at this point, we might be
reaching for the old concept of the
dialectic.

A final point about parallels: the critic
and lens-artist David Hevey once asked
me: are we making a big mistake to see
disability as parallel to gender,
sexuality and 'race'? In each of the
other cases, people can celebrate their
difference. Sisterhood, Gay Pride,
Black is Beautiful have all been slogans
of other social movements. While it is
possible to celebrate the solidarity, the
resistance and the strength and
creativity of disabled communities and
individuals, this is not usually about a
celebration of impairment itself. Hevey
suggested that perhaps impairment/
disability is a phenomenon which is
more like poverty. Outside religious
asceticism, people do not celebrate
poverty as a state or status. Few would
voluntarily choose to be poor. Most
people who are poor want to stop being
poor.

Who wants to be disabled?

Implicit in this paper is my belief that the
strong social model of disability has to be
approached and understood not just as a
matter of theory, logic or rationality, but
as a psychological/political moment in
the lives of people with impairments or
people who identify themselves as
disabled. Achieving self-respect, self-
esteem and self-confidence is central to
any individual's life project. Axel
Honneth has demonstrated how the denial
of these feelings through social exclusion
and devaluing lies at the heart of many
social conflicts (1996).

In the case of impairment/disability, the
possibility for achieving positive personal
identity is undermined, both by the social
exclusion and devaluing in disabling
societies, but also through the intrinsic
experience of incapacity, vulnerability
and dependency.

Researchers have begun to explore the
psycho-emotional aspects of disablement:
the ways in which the disabling society
takes its toll on the individual psyche (cf.
Reeve, 2003). But simply having an
impairment, regardless of the social
reaction or social context, can be
psychologically damaging for many
people. Creating and sustaining a strong
sense of self is difficult for anyone, but
particularly for one who has been born, or
who becomes, impaired.

In this context, the strong social model
plays an important psychological role for

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Tom Shakespeare

many disabled people. It is a powerful
way of denying both the relevance and
the negativity of impairment.
Individuals can say that their problem is
not their deficit of body or mind, but the
society in which they live. By combining
with others who share this belief, their
own self-image is reinforced, and they
can achieve solidarity and self-respect.
Within the movement, some go further
than the social model, and make the
relativist claim that there is no intrinsic
problem with impairment: that it is just a
different way of being, if only society
would accept it and remove the barriers.

When it comes to impairment, I am not a
relativist. I believe that most
impairments of body or brain are real,
and that many of them are pathological. I
do not accept the negative valuation of
impairment and illness in much of the
medical literature, the so-called 'medical
tragedy' model. I do not think that
impairment makes a life not worth living.
I do not believe impairment is necessarily
a worse problem than other social
obstacles. I do not even believe that
impairment is more of a problem for
people than the disabling society in which
they live. But I do believe impairment
prevention is desirable, and I can quite
understand why people would rather not
become impaired, and why many will
actively seek a cure.

The psychological/political value of the
strong social model to individuals and to
groups seems clear. It has led to the
formation of a powerful disabled political

identity. Strong social identities are
attractive to many people. It is part of the
human condition sometimes to feel lost or
groundless or lonely. If people have
oppression to fight against, they can feel
strong, self-righteous, and significant. If
people can fight oppression in a group,
then they no longer feel alone or
powerless or irrelevant. The disability
movement therefore attracts many
individuals, with or without impairments,
who are looking for a cause to identify
with and who need to bolster their sense
of self. All social movements are the
same, and many religions operate in
similar ways.

If this claim about the psychology of
politics is correct, it perhaps explains the
vigour, verging sometimes on brutality,
of political debates around the SSM. The
British disability movement has found it
very difficult to respond to criticisms or
developments of the social model. Many
activists have refused to countenance
moving beyond the formulation of 1976,
or doing different sorts of research, or
asking different questions.

Identity politics, as Foucault has argued,
can become a kind of prison.

Conclusion

This paper has no firm conclusions.
The debate about models of disability
will run on and on. It is a debate which
raises two of the biggest questions for
social science as a whole: the relation

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of the individual to the structural, and
of the biological to the social. Despite
the claims of theorists such as Anthony
Giddens, it does not seem that the circle
has yet been squared. Perhaps we
shouldn't feel too badly that we haven't
managed it either.

But I can make some tentative
suggestions for ways forward. The
disability community needs to make
safe spaces to explore the psycho-
emotional dimensions of both
impairment and disability.
Recognising the experience of hurt and
of oppression is important for people to
be able to operate effectively, and to
enable disability politics to become less
acrimonious and divisive.
Understanding the investment
individuals make in social model theory
and the need to offer alternative ways
of identifying and healing is part of the
way forward for academic analysis.

Carol Thomas asks whether the
relational can be rescued in the social
model? I am not so sure. Clearly the
work that Carol and Donna Reeve have
done on the inclusion of psycho-
emotional dimensions of disablement is
vital. But including psycho-emotional
issues shows the fundamental problems
of the unsustainable dichotomy at the
heart of the strong social model. If
individuals are experiencing distress,
can this be put down to the effects of
impairment, the effects of disablement
(whether defined as barriers or
oppression) or both? What sense would

it make to distinguish these different
factors in the complexity of an
individual psyche?

We need to move beyond the polarity of
medical and social models. Disabled
people do need medical interventions,
and do often suffer bodily deficits. But
none of us want to be defined by our
medical conditions, and the disability
movement wants to prioritise
environmental and social change, not
individual correction. There is a need for
appropriate interventions at the different
levels at which people experience the
complex phenomenon of disablement.

