SRV Explication- Devaluation

Devaluation

· Devaluation is the process that follows negative value being given to a group by another powerful group in society.

· Devaluation occurs when groups of people are systematically treated poorly by society because of differences between them and people who are valued.

· These differences can be PHYSICAL (facial disfigurement, lack of what society considers to be beauty, loss of limbs, skin colour, hair colour, looking old or looking young), FUNCTIONAL (behaviour, lack of intelligence, lack of moral sense, beliefs, skills) or SOCIAL (groups belonged to, failure to respond to others, being young, being old, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation).

· Usually the group that suffers from devaluation is a relatively powerless minority.

Societal Devaluation

· Note that it is not societal devaluation if only one person does the disliking of another person (just dislike), or if only one person dislikes a group (individual prejudice), or if the whole society dislikes one individual (scapegoating). For devaluation to occur, it must be most of society (or at least the powerful parts of it) disliking and acting negatively towards a group of people.

How Do We Decide What and Who Is Devalued?

· A very good way of deciding what is devalued by society is to look at what is valued and then choose the opposite as the devalued object or person.

· In western society a good way of finding out what is valued is to look at positive images from advertising. The opposite of these will, quite possibly, be the devalued objects or people.

Why Do We Devalue People?

· Many of the ways that we react have been inherited from our human ancestors, and even from our non-human ancestors. These include basic safety mechanisms- ‘avoid the different, desire what is like you’, ‘if someone has one threatening feature, look for others’. There is also a desire to identify yourself as individually valued or part of a valued group, and this is often achieved by defining who is not so valued.

How Can Devaluation Be Avoided?

· Societies will probably always engage in devaluation. The only defences are either to change that society’s view of why they devalue particular groups, or to assist those devalued groups to gain more societal value.

Who Do I Not Value?

· Looking at our own prejudices is useful. The problem is that our prejudices will seem normal and acceptable because we will tend to surround ourselves with friends and colleagues who share these prejudices. We also don’t tend to question these prejudices.

· Some people will be devalued by most people in our society. For instance, criminals (especially paedophiles and drug dealers) and the severely mentally ill are devalued by most of society. We take it as normal that these people should be badly treated. It is expected that these people should have rights and good experiences taken from them. This is what prisons and (to a lesser extent) secure (and some non-secure) psychiatric units are for. It is unremarkable that these people should be routinely denied family life, alcohol, sexual relations, the right to vote and so on. When it is suggested that prisoners should have televisions in their cells or that secure psychiatric patients should be able to visit pleasant areas outside hospital, the press and probably the majority of people in this country become angry because they believe that doing bad things to people is correct and doing good things is questionable. This applies even if such things may help the person to avoid re-offending or to become ‘well’ again.

· So we can see that most people (including ourselves) take part in this devaluation.

· It is useful to compile a list of those people who we don’t value and to understand why we want bad things to happen to these people. If we then look at people who we don’t devalue, but who are devalued by others, then we can understand better how bad things happen to the mentally ill, ethnic minorities, children, older people, people with learning disability, refugees etc. Then we could consider how we may ourselves unconsciously not value these groups and take part in doing bad things to them.

Historical And Cultural Prejudice

· "These ‘Ocean Men’ are tall beasts with deep sunken eyes and beak-like noses...Although undoubtedly men, they seem to possess none of the social faculties of men. The most bestial of peasants is far more human... It is quite possible that they are susceptible to training, and could with patience be taught the modes of conduct proper to a human being."

· Jesuit priests described by a Confucian Scholar in the sixteenth century.

· Prejudice is from the Latin meaning pre-judgement (that is to say judgement before the full facts are known.)

· Prejudice may be similarly demonstrated by reference to many historical and anthropological texts.

ADD IN INFORMATION FROM ROANOKE BOOK

The Psychology Of Prejudice

· It may be seen as having three components:

1/ Cognitive- a set of beliefs about the attitude object

2/ Affective- strong feelings (usually negative) about the object

3/ Connative- a set of intentions to behave in a certain way towards the object

· Prejudice is most often negative.

· Additionally, we are more likely to believe negative information than countervailing positive information, sometimes known as Automatic Vigilance.

· We are more likely to believe information from trusted (often conventional) sources. If the information describes behaviours or traits that are unusual or extreme, greater weight will be placed on them.

· Finally, there is the Primacy Effect , which shows that first impressions may be the most powerful.

· It is not even necessary to have any contact with a group in order to become prejudiced. Merely hearing others impressions will be enough to form a prejudice.

Randomness Of Prejudice

· A study in 1983 showed that students were capable of creating a ‘random’ devalued group- engineering students. He was able to show that people were able to have beliefs, affect and connations about this group

Randomness Of Attribution

· People tend to explain positive and negative outcomes irrationally and based on a set of values.

· We are more likely to externalise our own failures and attribute internal failings to others.

· People are more likely to attribute success in males to ability and effort, and success in females to luck or ease-of-task.

2.2 The Process Of Devaluation

The Social Process of Devaluation

· A Person becomes perceived or defined as Societally Devalued :

1/ By being different from others

2/ In one or more ways

3/ Which are considered to be significant by a majority or a ruling segment of society

4/ Who value this difference negatively.

The Reality Of Social Devaluation

· The process of social devaluation is a reality and influences the life chances of people-at-risk in a seriously negative manner. It is a process involving all members of society, is a function of that society and is most definitely not inherent in the person devalued.

Why Do We Devalue People?

· Many of the ways that we react have been inherited from our human ancestors, and even from our non-human ancestors. These include basic safety mechanisms- ‘avoid the different, desire what is like you’, ‘if someone has one threatening feature, look for others’. There is also a desire to identify yourself as individually valued or part of a valued group, and this is often achieved by defining who is not so valued.

Who Do I Not Value?

· Looking at our own prejudices is useful. The problem is that our prejudices will seem normal and acceptable because we will tend to surround ourselves with friends and colleagues who share these prejudices. We also don’t tend to question these prejudices.

· Some people will be devalued by most people in our society. For instance, criminals (especially paedophiles and drug dealers) and the severely mentally ill are devalued by most of society. We take it as normal that these people should be badly treated. It is expected that these people should have rights and good experiences taken from them. This is what prisons and (to a lesser extent) secure (and some non-secure) psychiatric units are for. It is unremarkable that these people should be routinely denied family life, alcohol, sexual relations, the right to vote and so on. When it is suggested that prisoners should have televisions in their cells or that secure psychiatric patients should be able to visit pleasant areas outside hospital, the press and probably the majority of people in this country become angry because they believe that doing bad things to people is correct and doing good things is questionable. This applies even if such things may help the person to avoid re-offending or to become ‘well’ again.

· So, we can see that most people (including ourselves) take part in this devaluation.

· It is useful to compile a list of those people who we don’t value and to understand why we want bad things to happen to these people. If we then look at people who we don’t devalue, but who are devalued by others, then we can understand better how bad things happen to the mentally ill, ethnic minorities, children, older people, people with learning disability, refugees etc. Then we could consider how we may ourselves unconsciously not value these groups and take part in doing bad things to them.

People That I Do Not Like- An Exercise

· It may help you gain insight into your own prejudices and devaluations if you consider the following:

· Make a list of People or Groups:

à Who I devalue

à Who I do not like

à Who I disdain/scorn

à Who I am not comfortable with

à Who I do not like to be with/around/near me

à Who I want to be away from

à Who I think other people should avoid

à For whom I have a ‘special language’

à With whom I associate Negative Images.

People and Characteristics that might qualify for "My Favourite Devalued People" List

1/ Age Groups: infants, teenagers, adults, elderly people

2/ Looks, appearance, grooming, styles

3/ Mannerisms, habits, speech styles

4/ Personality styles

5/ Competence, helpless, dependency

6/ Being Demanding, arrogance, power

7/ Racial, ethnic, nationality

8/ Social Class, wealth, poor

9/ Organisations, social, fraternal, business

10/ Professions, occupations

11/ Political beliefs or parties

12/ Religious groups or beliefs

13/ Certain Office Holders

· If the above is carried out as an exercise- either as a group or individually- it will illustrate that we all have groups of people that we devalue, and that these groups may be quite surprising. There is a tongue in cheek suggestion that seeing as we are all aware now that we are prejudiced against some racial groupings (as we are all racists) that we should redefine the term racist to mean someone who is prejudiced against more than five racial groups- hence giving the term more meaning.

· We may even find that we seriously devalue the people who are our clients!

INSERT REMAINDER OF OXANA’S EXAMPLES

Social Devaluation Is A Universal Phenomenon

· Social Devaluation is often denied. People will try to explain it away as some other process. This is in the face of overwhelming evidence. Often people will confuse whether a person IS suffering devaluation with whether a person SHOULD BE suffering devaluation.

How We All Share In Social Devaluation

· Every member of society participates in social devaluation of at least of some individuals and groups. This participation in devaluation applies to human service providers as well as to the people-at-risk themselves. Devaluation is so deep rooted that it is almost impossible for any individual, no matter how aware and well intentioned, to avoid participating in devaluation.

Social Devaluation Is Not Necessarily The Same As Dislike

· Dislike is not enough for devaluation to exist. Devaluation requires consistent negative valuing by important groups of people within society.

