Capitalism, Disability and Ideology: A Materialist Critique of the Normalization Principle

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Oliver, Michael J. 1999. "Capitalism, disability and ideology: A materialist critique of the Normalization principle."

First published in Flynn, Robert J. and Raymond A. Lemay, A Quarter-Century of Normalization and Social Role

Valorization: Evolution and Impact, 1999. Internet publication URL:

http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/oliver99.pdf

The oppression that disabled people face is rooted in the economic and social structures of capitalism. Materialist social theory offers disabled people the opportunity to transform their own lives and in so doing to transform the society in which they live into one in which all roles are valued. Oliver, Professor of Disability Studies, University of Greenwich,

London, well-known disability rights advocate, sociologist and author. Dr. Oliver has a disability.

CAPITALISM, DISABILITY AND IDEOLOGY:

A MATERIALIST CRITIQUE OF THE NORMALIZATION PRINCIPLE

Professor Michael J. Oliver

Professor of Disability Studies

University of Greenwich, London, England

Introduction

At the outset, I should say two things. I have no particular interest in the history of normalization

and therefore, I am not attempting to provide a revisionist history of it. Neither do I think that

normalization, or social role valorization as it has become in its reincarnation, has much to offer in

developing a social theory of disability. I am interested however in the oppression of disabled

people in capitalist societies and what normalization does, or rather does not say about it.

This interest has led me to begin to sketch out what a social theory of

disability might look like (Oliver 1990) .For me, all social theory must be judged on three interrelated

elements: its adequacy in describing experience; its ability to explain experience; and

finally, its potential to transform experience. My own theorizing on disability is located in Marxist

political economy which, I would argue offers a much more adequate basis for describing and

explaining experience than does normalization theory which is based upon interactionist and

functionalist sociology.

In fact I would go further and argue that the social theory that underpins Marxist political economy

has far greater transformative potential in eradicating the oppression that disabled people face

throughout the world than the interactionist and functionalist theories that underpin normalization

ever can have. And I will go even further than that and argue that already this theory has had a far

greater influence on the struggles that disabled people are themselves currently engaged in to

remove the chains of that oppression than normalization which is, at best a bystander in these

struggles, and at worst part of the process of oppression itself.

In presenting this argument, I will begin by articulating my own

theoretical position based upon Marxist political economy and

hereinafter referred to as materialist theory. I will then demonstrate the inadequacies of

normalization theory's explanation of the rise of the institution before going on to provide a

critique of the ideology which underpins it. Next, I will take issue with the argument that

normalization has been successful because it is based upon 'experience'. Finally I will look at what

both normalization and materialist theories say about change, having briefly described the

appalling material conditions under which disabled people live throughout the world.

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 2 (16)

Before proceeding further, it is perhaps necessary to explain the use of terminology in this chapter.

Underpinning it is a materialist view of society; to say that the category disability is produced by

capitalist society in a particular form implies a particular world view. within this world view, the

production of the category disability is no different from the production of motor cars or

hamburgers. Each has an industry,whether it be the car, fast food or human service industry. Each

industry has a workforce which has a vested interest in producing their product in particular ways

and in exerting as much control over the process of production as possible.

Producing a materialist theory of disability

The production of disability therefore is nothing more or less than a set of activities specifically

geared towards producing a good - the category disability - supported by a range of political actions

which create the conditions to allow these productive activities to take place and underpinned by a

discourse which gives legitimacy to the whole enterprise. As to the specifics of the terminology

used in this discourse, I use the term disabled people generically and refuse to divide the group in

terms of medical conditions, functional limitation or severity of impairment. For me disabled people

are defined in terms of three criteria; (i) they have an impairment; (ii) they experience oppression as

a consequence; and (c) they identify themselves as a disabled person.

Using the generic term does not mean that I do not recognise differences in experience within the

group but that in exploring this we should start from the ways oppression differentially impacts on

different groups of people rather than with differences in experience among individuals with

different impairments. I agree that my own initial outlining of a materialist theory of disability

(Oliver 1990) did not specifically include an examination of the oppression that people with

learning difficulties face (and I use this particular term throughout my paper because it is the one

democratic and accountable organisations of people with learning difficulties insist on).

Nevertheless I agree that

"For a rigorous theory of disability to emerge which

begins to examine all disability in a materialist

account, an analysis of normalization must be

included".