Different problems need different
approaches. This applies to research as
well as to service provision. To
understand my genetic mutation,
molecular biology is needed. To solve
my spinal problems, I resort to
orthopaedics, physiotherapy or Pilates.
When I experience an environmental
problem, I need to negotiate an accessible
workspace and campaign for good
transport provision. Theorists might call
this 4Ontological holism but
methodological pluralism': it's the same
person we're talking about, but each
question needs a specific answer.
Perhaps there is a need for the sort of
4 bio-psycho-social' model for which
proponents of the new ICF have argued.

In my recent work with Nick Watson, we
have built on Irving Zola's arguments
about the need to universalise disability
policy (Zola, 1989). The imperative is to

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Tom Shakespeare

break the social separation between
disabled people, defined by their flawed
bodies, and non-disabled people, defined
by their perfect bodies. The strong social
model does this by denying the flawed
body and claiming that what defines
disabled people is oppression and
exclusion. Perhaps an alternative is stop
denying the flawed body. All human
beings have flawed bodies. Embodiment
is not some Platonic ideal, but a
constantly shifting experience of
physicality with an inextricable element
of lack, disease, degeneration and
suffering. That is to say, everyone is
impaired, to varying extents, and at
different times.

However, not everyone experiences
disabling barriers or oppression, because
many impairments are not subject to
social stigma, and many people, despite
their impairments, are not socially
excluded or discriminated against.
Impairment/disability is always already
social, and the major problems for
disabled people are social arrangements.
But, like all humans, we are limited by
our bodies and brains. Rather than a
social theory of disability, we need a
social theory of embodiment.

References
Abberley, P. (1998). The spectre at the feast:

disabled people and social theory. In
Shakespeare, T. (Ed.). The Disability
Reader: social science perspectives. Cassell,
London.

Blaxter, M (1976). The Meaning of Disability.
London: Heinemann.

Butler, J (1990) Gender Trouble: feminism and
the subversion of identity. New York:
Routledge.

Campbell, J. and Oliver, M. (1996). Disability
Politics: understanding our past, changing
our future. London: Routledge.

Crow, L. (1996) Including all our lives. In
Morris, J. (Ed.) Encounters with Strangers:
feminism and disability. London: Women's
Press.

Finkelstein, V (1980). Attitudes and Disabled
People. New York, World Rehabilitation
Fund.

Finkelstein, V (1981). To deny or not to deny
disability. In Brechin, A. et al (Eds.).
Handicap in a Social World. Sevenoaks,
UK: OUP/Hodder and Stoughton.

French, S. (1993). Disability, impairment or
something in between? In Swain, J.,
Finkelstein, V., French, S. & Oliver, M.
(Eds.) Disabling Barriers, Enabling
Environments. London: OUP/Sage.

Hasler, F. (1993) Developments in the disabled
people's movement. In Swain, J.,
Finkelstein, V., French, S. & Oliver, M.
(Eds.) Disabling Barriers, Enabling
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Finkelstein, V., French, S. & Oliver, M. (Eds.)
Disabling Barriers, Enabling Environments.
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Honneth, A. (1996). The Struggle for
Recognition: the moral grammar of social
conflicts. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Locker, D. (1983). Disability and Disadvantage.
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Morris, J. (1991). Pride Against Prejudice.
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Oakley, A. (1972) Sex, Gender and Society.
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Oliver, M (1990). The Politics of Disablement.
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Oliver, M (1992) Intellectual masturbation: a
rejoinder to Söder and Booth. European
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Oliver, M (2003). If I had a hammer: the social
model in action. Unpublished paper
presented to ESRC Disability Seminar,
University of Leeds.

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Social models of disability and other life strategies

Pfeiffer, D (2001). The conceptualization of
disability. In Barnarrt, S. & Altaian, B.M.
(eds.). Exploring Theories and Expanding
Methodologies: where are we and where do
we need to go? Research in Social Science
and Disability volume 2, Amsterdam: JAI.

Reeve, D (2003) 'Encounters with Strangers':
Psycho-emotional dimensions of disability in
everyday life. Paper presented at the UK
Disability Studies Conference, Lancaster.
(http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/apsocsci/event
s/dsaconf2003/papers.htm).

Shakespeare, T. & Watson, N. (2001) Making
the difference: disability, politics and
recognition, In Albrecht, G. et al (Eds.).
Handbook of Disability Studies. Thousand
Oaks: Sage.

Shakespeare, T. and Watson, N. (2001). The
social model of disability: an outdated
ideology? In Barnarrt, S. & Altman, B.M.
(eds.). Exploring Theories and Expanding
Methodologies: where are we and where do
we need to go? Research in Social Science
and Disability volume 2, Amsterdam: JAI.

Singer, J (1999). 'Why can't you be normal for
once in your life?' From a 'problem with no
name' to the emergence of a new category of

difference. In Corker, M & French, S.
(Eds.). Disability? Discourse. London: Sage.

UPIAS (1976). Fundamental Principles of
Disability. London: UPIAS.

Zola, I (1989). Towards the necessary
universalizing of a disability policy. The
Milbanh Quarterly, 67 (suppl. 2, pt 2), pp
401-428.

The Author:
Dr. Tom Shakespeare is Director of Outreach at

PEALS (Policy, Ethics and Life research
Institute) at the University of Newcastle,
UK. Professional fields of interest:
Disability studies, bioethics, medical
sociology.

Address:
Geography, Politics and Sociology

University of Newcastle
Claremont Bridge Building

Newcastle NE1 7RU

E-mail:
t. w. shakespeare@ncl .ac. uk

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