· Examples:

· Smoking until about 1980 was often valued negatively by powerful people, but choosing between smokers and non-smokers was not seen as a significant matter in employment etc.. People could be disliked for smoking, but it was not necessarily a devaluation. This, of course, has now changed and smokers are actively devalued by the majority. It is instructive that if you see a character smoking in a film, play or soap opera, it is now an indicator of ‘the baddy’.

RE-DO AS I DON’T LIKE THE ABOVE EXAMPLE

· The ‘super-rich’ may be disliked by a large number of people, but wealth is highly valued within the core beliefs of Western Society, so it is not valued negatively- people may be disliked for their difference, but not necessarily devalued. However, in communist countries, the super rich would be seen as greedy capitalists and hence devalued because they were negatively valued by the dominant ruling group.

· It would be possible for individuals or groups to dislike people with particular colour eyes, but this is neither seen as significant by powerful sections of society, nor valued negatively by them. Thus, it is not devaluation.

Random Devaluation

· There is an experiment described somewhere in the literature that shows how disturbing devaluation can be and how easy it is to stigmatise a devalued group.

· The participants in the experiment walk towards the experimenter who divides them into two groups by eye colour.

· One group is then told to ignore and treat badly in other ways those with the other colour eyes.

Individual And Collective Devaluation

· The subjects and objects of devaluation can be individual or collective:

Systematic, Collective Devaluation Has Much More Negative Impact Than Individual Devaluation

· Individual-to-individual devaluation or Collective-to-individual can be very painful to the person concerned; Individual-to-collective devaluation can cause distress to the group. However, these three often have a minor impact compared with the Collective-to-collective devaluation which can lead to life-defining and often life-denying results for people in the devalued group. However, it should be noted that even individual to individual devaluation can lead to death.

Social Devaluation Is Not All-Or-Nothing, But A Matter Of Degree

· Social devaluation can happen to anyone, and the onset of it may be slow and silent. People will have different levels of social devaluation that will change over time.

Attribution Of Traits Or Characteristics Plays A Bigger Role In Devaluation Than The Actual Existence Of Such Characteristics

· This is very important as often people-at-risk do not in reality possess the characteristics with which they are burdened; they are forced into roles that have these attributes, and then socially devalued solely because of their occupation of the role.

The Deviancy Career

· The problem occurs as someone enters into a deviancy career. As this happens, people-at-risk will collect more and more deviant images and roles until the possession of these images and roles become life-defining, life-limiting, and potentially life-threatening.

EXPAND DEVIANCY CAREER

Universal Processes Which Cause Personal And Collective Devaluation

· These are:

The evaluative nature of human perception

The struggle for identity

The need for tension relief

The lust for privilege and status

Personal And Collective Devaluation And The Evaluative Nature Of Human Perception

· It is a natural part of human nature to evaluate, and evaluate quickly and in an unconscious and short-cut manner. This has had a life-saving effect and is deeply ingrained. The unconscious and short-cut technique will often lead to devaluation.

Personal And Collective Devaluation And The Struggle For Identity

· ADD FROM ANTHROPOLOGY

· Because there is a basic human need for attainment of identity and security by defining and defending the self , there is a further need to define what constitutes humanness, worth (e.g. value, morality, competencies) and the social boundaries of society and social groupings, and what lies beyond (‘tribalisms’). This is, in essence, the often-unconscious decision about who is ‘us’ and who is them’.

Personal And Collective Devaluation And The Need For Tension Relief

· Because there is a basic human need for tension release, people often turn to social aggression and especially scapegoating. This tension relief is achieved by attacking (physically or verbally) a conveniently available weaker party and by legitimising the scapegoating of a party by blaming it for misfortunes of the whole.

Personal And Collective Devaluation And The Lust For Privilege And Status

· In western society people have a lust for privilege and status which creates stratification, especially with economics. This commonly means that some people must be made/kept poor to assure that the rich can be and stay rich, and that the poor will perform necessary but unpleasant chores; in the case of people-at-risk, it also ensures that the livelihood of ‘deviancy managers’ is assured.

· There is also an emphasis on Class/Status/Power maintenance and enhancement, regardless of economic advantages.

Factors Important In Increasing The Severity Of Devaluation

· Factors that increase the severity of devaluation:

· How precious/important/deeply-held are the values thought by society to be violated by the person or group. (National interests- spies/traitors, Religion- heretics, paedophiles, Myra Hindley).

· How many values are perceived to be violated by the person or group. (Elderly, deformed, poor AND learning disabled).

· The degree to which the values are perceived to be violated by the person or group (Wealth-Poverty-Abject Poverty, Good Citizen-Campaigner-Rebel-Demonstrator-Terrorist).

Factors Important In Decreasing The Severity Of Devaluation

· Factors that mitigate the presence of devalued characteristics:

· Religious or economic reasons for reserving positive roles or role elements for people with devalued characteristics. (Old women: mourners, Blind: story-tellers)

· Having sufficient compensatory qualities (attractive, pleasant).STEPHEN HAWKING

· Having once held valued status. (Professors or Doctors in EMI. Reagan with senile dementia.)

· Being seen to have positive connections to persons valued by the observer.

· The degree to which the observer has positive connections to the devalued party.

What Is Devalued In Different Societies and Ages

· There are many cultural and societal differences about what is valued and devalued, but also much in common between different societies.

· Devaluation is a universal process, but there are differences between societies in what they value on what they devalue. Things that are valued in one culture may be devalued in others. The differences can strike one as very odd, but they may show what the cultural values are in that society, and may also indicate that one’s own culture may also be strange if looked at from an outsiders perspective; by looking at other societies, different in time and place, one may recognise the arbitrariness of ones own society’s foibles.

· For instance look at some things that are devalued in certain cultures:

à In Japan: being left-handed, especially if one is a woman.

à In Europe, North Africa and the near East, and having red hair has long been considered stigmatising.

* This is especially clear in German lands where red-haired natives were segregated by invading Germanic tribes. These invaders then devalued a characteristic that was distinctive of those that they had conquered. Historically, Germans have associated red hair with witchcraft and sorcery, and there have been all sorts of sayings cautioning men against entanglements with red headed women. In Britain this is exemplified by prejudice against people particularly with ginger hair.

* German mythology often interpreted Cain, who slew Abel, as a red-head.

* In contrast, reddish-blonde hair became fashionable in Rome and Italy as a result of the Roman empire contact with the Germanic tribes, the Roman women applied reddish-yellow dyes to their hair.

à In England, working manually, being "working-class." In contrast, other cultures (historic and current) place high value on toil and artisanship.

à In the North American society, not working at all. In contrast, some cultures value this.

à In some parts of Africa, cutting the two front teeth before others has been considered a sign of bad luck so that infants may even be put to death.

à In India, being a member of the untouchable caste.

à A report in 1993 listed the following as devalued groups in China: peasants protesting against high taxes, couples infringing family planning rules (meaning couples trying to have more than one baby), workers who violate labour discipline, vagrants, members of religious bodies, the mentally ill, and criminals.

QUERY ISLAMIC COUNTRIES-LEFT HAND AS SOILED HAND

· What is devalued in a culture can be more clearly perceived by identifying what is positively valued, and vice versa.

· Consider then a few examples of characteristics that are positively valued in some societies, but are devalued, or at least seen as peculiar in others:

‘Unusual’ Attributes Valued Or Devalued Various Societies and Eras

VALUED

China Old Age, mutilated feet

Pre-Revolution USA Old Age

W Africa & Arabic Simple, Disordered Mind

Pre Soviet Russia Fool for Christ

Germany Facial scars in men

Ethiopia Men having visible signs of venereal disease

Middle-East Obesity in women

Western World Near anorexic/drug-wasted look- ‘heroin chic’

American Native Beliefs ,

Turkey and Elsewhere Psychosis

Romantic Europe Tuberculosis

Mayan Society Slightly Crossed Eyes

DEVALUED

Arabic World Thinness in women

Puritan New England Worldly Knowledge

Nineteenth Century Britain Education in women

Modern Britain Practical (especially Scientific) knowledge

Britain Nouveaux Riche

Britain Intelligence- ‘Too smart by half’

USA Lawyers, Journalists and Politicians

Nineteenth Century Britain Sun-tan (indicated manual occupation)

What Is Valued In Society And How This Tells Us What Is Devalued

· One way to understand who is at risk of devaluation is by looking at what a culture values positively, because it is the people who have the image of the opposite of what the society values positively who will almost certainly be cast into a devalued status in a society.

· For instance, in a society that values wealth and possessions, poverty will be devalued, and so will the poor who are the opposite of what is valued. A society that values activity and productivity will devalue idleness, and laziness, and perhaps even leisure, and therefore people are apt to be devalued who are lazy, long-term unemployed, or who play around a lot.

· Carl Jung referred to a similar phenomenon as the ‘collective shadow’ of the society. For instance, he saw the pornography explosion in Victorian England as the shadow side of Victorian prudery.