(Chappell 1992.38)

Attempting to incorporate normalization in a materialist account however, does not mean that I

believe that, beyond the descriptive, it is of much use. Based as it is upon functionalist and

interactionist sociology, whose defects are well known (Gouldner1970), it offers no satisfactory

explanation of why disabled people are oppressed in capitalist societies and no strategy for

liberating us from the chains of that oppression.

Political economy, on the other hand, suggests that all phenomena

(including social categories) are produced by the economic and social

forces of capitalism itself. The forms in which they are produced are

ultimately dependent upon their relationship to the economy (Marx 1913). Hence, the category

disability is produced in the particular form it appears by these very economic and social forces.

Further, it is produced as an economic problem because of changes in the nature of

work and the needs of the labour market within capitalism.

"The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline,

the time-keeping and production norms -all these were

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 3 (16)

a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more

self-determined methods of work into which many

handicapped people had been integrated" .

(Ryan and Thomas 1980.101)

The economy, through both the operation of the labour market and the

social organisation of work, plays a key role in producing the category

disability and in determining societal responses to disabled people. In

order to explain this further, it is necessary to return to the crucial

question of what is meant by political economy. The following is a

generally agreed definition of political economy,

"The study of the interrelationships between the polity,

economy and society, or more specifically, the

reciprocal influences among government the

economy, social classes, state and, status groups.

The central problem of the political economy

perspective is the manner in which the economy and

polity interact in a relationship of reciprocal causation

afecting the distribution of social goods".

(Estes et al 1982)

The central problem with such an agreed definition is that it is an

explanation which can be incorporated into pluralist visions of society as a consensus emerging out

of the interests of various groups and social forces and indeed, this explanation has been

encapsulated in a recent book on disability

"A person's position in society affects the type and

severity of physical disability one is likely to

experience and more importantly the likelihood that he

or she is likely to receive rehabilitation services.

Indeed, the political economy of a community dictates

what debilitating health conditions will be produced,

how and under what circumstances they will be

defined, and ultimately who will receive the services".

(Albrecht (1992.14)

This quote lays out the way in which Albrecht pursues his argument in

three parts. The first part shows how the kind of society people live in influences the kinds of

disability that are produced, notably how the mode of production creates particular kinds of

impairments. Further, he traces the ways in which the mode of production influences social

interpretation and the meanings of disability and he also demonstrates how, in industrial societies,

rehabilitation, like all other goods and services is transformed into a commodity.

The second part of the argument shows how intermediate social

institutions in America, such as the legal, the political and welfare

systems contribute to the specific way in which disability is produced and their role in the

transformation of rehabilitation into a commodity. The final part considers what this may mean in

terms of future developments in social policy and what effects it may have on the lives of disabled

people.

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 4 (16)

It is difficult to disagree with this formulation at the descriptive level but the problem with this

pluralist version of political economy is that the structure of capitalist America itself goes

unexamined as does the crucial role that the capitalist economy plays in. shaping the experience of

groups and individuals. Exactly the same criticism can be levelled at normalization theory.

Devaluation according to normalization theory is a universal cognitive process and economic and

social conditions are only relevant to who gets devalued.

Political economy, as it is used here, takes a particular theoretical view of society; one which sees

the economy as the crucial, and ultimately determining factor, in structuring the lives of groups and

individuals. Further, while the relationship between various groups and the economy may differ in

qualitative ways, the underlying structural relationship remains.

"The convergence and interaction of liberating forces

at work in society against racism, sexism, ageism and

economic imperialism are all oppressive 'isms' and

built-in responses of a society that considers certain

groups inferior. All are rooted in the social-economic

structures of society. All deprive certain groups of

status, the right to control their own lives and destinies

with the end result of powerlessness. All have resulted

in economic and social discrimination. All rob

(American) society of the energies and involvement of

creative persons who are needed to make our society

just and humane. All have brought on individual

alienation, despair, hostility, and anomie".

(Walton 1979.9)

Hence the oppression that disabled people face is rooted in the

economic and social structures of capitalism. And this oppression is

structured by racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and disablism which

is endemic to all capitalist societies and cannot be explained away as a universal cognitive process.

To explain this further it is necessary to go back to the roots of capitalism itself.

Disabled people and the rise of capitalism

Whatever the fate of disabled people before the advent of capitalist

society and whatever their fate will be in the brave new world of the

twenty first century, with its coming we suffered economic and social

exclusion. As a consequence of this exclusion disability was produced in a particular form; as an

individual problem requiring medical treatment.

At the heart of this exclusion was the institution -something on which we would all agree. In the

nineteenth and twentieth century, institutions proliferated in all industrial societies (Rothman 1971)

but to describe this, as Wolfensberger does, as 'momentum without rationale' (p3) is patently

absurd. The French Marxist, Louis Althusser (1971), suggested that all capitalist societies are faced

with the problem of social control and they resolve this by a combination of repressive and

ideological mechanisms.

The reason for the success of the institution was simple; it combines

these mechanisms almost perfectly. It is repressive in that all those who either cannot or will not

conform to the norms and discipline of capitalist society can be removed from it. It is ideological in

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 5 (16)

that it stands as a visible monument for all those who currently conform but may not continue to do

so -if you do not behave, the institution awaits you.

It is for this reason that the institution has been successful. Its presence perfectly meets capitalism's

needs for discipline and control (Foucault 1972). It is also the reason why, despite the fact that the

defects of institutions have been known for the 200 years that they have existed, they have remained

unaddressed. Indeed, the principle of 'less eligibility' was central to the rise of the institution. It is

simply not true to say that we have only known of their defects in recent years because, if this were

the case, they would then not have been performing their ideological control function. Day trips to

institutions, which originated in the 1850's not the 1950's, were precisely for this purpose; to

demonstrate how awful they were for the purposes of social control, not to educate the public about

their reform (p8)

What is also not in dispute between us is that in the second half of the twentieth century, the

physical and ideological dominance of the

institution began to decline (Scull 1977). What is in dispute however, is why this should be so.

While not claiming that the normalization principle was the only causal factor in what has become

known as deinstitutionalization

or de-carceration, Wolfensberger nonetheless claims that it 'broke the back of

the institutional movement' (p60) and without it 'there would have been massive investments in

building new, smaller, regionalised institutions' (p16). I would not wish to dismiss the role of ideas,

or more appropriately, ideologies in this process but there were other, more important factors.

Most importantly, the rising costs of institutional care were becoming a major factor in the shift to

community based care. Ideology was turned into political action when this, along with other factors

such as rising oil prices, spiralling arms expenditure and so on, brought about fiscal crises in many

capitalist states (O'Connor 1973. Gough 1979). This fiscal crisis explanation stands in stark contrast

to Wolfensberger's assertion that while de-institutionalization may have started in the 1950's, it was

a 'drift that occurred without much planning, intent or consciousness' (p98) .

The transition to late capitalism (the post-industrial society as some

writers have called it or its more recent fashionable manifestation as

post-modernity) has seen this process continue apace. The question it

raises is what does this process mean. Cohen suggests that it

"...is thought by some to represent a questioning,

even a radical reversal of that earlier transformation,

by others merely to signify a continuation and

intensification of its patterns".

(Cohen 1985.13)

Those who have promoted the idea of normalization would, I suspect

place themselves in the first camp. That is to say, the move from the

institution to the community is part of a process of removing some of the apparatus of social control

by the state. I would place myself in the latter-camp seeing this move as an extension of the

processes of control within the capitalist state.

After all, the balance of power between disabled people and

professionals has not changed at all. The situation described by Cohen

(1985) remains unchanged.

"...much the same groups of experts are doing much

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 6 (16)

the same business as usual. The basic rituals

incorporated into the move to the mind -taking case

histories, writing social enquiry reports, constructing

files, organising case .conferences - are still being

enacted".

(Cohen 1985.152)

In the world of late capitalism, the same people, albeit with different jobs titles and perhaps in

plusher buildings, are doing the same things to disabled people although they may now be calling

them 'doing a needs

led assessment' or 'producing a care plan' in Britain. Elsewhere it may

be called individual programme planning, social brokerage, change

agentry and the like. But the material fact remains, it is still professionals doing it, whatever 'it' is

called, to disabled people.