· Our Society Places High Value On:

à Physical fitness and bodily integrity

à Conventional and acceptable behaviour

à Wealth

à Skill and competence

à Hard work

à Similarity to ruling group in ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion and ‘image of humanness’

· Conversely Our Society Devalues:

à Unfitness and bodily deformity

à Unconventionality

à Poverty

à Incompetence

à Laziness

à Dissimilarity to ruling group in ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion and ‘image of humanness’

Devalued By Immigration Laws

· A useful indication of devalued status is the gradual restriction of types of people to be admitted as immigrants to the USA:

pre 1875 Open immigration

1875 No convicts, no prostitutes

1882 No Idiots, no lunatics, no people likely to need public care. No Chinese.

1885 No gangs of cheap contract labourers

1891 No immigrants with dangerous contagious diseases, no paupers,

no polygamists

1903 No epileptics, no insane people, no beggars, no anarchists

1907 No feeble-minded, no children under 16 unaccompanied by parents, no immigrants unable to support themselves because of physical or mental defects.

1917 No immigrants from most of Asia and the Pacific Islands. No adults unable to read or write.

· The above gives an interesting taxonomy of the undesirable in American society.

Minority Groups Widely Devalued In Western Societies

· Those handicapped in: senses, body, mind

· Those with disapproved, disordered conduct behaviour

· Hyperactive, lethargic, sexual, self-harm, substance abuse

· The socially rebellious

· Dissident, work resistant, lawless, delinquent

· The poor

· Those with few or unwanted skills

· Illiterate, unemployed

· Those unassimilated for other reasons

· Unborn, new born, aged, race, skin colour, ethnicity, nationality, religion

Signs That A Group Is Being Socially Devalued

· There are clear signs that a group is being socially devalued:

à They are treated less well than valued members of society.

à They are systematically placed at a distance (distantiated) from valued people. Valued people may voluntarily remove themselves physically and segregate and congregate themselves, devalued groups may be involuntarily removed, segregated and congregated.

à There is systematic deviancy imaging of a group.

à They are disproportionately likely to be the object of scientific experiment.

Cultural Geographical And Temporal Change

· Cultures differ between themselves in what they value and devalue; anthropology shows us this. Cultures differ within themselves in what they value over time; historical studies show us this . If culture differ thus in what they can value, and this changes over time or place, it is obviously possible for our culture to change to value devalued people more, or for society to value highly-valued people less.

· Our culture is going through a time of rapid change and we have seen changes in value even within our own generations. For instance, elderly people have become less valued and people with learning disability have become much less devalued than they were. Frank prejudice against the Irish in Britain has reduced greatly and such prejudice against most ethnic minorities has reduced over the last thirty years. Prejudice against people with Learning Disability has decreased over the past thirty years whereas prejudice against the mental ill has increased.

Reasons For Denial Of Social Devaluation

· Social devaluation is widespread and undeniable, but people will still insist in denying it despite the overwhelming evidence. Some groups deny that devaluation exists at all, usually for ideological reasons; this includes people who use a Marxist analysis, which sees economic factors as paramount and social factors as secondary. Other people react against the suggestion that any human behaviour is innate and insist that all human behaviour is learned and so deny that devaluation is universal, implying that it is mis-learning and therefore can be ‘engineered’ out. Other people have moral/religious reasons for denying that most people have such hateful characteristics as selfishness, devaluation, hatred, violence. deception etc..

Characteristics Or Identities For Which People Are Most Likely To Be Very Severely Societally Devalued

· There are several key indicators that are likely to lead inevitably to Social Devaluation; these are covered in the following sections.

Not Looking Or Acting Like The Image And Expectation Of ‘Real’ Or ‘Full’ Humans.

· People everywhere have an instinctive aversion towards humans, who do not seem to be quite human, for instance who are perceived as sub-human.

Failing To Reciprocate Relationships

· Failure to reciprocate relationships is another way of gaining socially devalued status. Examples would be people who are comatose, or in a so-called "persistent vegetative state," as well as some long-term residents of mental institution back wards. People who are very profoundly mentally disabled (e.g. senile dementia or severe learning disability), especially if they have always been so, might also be perceived in this way. There are also people who reject any positive social context, who tell anyone who approaches them in any positive way to leave them alone.

· People who are seen to deliberately and habitually violate, or seek to destroy, major societal value structures are also likely to be cast into a non-reciprocating role.

People Who Violate Major Social Norms

· People who are perceived to deliberately and habitually violate, or even seek to destroy, major prevailing societally values structures, are at especial risk of social devaluation. Examples might be repeated and "hard core" criminal offenders, those who habitually resist work, those who are habitually dependent on drugs and alcohol, and many of the homeless on the streets. This also applies to people who agitate to cause violation of such norms.

Being Seen As A Great Danger

· Another group who tend to be severely devalued are people who are seen as a great danger, for instance as assaultative, or as very dangerously contagious. Examples might be prisoners with Aids or TB who assault people walking by their cells with infected fluid and body waste. It also applies to those people with schizophrenia who are seen as potential ‘raving axe-men’.

Being Seen As Disproportionately Burdensome, Demanding, Or An Obstacle To Others’ Desired Ends

· People who are seen as being disproportionately burdensome, demanding, or an obstacle to some desired end, such as very active but senile elderly persons, are increasingly seen as socially devalued. People who make very severe and sustained demands which are experienced as highly unpleasant are apt to be severely devalued by those on whom the demands are made (but not necessarily by others). A person might be severely devalued even by his or her own family because of the imposition on them, even though the same person might be viewed indifferently or even positively by others. This is becoming very significant in the arguments for euthanasia.

Being In Violation Of Multiple Values And Valued Images

· Lastly, there are those who are seen as violating multiple values and valued images. Examples would be people who are severely handicapped in both mind and body, and homeless, alcoholic people who have Aids.

Purposeful Devaluation

· An article in Esquire 2/1984 summarised some universal historical ways that societies have used to stereotype their enemies:

An enemy of God

Death personified

Primitive Barbarian

Rapist

Subhuman Beast

Reptile or Insect

· The article claimed that these interpretations are needed to fan the killer instinct.

· POSSIBLY ALSO ‘DIRT’- JEWS, GYPSIES AND OTHERS ARE OFTEN REFERRED TO AS DIRTY AS A METHOD OF PURPOSEFUL DEVALUATION.

Anthropological And Historical Studies Indicative Of Devaluation

· Recently a reaction has occurred which has begun to bring out the more universal social elements and values across cultures, and the deceptiveness of some of the earlier anthropological research. For instance, it has been found that whatever the criteria of personal beauty may be across different cultures, one element that has great universality is symmetry, and that is valued even among animals.

· Some people deny that certain groups that are devalued in their own society actually are devalued. This denial can have multiple reasons, but is often also motivated again by ideology and class interests.

The Psychological Mechanism Of Denial In Criticising The Reality of Devaluation

· Another reason for failing to accept the principle of Social Devaluation is that almost everybody denies some of their own personal devaluations or prejudices. This is a natural process given the formal title of Denial in psychology. There are many parts of our personality that we find it difficult to ‘own’. Rather than confront these difficulties, we hide them and deny that they actually exist. This is part of what is known as ego defence. Issues of religion and moral philosophy that a person espouses may make it particularly difficult for that person to admit that they and their society take part in devaluation.

The Strong Belief That People ‘Should Not’ Be Devalued

· One of the strong misunderstandings of SRV originates with people’s strong belief that people should not be devalued. This is a laudable view. However, people extend this by implying that if you admit that Social Devaluation occurs, then you are colluding with the process. Thus, they may accuse SRV Theory as being part of the problem rather than an explication of the problem. The most important question is not whether it is believed that a person or group should or should not be devalued, it is whether a person or group is devalued at all.

The Whig View of History

· There is a strong theme running through much modern liberal thought that believes that society is continually improving and is in fact aimed in some way at a perfect end. This is known as the Whig View of History.

· There is decisive evidence in the literature to show that such an assumption is unjustified, and that ‘progress’ is not in fact guaranteed. Some parties would argue that the increased technological ability of humankind allows equal and increasing ability to do good as well as harm.

· Certain other factions take a more negative view and suggest that increasing technology and ‘modernisation’ lead to a moral deterioration in humanity. This is probably Wolf’s view.

· At least we may conclude that the Whig View of history is merely one strand among many.

Why Social Devaluation Is So Easy

· It is often the case that it is easier to do harm than to do good. Doing good often takes a positive effort whilst doing harm easily happens by omission. Social devaluation is a social act that is easier to perform than its opposite- to positively value people. Much social devaluation is by default. Additionally, it may be the case that destructive tendencies are less under conscious control. Also, it may be easier to organise collective ill feeling than collective co-operation for the good; history is full of examples of people who have been stirred to commit evil, and has fewer examples of joint action for the common good.

The Problem With Altruism

· Some people who oppose SRV will over-stress the importance of altruism.

· It is difficult to collect examples from history of large numbers of acts of altruism, or of a policy of altruism continuing over long periods of time.

· SRV theory would suggest that emphasis on the importance of altruism is a defence against the reality and awfulness of human behaviour.

Devalued Parties Also Participate In Social Devaluation

· While it is largely the dominant sections of society that define its values, devalued people themselves participate in societal devaluations (prisoners versus sex offenders, mentally ill versus learning disabled, signers versus people with cochlea implants, working poor versus welfare poor).

Understanding Social Devaluation Points To What Can Be Done To Reverse It

· If we are able to understand the process of social devaluation- how it starts, what methods are employed and what the results are, we will be better able to reverse the effects of social devaluation. An understanding of the facts about devaluation points to the good things that can be done to/for devalued people.