The ideology of normalization All social changes require an ideology to

support the economic rationality underpinning them. So the ideology

underpinning the rise of the institution was ultimately a medical and a

therapeutic one; accordingly placing people in institutions was not only good for the health of

individuals, it was also good for the health of society. Normalization, it could be argued, is the

ideology (or one of the ideologies) that allowed people to be returned to the community in that they

can be 'normalized' or in its later variant, be allocated normal (valued) social roles. After all, we

don't want the different, the deviant or even the dangerous returned to our communities.

I fully realise that here I am stepping on dangerous ground and that both Wolfensberger (1994) and

Nirje (1993) would probably argue that I am confusing normal with normalization. There is not the

space to

demonstrate that I realise that this is not the case nor to draw attention to their own published

ambiguities on this issue. Instead I wish to point out that normalization is part of a discourse which

is predicated on the normal/abnormal distinction and it is certainly clear that Wolfensberger thinks

this distinction is real rather than socially constructed (p95).

A materialist approach to this would suggest, as does the French

philosopher Foucault (1973) , that the way we talk about the world and

the way we experience it are inextricably linked -the names we give to

things shapes our experience of them and our experience of things in

the world influences the names we give to them. Hence our practices of

normalizing people and normalizing services both constructs and

maintains the normal/abnormal dichotomy.

It is becoming clear that the social structures of late capitalist societies cannot be discussed in a

discourse of normality/abnormality, because what characterises them is difference; differences

based on gender, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, abilities, religious beliefs, wealth, age,

access or non-access to work and so on. And in societies founded on oppression, these differences

cross cut and intersect each other in ways they we haven't even begun to properly understand, let

alone try to resolve (Zarb and Oliver 1993).

The concept of simultaneous oppression (Stuart 1993) may offer a more

adequate way of understanding differences within the generic category

of disability. Certainly people are beginning to talk about their experience in this way.

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 7 (16)

"As a black disabled women, I cannot

compartmentalise or separate aspects of my identity

in this way. The collective experience of my race,

disability and gender are what shape and inform my

life".

(Hill 1994.7)

Kirsten Hearn provides a poignant account of how disabled lesbians and

gay men are excluded from all their potential communities. Firstly,

"The severely able-bodied community and straight

disabled community virtually ignored our campaign".

(Hearn 1991.30)

and,

"Issues of equality are not fashionable for the majority

of the severely able-bodied, white, middle-class

lesbian and gay communities.

(Hearn 1991.33)

The point that I am making is that the discourse of normalization

(whatever the intent of its major proponents and however badly they feel it has been misused by its

disciples} can never adequately describe or explain societies characterised by difference because of

its reductionist views of both humanity and society. Individual and group differences cannot be

described solely in terms of the normality/abnormality dichotomy and inegalitarian social structures

cannot be explained by reference only to valued and devalued social roles. Normalization can also

never serve to transform peoples lives; a point to which I shall return.

The Role of Experience

In explaining why the idea of normalization was so powerful for many

people, Wolfensberger claims that it connected with their common

sense, it gave them a language or discourse in which to talk about the

issues and it gave them a unified mental scheme (social theory)

connecting a range of issues (p59). Of course, in talking about this he is talking about the

connection of these ideas to the experience of

academics, professionals and policy makers not to the experience of

people with learning difficulties

He also claims that 'a single theory or principle could be applied to all; not only to all retarded

people and not only to all handicapped people but to all deviant ones' (p58) .I remember attending

the first conference on normalization in Britain in the mid 1970's when such claims were made.

Vic Finkelstein and myself vociferously denied the claim that the half-digested mish mash of

functionalist and interactionist sociology we were being presented with had anything to do with our

experiences as disabled people.

Our claims were of course denied, as they often have been in the past

on the grounds that as isolated, elite disabled individuals, our

experiences did not accord with those of the majority of disabled people (a basis on which you may

wish to deny my claims in this paper). And of course the normalization band wagon rolled on in

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 8 (16)

Britain, into social service departments, health authorities and undemocratic voluntary

organisations. But not into the newly emerging democratic and

accountable organisations that disabled people were setting up at the

time. To this day, not a single one of these organisations of disabled

people has adopted the normalization principle as the basis for its

operations or as a rationale for its existence.