Ultimate Devaluation

· In 1920, Karl Binding and Alfred Koche published a tract entitled ‘Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life’ in Germany. This advocated, among other things, the mass starvation of mental patients.

Notes From Death And Deliverance By Michael Burleigh

The Use Of School Curricula To Change Attitude

· A mental patient costs about 4RMs a day to keep, a cripple 5.50RMs, a criminal 3.50RMs. In many cases a civil servant only has about 4RMs, a salaried employee scarcely 3.50RMs, an unskilled worker barely 2RMs for his family. (a) illustrate these figures with the aid of pictures. According to conservative estimates, there are about 300 000 mental patients, epileptics etc., in asylums in Germany. (b) What do they cost together per annum at a rate of 4RMs per person? I) how many marriage loans at 1 000RMs each could be awarded per annum with this money, disregarding later repayment? (From Adolf Dörner (ed.) Mathematik im Dienste der nationalpolitischen Erziehung mit Anwendungsbeispielen aus Volkswissenschaft, Gelädekunde und Naturwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main 1935 p42)

Similar Phrasing In Later Government Document

· Assuming an average daily outlay of 3.50RMs there hereby results:

1/ A daily saving of RM245.955

2/ an annual saving of RM88.543.980

3/ assuming a life expectancy of ten years

RM 885.439.800

in words eight hundred and eighty five million, four hundred and thirty nine thousand eight hundred Reichmarks,

i.e. this sum will have been, or has already been saved by 1 September 1941 by reason of the dis-infection of 70.273 persons which has been carried out to date.

(T-4 internal statistical digest found at Schloss Hartheim in 1945. National Archives Washington, T1021, Heidelberger Dokumente, Roll 18, Item Nr 000-12-463, Exhibit 39, p. 4.)

Reference for asylums in Germany being opened is p43 of Burleigh

Life Unworthy of Life, vita non jam vitalis,

Karl Binding and Alfred Koche Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Mass und ihre Form (Leipzig 1920)

Progress towards killing:

Eugenics Movement 19thC- 1920s, euthanasia promotion 1920s, opening up the asylums, inviting the press to write negatively, contacting the parents to ask under what circumstances they would want to have their handicapped children killed, opinion polls to test/change public opinion, asylums allowed to revert to custodial institutions, compulsory sterilisation programme, creation of Reich Hereditary Health Court to decide on sterilisation, starving institutions of funds and increasing patient numbers without increasing staff numbers, petition to Hitler re Knauer baby, 18 Aug 1939- registration of all ‘malformed’ children, leading to decision to implement Children’s Euthanasia Programme, eventually becoming a programme to eliminate adults with MH LD Problems.

Notes taken to end of Chapter 3.

2.4 The History Of Devaluation

The History Of Social Devaluation

Discrimination And Disability

The History Of Disability

· If we are to understand how people-at-risk are treated by society today, it is necessary to look at how we have arrived at the current situation.

Fear Of The Unknown

· It has been suggested by Douglas that our views of impairment and disability are determined by a reaction caused by a psychological fear of the unknown. It is stressed that these beliefs are socially codified (even if unwritten and unconscious) and that they gain authority from this societal codification.

· Others have suggested that intolerance of impairment is caused by economic factors. Thomas suggests that when economic conditions were harsh in early historic times, there was little opportunity to support impaired individuals, but as the economic system was able to produce a surplus, this enabled support to be given to the impaired. Although there is good evidence to show that explanations determined by economics are useful in illustrating some causes of this problem, non-economic (cultural) issues are also important.

Historical Continuity

· Bronze and Iron Age, Greco-Roman, Dark Age, Medieval, Renaissance and Industrialised eras all show that this basic human fear of the unknown and different continued to be expressed in different, but always negative, ways throughout three millennia. Some of this is covered in greater depth later in the section on devaluation.

The Great Confinement

· Foucault described the reactions of society to mental disability from 1500-1800.

The Move To The Institutions

· Stone describes the division of the impaired into the sick, the insane, the defectives and the aged and infirm, and the institutional response to these categories.

· Scull describes this era for people with mental impairments very well.

The Eugenics Movement

· Eugenicists used the theories of Charles Darwin to suggest that the impaired were a danger to the ‘gene pool’ of society. Sterilisation and segregation were promoted to ensure avoidance of ‘contamination’ of society. Although never enshrined in legislation in this country (as opposed to Europe and the USA), the movement affected attitudes and responses to impairment.

Leviticus

· Leviticus in the Old Testament contains a list of physical and mental perfections deemed necessary for religious ritual.

[16] And the LORD said to Moses,

[17] "Say to Aaron, None of your descendants throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God.

[18] For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long,

[19] or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand,

[20] or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles;

[21] no man of the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the LORD's offerings by fire; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.

[22] He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things,

[23] but he shall not come near the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the LORD who sanctify them."

[24] So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the people of Israel.

· In fact, it is only recently that people with specific impairments have been able to receive some sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

Greco-Roman Times

· A higher value was placed on those who were sick and impaired (especially those with impairments resulting from battle), infanticide was widely practised.

The Middle Ages

· In the Middle Ages impaired people were the subjects of superstition, persecution and rejection. Haffter pointed out that disability was associated with evil and witchcraft. Impairment of any sort was seen as a result of divine judgement. Martin Luther (1483-1546) said that he saw the devil in a profoundly disabled child; he recommended killing such children.

Renaissance And After

· Barnes points to the portrayal of Richard III as illustrative of attitudes at this time. Scull gives a very good account of this period in his book ‘The Most Solitary of Afflictions’.

Industrialised Era

· This was the time massive institutionalisation- segregation, congregation and distantiation. Again, Scull as above is an excellent historian of the period.

The Freak Show

· Prejudice against the physically different has a long history. Circus side-shows of freaks were common; Bedlam was open to visitors to allow people to taunt the mad; look also at the Kevin Brownlow movie Freaks , David Lynch’s Elephant Man , and Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris . Also consider Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Frankenstein’s Monster.

· In the 1930s, German Asylums were opened again as freak shows to acquaint the public with the ‘need’ for eugenics.

2.5 Value, The Process Of Devaluation And SRV

· We now need to look at what specifically the process of devaluation has to do with Social Role Valorisation.

· Devaluation is the process by which people are chosen by society to be less well treated by that society.

· Devaluation also leads directly into negatively valued roles (whether deserved or not)

People In Devalued Roles And Their Specific Role Risks

· People with different roles will be at different sorts of role risks. The table below summarises these for various people-at-risk.

Learning Disability 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Mental Disorder 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Old Age 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Alcohol Habituation 4 4 4 4 4

Poverty 4 4 4 4 4

Racial Minority 4 4 4 4

Criminal Offenders 4 4 4 4

Epilepsy 4 4 4 4 4 4

Drug Addiction 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Deafness 4 4

Blindness 4 4

Illiteracy 4 4

Unborn 4 4 4 4

Political Dissidence 4 4 4 4

?TO SECTION ON ROLES

Positive And Negative Values

Wolfensberger gives the following table of types of role, positive and negative, for various social categories.

NEGATIVE POSITIVE

VIRTUE Sin, Diabolicness, Evil, Irresponsibility, Criminal, Corruption, Pity, Charity Virtue, Angelicness, Divinity, Responsibility, Lawfulness, Morality, Respect, Entitlement

ATTRACTIVENESS Ugliness, Disorder, Darkness, Blackness, Shadow Beauty, Order, Light, White, Bright

LIFE-RELATED Illness, Death, Incapacity, Impairment, Weakness, Cold, Old Decay, Sub-humanity, Incompleteness, Broken-ness Health, Vitality, Strength, Power, Warm, New, Youth, Growth, Humanity, Wholeness, Completeness

PLACE Bottom, Down, Low, Back, Left, Last, End, Out Top, Up, High, Front, Forward, Right, First, Beginning, In

2.5 Avoiding Devaluation

How Can Devaluation Be Avoided?

· Societies will probably always engage in devaluation. The only defences are either to change that society’s view of why they devalue particular groups, or to assist those devalued groups to gain more societal value.

2.6 A Summary Of Value And The Process Of Devaluation

WRITE

&

The Slave Trade- The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870, Hugh Thomas, Picador, London 1997

The Holocaust- The Jewish Tragedy, Martin Gilbert, Fontana Press, London, 1987

Hitler’s Willing Executioners- Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Little, Brown and Company, London 1996

Death and Deliverance- Euthanasia in Germany 1900-1945, Michael Burleigh, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994

The Fatal Shore- A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868, Robert Hughes, The Harvill Press, London 1987

Other supporting information about Devaluation may be found in basic sociology texts, often in sections dealing with attitude formation and value systems.

Important Points of Clarification About Social Devaluation

1. Social Devaluation is not necessarily the same as dislike

2. Devaluation can be personal or collective

3. Sociologists may use the terms deviant and deviancy to refer to systematic collective devaluation, but deviant does not mean deviate

4. Social devaluation is not all-or-nothing, but a matter of degree

5. Social devaluation is universal

6. The Universality of social devaluation is widely denied

7. Social devaluation is one of the negative things that comes easier than altruism

8. There are great cultural, societal, and historical differences as to what is valued/devalued, but also much universality

9. Since differences may be valued or devalued, a difference does not automatically imply negative valuation

10. What is devalued in a culture can be more clearly perceived by identifying what is positively valued, and vice versa.