Our experiences at that conference mirrored our experience in terms of

disability politics more generally. We were already being told by groups of able bodied experts that

not only did they know best what our

problems were, they also knew best how to solve them. And disabled

people were developing our own views both on those experts who

wished to define or colonise our experience and to identify what our

problems really were. These views were encapsulated in 'a little red

book' called Fundamental Principles of Disability (UPIAS 1976) and

which, I would argue, is far more important for disabled people than all the publications on

normalization put together.

This slim volume is not widely available but the debt that disabled people owe to it is enormous. I,

and many other disabled people, openly

acknowledge our debt to the document in the way it shaped our own

understanding of disability (Oliver 1995) .The document has never been

widely available and with the demise of the Union in 1991, it will become increasingly difficult to

obtain. I reproduce two passages here, the first of which exposes the role of 'experts' in our lives and

the second which defines our own problems for us.

The Union maintains that, far from being too

concerned with the cause of disability, the "experts" in

the field have never concerned themselves with the

real cause at all. The fact that they had delusions that

they were looking at the cause, when they were

typically concentrating on its effects, on confusing

disability with physical impairment, underlines the

imperative need for disabled people to become their

own experts. It is only when we begin to grasp this

expertise that disabled people will be able to see

through the "experts" attempt to disguise as

something "entirely different" the traditional, clearly

failed, "spontaneous" struggle against aspects of

disability, such as poverty.

Disability is something imposed on top of our

impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated

and excluded from full participation in society.

Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in

society". To understand this it is necessary to grasp

the distinction between the physical impairment and

the social situation, called 'disability', of people with

such impairment. Thus we define impairment as

lacking part of or all of a limb, or having a defective

limb , organ or mechanism of the body; and disability

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 9 (16)

as 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 participation in the

mainstream of social activities. Physical disability is

therefore a particular form of social oppression.

It was from this work that I and a number of other disabled people began to write and talk about the

social model of disability. For my own part I originally conceptualised models of disability as the

binary distinction between what I chose to call the individual and social models of disability

(Oliver, 1983). This was no amazing new insight on my part dreamed up in some ivory tower but

was really an attempt to enable me to make sense of the world for the social work students and

other professionals who I was teaching at the time. The idea of the individual and the social model

was taken quite simply and explicitly from the distinction originally made between impairment and

disability by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in the 'Fundamental

principles' document (1976).

The articulation of this new view of disability did not receive universal acceptance. Originally, it

was professionals, policy makers and staff from organisations for disabled people who, because

they had vested interests in maintaining the status quo underpinned by the individual model,

questioned the experiential validity and explanatory reliability of the social model. However, we

have seen a paradigm shift and many professional bodies and groups have now come to espouse the

social model, in theory at least (DHSS 1988 Gillespie-Sells and Campbell 1991). Whether it has

had much impact on professional practice is another question altogether and beyond the scope of

this paper.

The articulation of the social model was received much more

enthusiastically by disabled people because it made an immediate

connection to their own experiences. It quickly became the basis for

disability awareness and later disability equality training. It was adopted by democratic disability

organisations allover the world including Disabled Peoples International (DPI) and the British

Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) and remains as central to

their rationale.

In reading Wolfensberger's comments about how Changing Patterns

came to be written, I am struck by just how much in the way of economic

resources (plane tickets, hotel bookings, secretarial support etc} went in to producing it. Similarly

the World Health Organisation has spent

millions of pounds, dollars and yen on trying to describe and classify us (Wood 1980} and have

lamentably failed.

Disabled people, whose intellectual labours have produced the social

model, have done this without access to the kinds of resources available to international academic

superstars, professionals and policy makers, as well as the usual coterie of hangers on and free

loaders. Imagine how much farther down the road we might be if disabled people had been given

these resources to develop our own social theory, our own quality measures for human services and

our own classification schemes.

The material conditions of disabled people throughout the world

Developing materialist theory in respect of disability requires us to

understand the material conditions under which disabled people live

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 10 (16)

throughout the world. A recent UN report (Despouy 1991) has confirmed

earlier estimates that there are more than 500 million impaired persons

in the World; that is one in ten of the World's population. The report goes on to suggest that at least

"25 per cent of the entire population are adversely affected by the presence of disabilities".

There have been very few international studies of the lives of disabled

people although the ON Report did come to the following conclusion.