11. The perception or attribution of valued/devalued traits will carry more weight than their existence in reality

12. When a party has devalued characteristics, additional exacerbating or mitigating factors determine whether it gets devalued, and if so, how much

13. The ways that social devaluation is enacted are remarkably universal and can therefore serve as an indicator of who is systematically devalued

14. Being valued/devalued by those with power over one tends to have a greater impact on one

15. Being at power disadvantage does not automatically entail devaluation

16. Systematic collective and societal devaluation is much more devastating than personal sporadic devaluation

17. While it is largely the dominant sectors of society that define its values, devalued people themselves participate in societal devaluations

18. An understanding of the facts about devaluation points to both good and bad things that can be done to devalued people

Values and the Social Sciences Eric Carlton

The Creatures Time Forgot, Photography and Disability Imagery

David Hevey 1992

London:Routledge TO BIBLIOGRAPHY-done

Mastectomy as image disability

CHAPTER 2 "Social Life or Medical Death"

Impairment: Lacking part or all of a limb, or having a defective limb, organism or mechanism.

Disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of social activities.

(The Union of the Physically Impaired (1976) quoted in The Politics of Disablement (1990) Michael Oliver, London Macmillan, pp3-40.)

Rain Man

My Left Foot

Born on the Fourth of July

FILMS ABOUT DISABILITY

‘…disability charities have historically been one of the main agents of representational (let alone organisational) oppression of disabled people in their advertising…’

p11

‘Charities …are by far the largest producers and distributors of oppressive impairment/disability imagery…’

p12

’…although they are called ‘disability’ charities, they are in fact impairment charities’ (emphasis in the original.)

p12

‘Within general disability representation, it is clear that it is the impaired body of the disabled person on to which is projected the negative manifestations of that impairment in society: that is, the disability. In this way, characters like Richard III, Frankenstein, Graham Greenes’s Raven, most villains in James Bond films and so on, have their evilness signified by impairment.’

P12

(Raven is the main character in A Gun for Sale, Greene, London, Penguin 1973, First published 1936.)

Oliver suggests in The Politics of Disablement that there are three implicit and historical theories of disability which underlie the ‘Personal Tragedy Theory’ of disability:

1/ Societies dominated by religious or magical ways of thinking, impairment may be

perceived as a punishment from God or from evil magic.

2/ The Liminality Theory- neither sick nor well, dead nor alive, with full humanity in

doubt, neither fish nor fowl, existing in partial isolation from society as undefined, ambiguous people.

3/ The ‘Surplus Population Thesis’ which occurs in societies where economic survival is a constant struggle. So weak, impaired or old people who threaten society by unproductivity are either killed at birth or left to die.

p13

Hevey notes of the above that Oliver’s work, describing the Personal Tragedy Theory as ‘a particular kind of descriptive anthropology which sees societies as , in the final analysis, the embodiment not of social or economic relationships but of thought systems.’

p13.

Finkelstein (ed) ‘Attitudes and Disabled People 1980 World Rehabilitation Fund, New York ORDER

Finkelstein: Three historical phases of disability:

1/ Feudal, pre-industrial revoloution. Produced ‘cripples’ who were not separated from society. No institutions, no special services. Existed at lower end of the economic ladder among the broad oppressed layer of other low-paid workers, the ou-of-work, the mentally ill etc.. No disabled group as such since sytematic social exclusion of impaired people from economic productivity had not yet begun.

2/ With the Industrial Revolution, production lines were geared to able-bodied norms. Phase two proper started with the foundation of the Asylums and Institutions to deal with those made destitute by their impaired labour power. Segregation and dependency went hand in hand. Rise of the Deviancy Manager. Cure or care programmes in an effort to adjust disabled people into labour givers. Service workers now dependent on the disabled for continued employment. Start of the ‘disability paradox’ - the relationship between a person (and his or her impairment) and the state of society (the social restrictions imposed upon the individual.)

3/ Phase three begins with the decline of heavy industry. Society is no longer so dependent on able-bodied people to produce and consequently there may be new opportunities for the disabled people.

p.15-16. Hevey

‘…medical professions, social sciences research, and charity advertising have used and constructed a medical dependency view of disability in which the impairment and the disability are both contained within the body…(whereas)…Oliver and Finkelstein have separated out the bodily impairment from the socially Created disablement.’

p. 16-17

Chapter 3 "The Creatures That Time Forgot" Part 1 Into the Grotto of Charity Advertising"

Critique of Charities and some imagery- none worth quoting.

Chapter 3 "The Creatures That Time Forgot" Part 2 Out of the Grotto."

‘There is no doubt that before the 1980s and early 1990s (when pressures came to be exerted on charities to market competitively) impairment chrity advertising relied, for its portrayal of disabled people, on notions of eugenics ad the eugenic inferiority of disabled people.’

p.30

‘One common feature of charity advertising is that it is almost always in balck and white, while commercial advertising is almost entirely in colour. Charity advertising sells fear, while commercial advertising sells desire. …Cripples are contaminated waste…. Cripples promote a brand not to buy, but to buy your distance from.,

p.35

p.42 he notes that even though much of the costs of campaigns are subsidised by the industry, the costs of the campaign to a charity are rarely ever covered by donations. Essentially the advertising is the branding of disability.

Chapter 9- Towards a disability imagery currency, Part 2 Little Stephen

THIS CHAPTER PHOTOCOPIED AND AVAILABLE

SCAN MARKED PHOTOGRAPHS

Haj F Disability in Antiquity NY: Philosophical Library1970

Oliver M, Barnes C Disabled People and Social Policy: Addison Wesley Harlow 1998

Chapter 1: Justification of Gramscian approach to subject- Organic Intellectuals.

Chapter 2: Who are disabled people?- review of the disability literature on definition

‘Historically, ‘disability’ has always been an important category in the crucial division between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor; those defined as unable as opposed to unwilling to work (Stone 1985). Throughout the twentieth century the process of categorisation has become ever more sophisticated with the involvement of a seemingly never-ending list of professional ‘experts’. These include doctors, lawyers, benefit administrators, policy analysts, therapists, and researchers, each of whom have their own interpretation of the concept and its use according to their own interests and criteria. All these people and others are involved in what Gary Albrecht (1992) has referred to as the disability business.’

P14.

‘..the disabled people’s movement has realised that definitions and terminology play a significant role in their individual and collective disadvantage. Terms such as ‘cripple’, ‘spastic’ and ‘mongol’ are offensive when applied to a disabled individual. Others which depersonalise and objectify the disabled community are also considered unacceptable. Examples include ‘the disabled’, ‘the deaf’ or ‘the blind’.’

P14

From ICIDH (

Three fold Typology of Impairment, Disability, Handicap

Impairment: ‘any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function’

Disability: ‘any restriction or lack (resulting from impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.’

Handicap: ‘a disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or disability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role that is normal (depending on age, sex and social and cultural factors) for that individual. (Wood 1980:29)

P15

Followed by long critique.

‘…house to house surveys conducted in villages near Madras in India …found that only 1 percent of the population were disabled people (Coleridge 1993?. The United Nations (UN) Disability Statistics Compendium (1990) shows that Peru, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have a disability rate of only 1 percent. But Australia, Britain, Canada and Spain have 11 percent and over. Austria has the highest incidence of disability with a figure of 21 percent.’

P22

‘Clearly, the figures appear to contradict the general view that there are more impaired people in developing countries where poverty and deprivation are common. There are a number of reasons for this. First, wealthy countries tend to have better health and support services; hence there is a greater survival rate among people born with impairments and among those who acquire them later in life. Second, the demographic bias towards old age in most developed societies means that the prevalence of disability is higher among the general population; in all societies the likelihood of acquiring an impairment increases significantly with age. Third, conditions regarded as ‘disabling’ in highly developed industrialised societies, such as ‘dyslexia’ or ‘flat feet’, for example, would present few problems to someone living in a rural village in Zimbabwe. (Coleridge 1993).

P22

Stone, D The Disabled State, Macmillan Basingstoke 1985

Albrecht, G The Disability Business, Sage, London 1992

Wood P International Classification of Impairment, Disability and Handicap World Health Organisation, Geneva.

Coleridge P Disability, Liberation and Development Oxfam Publications, Oxford

UN Disability Statistics Compendium???

Chapter 3 Disability in History and Culture:

Scheer, J Groce, N 1989 Impairment as a Human Constant: Cross Cultural and Historical perspectives, Journal of Social Issues, 44, 23-37 Ordered via Excel

Early evidence of physical disability is available in the fossil record but no such record exists from non-physical disability.

Such continued existence indicates that early societies did not necessarily exclude (to the point of death) their impaired.

However, one of the earliest sociological explanation for such exclusion (often to the point of death) is the ‘surplus population thesis’. He argues that such explanation may be founded on nineteenth century liberal ideology.

Although there are examples of such exclusion and deathmaking (Rasmussen K People of the Frozen North Lipincott, Philadelphia1908 – Eskimo and wife injured in explosion, wife exposed, husband commits suicide) there are many counter examples:

(Hastings J (ed) Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Vol 5 T &T Gibbs, Edinburgh 1919-21- Dalegura,) Australian Aboriginal and Native Americans (Hanks J and Hanks L 1980, ‘The Physically Handicapped in certain non-occidental societies’, in Phillips W and Rotenburg J (eds) Social Scientists and the Physically Handicapped) : Infanticide prohibited, age was a sign of authority and respect, individuals with impairments were not abandoned.

Another approach to the exclusion of disabled people: Mary Douglas 1966 Purity and Danger and Robert Murphy 1987

Murphy R The Body Silent, Henry Holt NY 1987 ORDER

Psychological fear of the unknown. Douglas: ‘primitive’ cultures react to ‘anomalies’ such as impairment by reducing it, physically controlling it, avoiding it, labelling it dangerous or adopting it as ritual.

Murphy adopts Victor Turner’s (1967) concept of liminality. Disabled people live in a state of social suspension, neither: "‘sick’ nor ‘well’, ‘dead’ nor ‘alive’, ‘out of society nor wholly in it…they exist in partial isolation from society as undefined, ambiguous people’" (Murphy 1987: 112)

(Turner V 1967 The Forest of Symbols Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Cornell University Press NY)

Above two approaches criticised in this text as not complete. Other approaches also criticised.

‘While we are not denying the importance of either economic circumstances or culture in shaping exclusionary processes, neither surplus population nor ‘universal other’ approaches capture the complexities between the two.’ P27.

‘ …cultural responses to people with impairments in non-western societies are highly variable and determined by a wide range of factors. In Sociological terms, these can be divided into two distinct but inter-related categories: namely the mode of production and the central value system.’ P27

‘Until the seventeenth century, despite the harshness of living conditions, most people were included in village communities even if they were subjected to controlling measures such as the pillar and the stocks and even ridicule’ p27

‘…those people rejected by their families and without resources, relied on the haphazard and often ineffectual tradition of Christian charity…’ p27

‘People with ‘severe’ impairments were usually herded together in one of the very small medieval hospitals in which were gathered ‘the poor, the sick and the bedridden’. The ethos of these establishments was ecclesiastical rather than medical (Scull 1984)

Scull 1984 Decarceration Polity Press Cambridge ORDERED-BOUGHT-To Biblio-done

16th century- power of church declined with the dissolution of the monastries etc. added to a growth in population because of the retreat of the plagues, improved harvests and immigration from Ireland and Wales (Stone 1985)

(Stone 1985 The Disabled State Macmillan Basingstoke ORDERED FROM LIBRARY, SENT TO BIBLIO

because of the fear of ‘bands of sturdy beggars’ this led to the making of economic provision for those hitherto dependent on the Church. Poor Law 1601 was the first recognition of state responsibility to respond to people with perceived impairments.

However a statute of 1388 discriminated between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor.

Most relief was ‘domestic’ or ‘household’ relief- essentially community care. Major changes to this did not occur until the nineteenth century.

Biblical link between impairment, impurity and sin was an important social cause of impairment being seen as undesirable. Visibly impaired children were seen as changelings- the devil’s substitutes for human children. The Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 declared that such ‘creatures’ were the result of their mother’s involvement with sorcery and witchcraft.

Haffter quoted as source for Luther story about disabled child. Haffter 1968 The Changeling: history and psychodynamics of attitudes to handicapped children, European Folklore Journal of the History of Behavioural Sciences 4, 55-61.

Garland R (1995) The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, Duckworth, London TO BIBLIO-DONE, TO ORDER LIST- DONE

Richard III – no evidence of physical impairment but Shakespeare used bodily deformity to mirror evil.

Keith Thomas 1977 The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England, Times Literary Supplement, 21 January 77-81

Thomas: ‘Every disability from idiocy to insanity to diabetes and bad breath was a welcome source of amusement, ‘we jest at a man’s body that is not well proportioned’, said Thomas Wilson, ‘…and laugh at his countenance… if it be not comely by nature’. A typical Elizabethan joke book contains ‘merry jests at fools’ and merry jests at ‘blind folk’. While some tricksters pranks are brutal to the extreme.’ P80-81

Children and adults with obvious impairments were often displayed at village fairs (Nicholli 1990- Menstruum quasi monstruum; monstrous births and menstrual taboo in the sixteenth century, in Nuir E Ruggiero G (eds) Sex and Gender in Historical Perspectives, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Ryan J and Thomas F 1987 the Politics of Mental Handicap Free Association Books, London: idiots were kept by aristocrats for amusement.

NOTES TAKEN TO PAGE 29.

STILL TO COMPLETE:

INDUSTRIALISATION AND AFTER

At the start of the eighteenth century, the intensification of the commercialisation of land and agriculture and the beginnings of industrialisation, the emergence of the Enlightenment all led to the legitimisation of exclusion, although it should be noted that they built on the culture and practices of earlier times.

Throughout 17th and 18th century, institutionalisation increased- for an increasing number of groups.

Definition of Institution from Jones and Fowles ( Jones K, Fowles A (1984) Ideas on Institutions Routledge and Kegan Paul, London)-

Long-term provision of a highly organised kind on a residential basis with the expressed aims of ‘care’, ‘treatment’, or ‘custody’.

Rothman (1971) (The Discovery of the Asylum, Little Brown Boston) suggests that this move from inclusion to institutions was due to the breakdown of early forms of state welfare in the face of early industrialisation, but Scull (1984) (Decarceration Polity Press Cambridge) says that the move to institutions started before the growth of large scale cities, and anyway was more pronounced in rural areas.

However:

‘The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline, the time keeping and production norms, all these were a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more self-determined and flexible methods of work into which many handicapped people had been integrated.’ Ryan and Thomas 1987 p101

Ryan J, Thomas F (1987) The Politics of Mental Handicap Free Association Books London

Incarceration of the ‘handicapped’ could be seen as a continuation of the intent of the poor-laws with all the advantages to the state of the institutional approach- efficiency, deterrence to ‘able-bodied malingerers’, instilling of good work habits etc..

Deterrence by ‘least eligibility’ – a pauper’s situation should be less comfortable than that of an ‘independent labourer of the lowest class’ before benfits could be granted. The workhouse was intended to be as unpleasant as possible.

Upsurge of Christian morality and ‘humanitarian’ values in 19th C – mixture of altruism and conscience. Tooley M (1983) Abortion and Infanticide OUP New York noted that this spirit of Victorian patronage called into question the widespread though unexposed practice of infanticide for impaired children.

Growth of ‘experts’ in deviancy management.

Four sub-groups of people (Stone D 1985 The Disabled State Macmillan Basingstoke) – ‘aged and infirm’, ‘sick’, ‘insane’, ‘defectives’.

Aged and Infirm- (chronic illness and/or permanent impairment) eligible for outdoor relief but could be institutionalised if necessary in special facilities, though usually not much better than the workhouses

Sick- (anyone with acute, temporary or infectious illness) outdoor relief or separate incarceration, although, again, workhouse standard. Illness could not be seen as a route to better treatment.

Insane- (difficulties with definition and diagnosis) ‘Idiots’, ‘Lunatics’, ‘the mad’ and ‘people suffering from diseases of the brain’ were either admitted to asylums or boarded out to families. (Scull 1984)

Private asylums existed, but public outcry about standards led to a state run system starting in 1845.

Roth and Kroll (Roth M, Kroll J 1986 The Reality of Mental Illness, Cambridge University Press) note that the cruelty meted out to the mentally ill in institutions may have been no worse than that found in the community.

Until 1871 Poor Law, compulsory detention no possible except under Lunacy legislation of 1845. Initially a legal matter, doctors became involved because of their assertion that mental illness had physiological causes, resonded to medical treatment (Scull 1984).

Defectives- (initially blindness, deafness lack of speech, After 1903 epilepsy, children with ‘mental subnormality’) This group often relieved by charity

Increasing incarceration towards the end of the century- second phase of industrialisation (Hobsbawn EJ Industry and Empire Penguin Harmondsworth 1968)

Ideological legitimacy for above provided by individualistic ideology over communal regarding property rights, politics and culture.

‘Scientific’ support from Darwinism and Malthus

Rise of Social Darwinism- excuses for not assisting the impaired.

Rise of Eugenics- Francis Galton, RL Dugdale (The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, Putnam New York 1877)

Henry Goddard (The Kalikak Family: a study in the heredity of Feeblemindedness Macmillan London 1912) reinforced traditional myths that there were genetic links between physical and mental impairments, crime, unemployment and other social eveils.

Kevles DJ (1985) In the Name of Eugenics Alfred A Knopf New York ORDERED FROM LIBRARY AND TO BIBLIO

Stated aim of eugenicists was to improve the race by preventing the reproduction of ‘defectives’ by sterilisation and segregation.

Scientific legitimisation of existing policies of excluding disabled people by death-making, sterilisation and incarceration with rigid segregation by sex.

‘Feeble-minded women are almost invariably immoral and if at large usually become carriers of venereal disease or give birth to children twice as defective as themselves.’ In Potts and Fido 1991 ‘A Fit Person to be Removed: Personal Accounts of Life in a Mental Deficiency Organisation, Northcote House, Plymouth)

Mental Deficiency Act 1913

Eugenics reached its logical conclusion with Life Unworthy of Life

Many prominent socialists shared these ideas- Beatrice and Sydney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells – not just province of the establishment.