" these persons frequently live in deplorable

conditions, owing to the presence of physical and

social barriers which prevent their integration and full

participation in the community. As a result, millions of

disabled people throughout the world are segregated

and deprived of virtually all their rights, and lead a

wretched, marginal life".

(Despouy 1991.1)

It is possible to put some descriptive flesh on the bones of these figures and what follows relies

heavily on figures present in a recent special edition of the New Internationalist (No 233/July 1992)

called 'Disabled Lives'.

Of the 500 million disabled people in the world, 300 million live in

developing countries, and of these 140 million are children and 160

million are women. One in five, that is one hundred million of the total population of disabled

people, are disabled by malnutrition. In the developing countries, only one in a hundred disabled

people have

access to any form of rehabilitation and 80% of all disabled people live in Asia and the Pacific, but

they receive just 2% of the total resources allocated to disabled people. In the third world, the death

rate of people with a spinal injury within two years of the injury is as high today as it was in the

developed world before the second world war.

While not being able to put an accurate figure onto it, there is no doubt that, allover the world, there

is a close link between disability and poverty.

"There is a close relationship between poverty and

disability: malnutrition, mothers weakened by frequent

childbirth, inadequate immunisation programmes,

accidents in over crowded homes, all contribute to an

incidence of disability among poor people that is

higher than among people living in easier

circumstances. Furthermore, disability creates and

exacerbates poverty by increasing isolation and

economic strain, not just for the individual but for the

family: there is little doubt that disabled people are

amongst the poorest in poor countries".

(Coleridge 1993.64)

While in an absolute sense, the material conditions of disabled people in the developed world are

vastly superior to their third world counterparts, they still experience conditions of life far inferior

to the rest of the population. Thus, for example, more than 60% of disabled people in both Britain

and America currently live below the poverty line.

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 11 (16)

Labour markets in the developed world continue to discriminate to the

point where disabled people are three times more likely to be

unemployed than their able-bodied counterparts. In education, the

majority of disabled children are still educated in segregated special

schools and less than three in a thousand disabled students end up in

higher education, when, according to prevalence figures, it should be

one hundred. On any indicators, disabled women and black disabled

people fare worse than their white, male counterparts.

While, the accuracy of some of these figures might be called into

question in respect of both the developed and developing world, no one

would deny that they paint an authentic picture of the lives of disabled people throughout the world.

The point at issue is what can be done about producing the necessary changes. In the next section, I

shall discuss the different positions of normalization and materialist theories in respect of

producing changes in the lives of disabled people.

Economic, Political and social Change - How will it be delivered?

In comparing what normalization and materialist theory have to offer in

respect of these changes, I want to concentrate on three inter-related

areas; change in individuals, change in social policy and welfare

programmes and change through the political process.

Partly, I suspect, because of the unacknowledged impact that the social

model has had, both Nirje and Wolfensberger are anxious to claim that

normalization does not mean making individuals normal. They go further

and suggest that it can be applied even more fruitfully to environments. Wolfensberger however

honestly admits that

''... as long as one grants that abnormalization

abnormalizes a person, and not just the person's

environment, one cannot say that normalization only

normalizes life conditions...In short I cannot see how

Nirje's formulation allows an exclusion of actions on a

person"

(Wolfensberger 1994.97)

It is the final sentence which raises issues of grave concern. The history of oppression is

underpinned by allowing 'actions on persons' and the crucial questions this raises are who decides,

what actions and which persons? To answer, as normalization does, that prevailing life

conditions, environments and values are the ones into which to

normalize individuals, begs huge questions and may take us down the

road to death making, sterilization, physical torture, incarceration and mind control. This list is part

of our collective history as disabled people as we are beginning to discover as we begin to write this

history, and not some emotive or exaggerated imagining to make a political point (Morris 1991,

Coleridge 1993).

Materialist theory does not have the same problem with changing

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 12 (16)

individuals, although it is their consciousness that it wants to change, not their bodies, their

behaviour or their social roles. Transforming consciousness is a matter changing personal

experiences into political issues. This materialist theory does, and it also links the two; at the

collective level disabled people may 'false consciously' believe that the difficulties they face are

because of their individual impairments. Hence they 'internalise oppression' (Sutherland 1981,

Morris 1991) by believing that it is their fault that they cannot get a job, use public transport and so

on.