Age Old tendency to display- travelling fairs carnivals and freak shows which flourished in USA and Britain late 19th early 20th century. Joseph Merrick The elephant Man (Bogdan R 1988 Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit Chicago University Press Chicago, Darke P 1994 ‘The Elephant Man (David Lynch, EMI Films): an analysis from a disabled perspective, Disability and Society 9(3), 327-42

Ch5: Social Constructions of disability and policy: (Photocopy Chapter)

Recent (20th C) developments in interpretations of disability:

Talcott Parsons and Sickness related behaviour ) Parsons 1951- leading to two approaches- 1/ Sick Role and its link to social deviance and 2/ the notion of health as adaptation. Both of these rely on western individualistic models with personal responsibility, requiring ‘professional’ involvement in decision making and treatment.

Poor critique of Wolfensberger p52 PHOTOCOPY

Weberian theories: Deborah A Stone The Disabled State uses a Weberian analysis. SO the ‘social construction of disability’ is the result of the state’s need to control access to the welfare system. She argues for a retreat from state-sponsored welfare and an emphasis on prevention and individual responsibility.

Gary Albrecht 1992 The Disability Business Sage London TO BIBLIO-DONE AND ORDERED-DONE: disability is produced by the Disability Business

Disability as politics:

Harlan Hahn 1986 akin to labelling, follow up if necessary

Item on gendered disabiliy

Disability and difference

Disability as Social Oppression

Chapter 6 Socially constructing a disabled identity PHOTOCOPY AND NOTE-TAKE.

Curra The Relativity of Deviance, 2000

CHAPTER 1

‘Nothing can be deviant in a social vacuum, and definitions and social reactions strongly affect the types of deviance that exist in societies (Schur 1971, pp16-17). The Study of social evidence is more than the study of a type of behaviour or of an individual attribute; it is a study of social relationships and socially constructed perspectives on human behaviour and human individuals (Goffman, 1961). Good and bad are mutually defined, and each of them has meaning only in terms of the other (Margolin, 1993, p511). We must always know what is made of an act or attribute socially’. Original italics. TO DEVALUATION

Schur E1971 Labeling Deviant Behaviour: Its sociological implications, New York, Harper and Rowe

Margolin L 1993 Goodness Personified: The emergence of Gifted Children, Social Problems 40, 510-532

Being Centred: Egocentricity and Ethnocentricity:

Piagetian concept of egocentricity. (Piaget J 1948 The Moral Judgement of the Child, New York Free Press) Pleasure – right, displeasure – wrong. Socialisation Process, internalisation of a culture.

‘Culture is a system of designs for living or shared understandings that members of societies use as they act together’ Curra quote paraphrasing Kluckhohn 1949 Mirror for Man: the Relation of Anthropology to modern life, New York, McGraw-Hill.

Socialisation alters the egocentricity of childhood. This socialisation leads to ethnocentrism.

Norms and sanctions

Regulative rules- regulating performance of necessary actions-eating, breathing, drinking, sleeping, waste elimination

Constitutive rules- games, social relationships, interpersonal relations, cultural understandings.

Certain groups, because of their luck, skill, determination, or control of important resources such as power or money, usually mange to influence disproportionately the content of culture by creating and spreading ideologies throughout a society’ Curra p6 quoting Bourdieu P (trans.: G Raymond and M Adamson)1991 Language and Symbolic Power Cambridge MA Harvard University Press

‘An ideology is a set of ideas or beliefs that serves the interests of a one segment of society more than all other segments; an ideology legitimates some specific social arrangement.’p6

‘It is possible for the ideal norms of one society or group to be drastically different from the ideal norms of another society or group.’ P7

Reference for different levels of rules as in Wolf:

Freilich M 1991 Smart Rules and Proper Rules: A Journey through deviance In M Freilich, D. Raybeck, J Savishinsky (eds.) Deviance: Anthropological Perspectives New York Bergin and Garvey. (pp27-50)

Social construction of Reality- NOTE TAKE FROM BERGER AND LUCKMANN

Vold G, Bernard TJ, Snipes J (1998) Theoretical Criminology (4th ed) New York Oxford University Press- ?GOOD FOR REFERENCES I’M LOOKING FOR

Social control can create deviance Erickson 1962 p10 Curra

Secondary deviance- deviancy channelling or amplification Sumner 1994. Labelling

DONE TO PAGE 11

Ember And Ember

Cultural Anthropology,

Hindus would consider westerners eating beef as primitive and disgusting-they view the cow as a sacred animal. Similarly, we would consider the Korean habit of eating dogs in a similar way.

In many societies, babies are always carried , or in someone’s lap, or asleep next to others- such societies would consider the western habit of leaving babies alone- in play-pens(like prisons) or cots- as barbaric.

Cultural relativism- ‘a society’s customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of that society’s problems and opportunities’ p. 16

Caste systems p 151. Camars- leatherworkers, Bhangis- sweepers, Nai- barber caste. Indians system most specific, but occurs elsewhere- N.America- skin colour- inter-racial marriages, children of mixed race inherit low caste status, separate drinking fountains reinforced images of uncleanliness, separate eating facilities similarly (famous case of the Woolworths lunch counter) Whites gained prestige at black’s expense- even white trash.

Eta in Japan- now known as Dowa Kankeisha- physically indistinguishable- ?the same as other example I have ?Burakim.

Slavery- persons who do not own their own labour. History- ancient Greece, slaves often by conquest, temporary, fated, freedom possible, no caste distinctions. Nupe in Nigeria (eventual seat of Atlantic Slave Trade) booty of warfare and purchase, could acquire property and wealth and even slaves of their own during lifetime, but reversion to master on death. In USA- no marriage, no contracts, no citizenship, no property,, their children also slaves, master had sexual rights over female slaves, many caste like similarities.

Tallness and more muscled as positive attributes.

Monogamy valued in modern western society, polygyny and polyandry - polygamy being more commonly recorded in all societies.

The Toda of India practised female infanticide p202 Stephens WN 1963 The Family in Cross-cultural Perspective NY Holt Rinehart and Winston. Also in modern day China- one child policy.

Ruth Benedict 1934 (1959), Patterns of Culture, NY, Mentor. - shows that abnormality is relative

Valued- modern western society- One God, Most earlier societies- many gods.

Pierced noses of women in India

Elongated necks of the Mangebetu of Central Africa

Tattooing of North American Males

Body Painting of the Caduveo of South America

The Western Make-up Industry

Fashion trends for women in last 300 years- pinched waists, ballooned hips, bustled rumps, exaggerated breasts, painted faces, exposed breasts. Sexual indicators and fashions.

Poro initiation ceremony of the Kpelle of Liberia- after circumcision, boys spend a period of seclusion in the forest, returning with scars down their backs - symbolic tooth marks indicating a close escape from the Ngamu The Greta Masked Figure which ate the child but disgorged the young adult.

Scarification, Bound Feet, Elongated Ears, Filed Teeth

Chapter 1: The Body of the Condemned

Notes changes from bodily corporal punishment to punishment of the soul- pre and post about 1800. Also has a long section on the emergence of mental ‘excuses’ for behaviour and the consequent change in judgements of judges from decisions about whether a ‘crime’ occurred to decisions on what the ‘best’ intervention was to ‘treat’ the problem.

Foucault Madness and Civilization

Referred to in Wolfensberger 1975 A Reflection on Foucault’s insights

Notes from Chapter 1 Stultifera Navis (Ship of Fools)

Towards the end of the middle ages leprosy disappeared in the western world. These people had been cast to the margins of society both literally and metaphorically. Until this date the gates and margins of the city had contained these people, at least those who were not confined in the leprosauria set up by governments. Mathieu Paris says that there were 19000 throughout Christendom.

These lazar houses were controlled and regulated by authority as they had immense assets due to endowments. The houses were set to treating poor noblemen and crippled soldiers.

Led to the Hopital Generale, Hospitals for the Incurable.

Then during the renaissance appeared the myth of the Ship of Fools, Narrenschiff, Stultifera Navis- not actual but myth. But people were expelled from communities as if placed on a ship of fools for socially unacceptable (madness) behaviour.

Also Narrtürmer- Towers at town gates- prisons for fools.

Access to churches was denied to madmen even though they were not technically denied the sacraments. P10

Madmen were whipped and chased from the city. Expulsion of madmen as ritual exclusion.

Tristan arrived in Cornwall disguised as a madman- see Foucault’s analysis.

Get copy of Bosch Ship of Fools Painting.

Cap and bells p 16

Madness as the dejà-là of death. Madness as already dead p16

Twelve dualities p24:

Faith Idolatory

Hope Despair

Charity Avarice

Chastity Lust

Prudence Folly

Patience Anger

Indulgence Harshness

Concord Discord

Obedience Rebellion

Perseverance Inconstancy

Compare with stereotypes of madness

Earlier interpretation of Madness as Tragedy gave way to:

The Romantic:

Madness by Romantic Identification

Madness by Vain Presumption

Madness of Just Punishment

Madness of Desperate Passion p29 et seq

Century after the Ships of Fools myths came the Hospital of Madmen- the Madhouse

Confinement succeeded embarkation

Chapter II The Great Confinement

‘It is common knowledge that the seventeenth century created enormous houses of confinement; it is less commonly known that more than one in every hundred inhabitants of the city of Paris found themselves confined there, within several months.’ P38

The Hôpital Général had nothing to do with medicine, it was an instance of order.

In England the origin of the confinement started with an overt response to poverty and indolence - bridewells had to be set up in each area. The system never spread to Scotland. The system was soon soaked up by the prison system.

The workhouse system followed. 1697 several parishes in Bristol formed a joint workhouse- the first. To keep the workhouses from becoming hospitals, all contagious individuals were to be turned away.

John Howard investigated the confinement across Europe in the late eighteenth century and found in England, Holland, France, Italy and Spain- hospitals, prisons and jails behind whose walls were confine almost randomly those who had broken the common law, those young men who disturbed their family’s peace, those who squandered goods, people without a profession and the insane.

Voltaire’s later comment applies: ‘Since you have established yourself as a people, have you not yet discovered the secret of forcing all the rich to make all the poor work? Are you still ignorant of the first principles of the police?’

Foucault: ‘Before having the medical meaning we give it, or that at least we like to suppose it has, confinement was required by something quite different from any concern with curing the sick. What made it necessary was an imperative of labor. Our philanthropy prefers to recognize the signs of a benevolence towards sickness where there is only condemnation of idleness.’

A review of the historical coincidences of masses of idle people leading to institutions of confinement- end of Thirty Years’ War.

Beggars and other indigents hunted down and confined.

First houses of correction were opened in England during a full economic recession.

Primary Frameworks- Natural and Social

Framework- schemata of interpretation

Natural Frameworks- undirected, unoriented, unanimated, unguided, ‘purely physical’. Reducible to more fundamental frameworks- conservation of energy, single, irreversible time. EVENTS

Social Frameworks- provide background understanding, events incorporate will, aim, intelligence, live agency etc.. Actions based standards, motive and intent are involved. DEEDS

All social frameworks involve rules.

Several social frameworks usual being applied at any one time.

Important answer to question ‘What is going on here?’

Five Distinctive Matters p28 et seq

1/ Astounding Complex

2/ Cosmological Interests

3/ Muffings

4/ Fortuitousness

5/ Segregation Issue

Objectificaton: from Good Behaviour, London, Constable and Co 1955, Harold Nicholson

‘The slave dealers, whether those of Delos or the mangones who ran the slave-market by the temple in Rome, would display their wares in the manner of hors-copers, allowing prospective purchasers to examine teeth and muscles of the animals, taking them for little runs to show their paces. Slaves were exhibited for sale in a wooden cage, their feet being smeared with whitewash, and tablets stating price and qualifications hung around their necks.’ P63

Also notes that people being made up by stage cosmeticians, measured by tailors or palpated by physicians resort to object status- they respond to requests to assume various positions, engage only in desultory side talk, but otherwise act how people are supposed to when being merely bodies. Also- haircutting, dentistry.

Henri Bergson Laughter 1911 London, Macmillan and Co- ‘We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing’ - origin of clown/disability stereotype.

Keys and Keying:

‘…the key, I refer here to the set of conventions by which a given activity, one already meaningful in terms of some primary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else.’

Framing limits- withdrawal of films or TV programmes about similar recent actual events. Similarly obscenity- the making public of what is seen as private.

Contests.

Plays.

Practising.

Designs and Fabrications- not yet noted.

Woodward Identity And Difference

Identity is marked by difference- Serbs and Croats

Essentialist and Non-essentialist perspectives on Identity- whether there are clear characteristics of identity or whether there are specific differences. See p11

Classificatory Systems- p 29, us/them, self/other

Emile Durkheim argued that it is through the organisation and ordering of things into classificatory systems that meaning is produced (the Elementary Forms of Religious Life- 1954 London Allen and Unwin 1954) ‘Without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence’

Leading to the Sacred and Profane- Sacred is set apart, opposition to profane.

Each culture has its own way of classifying the world

Mary Douglas Purity and Danger: an analysis of Pollution and Taboo, London Routledge 1966:

‘…culture, in the sense of public, standardised values of a community, mediates the experience of individuals. It provides in advance some basic categories, a positive pattern in which ideas and values are tidily ordered. And above all, it has authority, since each is induced to assent because of the assent of others.’

Douglas- rituals extend to all aspects of everyday life- preparing food, cleaning up, putting things away.

Claude Lévi-Strauss food (?The Raw and The Cooked) La triangle culinaire, 1965 in English Translation in New Society, 22 Dec 1966, pp937-40

Douglas op cit :

‘…ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience. It is only by exaggerating the difference between within and without, above and below, male and female, for and against that a semblance of order is created.’

Difference, especially its production through binary opposition:

Woodward p 35-36:

‘A feature which is common to most thought systems therefore seems to be a commitment to dualism whereby difference, which is essential to meaning, is expressed in terms of clear oppositions - nature/culture, body/mind.’

Helen Cixous- 1975 ‘Sorties’ in La Jeune Née, Paris, Union Générale d’Editions, 10/12; English Tranlation in Marks E and de Courtviron I, (eds) 1980 New French Feminisms; an anthology, Amherst MA, The University of Massachusetts Press.

‘Thought has always worked by

opposition

Speech/Writing

High/Low

Does this mean something?’

She argues that not only is thought constructed in terms of binary oppositions, but that in these dualisms, one term is valued more than the other.- one is seen as deviant or outside.

Where is she?

Activity/Passivity

Sun/Moon

Culture/Nature

Day/Night

Father/Mother

Head/Heart

Intelligible/Sensitive

Man/Woman.

Identity and Subjectivity:

p39

The positions which we take up and identify with constitute our identities.

Louis Althusser 1971 Lenin and Philosophy, and other Essays, London, New Left Books- suggests Interpellation is the way in which subjects are recruited into subject positions by recognising themselves - ‘yes, that’s me’ - conscious and unconscious, mainly unconscious. He also stresses the role of ideologies in reproducing social relations through institutional rituals and practices as well as through force and coercion.

Freud, suggests that the unconscious does not obey the laws of the conscious rational mind. However, Lacan 1977 Ecrits: a Selection, London Tavistock suggests that the unconscious is structured like a language.

Lacan- childs internalisation of itself, mirror stage folows the imaginery stage see p 44.

He argues that subjectivity is split and illusory- so the subject longs for identification with powerful and significant outside figures.

The Body and Difference p 65

embodiment has various sociological meanings

people’s actions are socially structured in different ways

Modern Technology has given us unprecedented control over our bodies.- reproduction, genetic engineering, plastic surgery, sports science.

p68 for footbinding picture

p69 tattoos

p70 narrow waist

p71 Body building

p72 Female body building

p84 Extremes of Victorian Femininity- women possessed frail bodies-

‘Middle class women fulfilled their own stereotype of the ‘delicate’ females who took to their beds with consistent regularity and thus provided confirmation of the dominant medical account that this should be so. Women ‘were’ manifestly physically and biologically inferior because they actually ‘did’ swoon, ‘were’ unable to eat, suffered continual maladies, and consistently expressed passivity and submissiveness in various forms. The acceptance by women of their ‘incapacitation’ gave both a humane and moral weighting to the established so-called ‘facts’.

Jennifer Hargreaves 1985 Playing like gentlemen while behaving like ladies: contradictory features of the formative years of women’s sport’, British Journal of Sports History, 2(1) 40-52

Civilising the body p93

N Elias 1978/1939 The Civilizing Process Volume 1 The History of Manners, NY Pantheon

N Elias 1982/1939 The Civilizing Process Volume 2: State Formation and Civilization Oxford, Basil Blackwell

Modern people are more sensitive than medieval persons to smells, nudity, proximity.

Increasingly complex rules about appropriate behaviour.

Defecating in the street was unexceptional

Immediate seeking of gratification and expression of emotions,

Attempt to satisfy desires without restraint or regard for others

Renaissance move to more courtly manners

Sanctions and controls

Increasingly complex

Manners were markers that separated individuals and were markers of value and identity.

Medieval Carnival- prominent displays of carnality- sex food and drink. In Nantes Shrove Tuesday was dedicated to St Vomit.

Individualisation of bodies- as people construct an affective wall between themselves, smells sounds and actions become signs of individuals rather than of common humanity. Distance was created between bodies and this caused increasining individuality and awareness of embarrassment.

Chapter 3 Part 6 p150 Faulty selves, imperfect bodies- impairment, disability and AIDS

‘… disabled people become ciphers for those feelings, processes or characteristics with which non-disabled society cannot deal. As a result, these negative feelings become cemented to disabled people.’ Tom Shakespeare 1994 Cultural representation of disabled people: dustbins for disavowal? Disability and Society 9(3) 283-299

Sonntag and Illness as Metaphor is considered

QUERY SUMMARISE CHAPTER THREE ONWARDS

Garland notes:

‘In New Guinea albinos are regarded as holy, while in Senegal they are considered to be ominous. Whereas a Congolese tribe called the Bayaka reverence their blind but deride their deaf, the deaf members of an Amazonian tribe experience no social stigma because of the ability of the tribe to communicate in sign language. In our own society it is much more acceptable to make jokes about the deaf rather than the blind.’

Garland notes:

‘Among the Skythian Makrokephaloi, a tribe which equated long-headedness with nobility, a normal-sized cranium was a sign of social inferiority and evolutionary backwardness. (Hippokrates Airs etc. 14) Likewise among a present day African tribe whose members suffer from a condition known as lobster-claw syndrome the possession of five digits constitutes a malformation.’