Social and individual transformations are inextricably linked. However, in materialist theory

individuals must transform themselves through

collective action, not be transformed by others who know what's best for them or what's best for

society.

Empowerment is a collective process of transformation on which the

powerless embark as part of the struggle to resist the oppression of

others, as part of their demands to be included, and/or to articulate their own views of the world.

Central to this struggle is the recognition by the powerless that they are oppressed; first articulated

in respect of disability by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in the 1970s

and more recently been given a theoretical re-formulation within 'oppression theory' more generally

(Abberley 1987).

Normalization theory sees improving human services as a major

platform for improving the quality of life for disabled people and indeed much time and energy is

devoted to precisely this. Wolfensberger's position on this is unequivocal; he is vehemently opposed

to services provided by institutions but has spent much of his working life developing and

improving community based services. As I suggested earlier, this is because he views community

based services as radically different from institutional ones in that they are not part of the social

control apparatus of the state.

While his position on community based human services may be

unequivocal, it is certainly contradictory. In the paper he gave at the

international disability conference in Bristol in 1987, he came very close to taking a materialist

position on all human services, not simply institutional ones, when he argued that their real purpose

(latent function) was to provide employment for the middle classes and in order to continue to do

that

"...merely enlarging the human service empire is not

sufficient to meet all the requirements that a postprimary

production economy poses. In addition, one

has to make all the services that do exist as

unproductive as possible - indeed one has to make

them counterproductive if at all possible, so that they

create dependency, and so that they create impaired

people rather than habilitate them".

(Wolfensberger 1988.34)

The problem with this formulation is that it mistakes the symptom for the problem. If human

services under capitalism are part of the state

apparatus of social control as materialist theory would argue, the reason they employ the middle

classes is simple; they are not the groups who pose a threat to capitalism and therefore, they do not

need to be controlled, but instead can become agents for the control of others.

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 13 (16)

It is precisely for this reason that the demands of disabled people all over the world are not, any

longer, for improvements in existing services but control over them. And further, their struggles

around welfare issues are about producing and controlling their own services through centres for

independent living, direct payments to enable them to purchase these services for themselves and

peer counselling to enable them to develop the necessary skills and support to meet their own selfdefined

individual and collective needs. This is not an anti welfare or anti human services position

but one which raises fundamental issues of who is in control and in whose interest?

In looking at the issue of political change, within normalization theory it is difficult to find

anything beyond descriptions of the kinds of things devalued people should be entitled to. How to

achieve these entitlements at the political level is not really discussed although Wolfensberger

confidently asserts that if we want to valorize someone's social roles

"...we know from social science what the overarching

strategies are through which this can be accomplished

if that is what one wants to pursue". (Wolfensberger 1994.96)

I don't know what social science he is referring to but I have to say that I know very few social

scientists who are, any longer, convinced that the concept of social roles has very much value to the

development of social theory let alone for the promotion of political action. Not only are Talcott

Parsons and Erving Goffman dead in a material sense but so are their products; the macro and micro

versions of role theory.

One can only assume from normalization writings that political change

will be a gift from the powerful to powerless once they have come to a

true understanding of disability through exposure to the teachings of

normalization and social role valorization. Nowhere does normalization acknowledge that

"...the conviction that one's group is worth fighting for

has to come at least partly from within. The alternative

is to wait passively for the advantaged group to confer

limited equality which does not essentially alter the

status quo, and which it may be motivated to avoid".

(Dalley 1992.128)

Again, materialist theory is much more upfront about political change. It will only be achieved

through struggle, and that struggles will be by oppressed groups themselves against the forces that

oppress them. In

order to do this it is necessary for oppressed groups to organise

collectively to confront this oppression. That inevitably means

confrontation and conflict with powerful groups, interests and structures for there are few examples

in human history of people willingly giving up power to others.

As far as disabled people are concerned, we have seen over the past

fifteen years disabled people coming together to organise themselves as

a movement at local, national and international levels. In Britain, for

example, in order to harness this growing consciousness of disabled

people, to provide a platform to articulate the re-definition of the problem of disability and to give a

focus to the campaigns for independent living and against discrimination, the British Council of

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 14 (16)

Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) was formed in 1981 and its success in the subsequent

decade is entirely an achievement of disabled people themselves (Hasler 1993).

Its conception and subsequent development have been achieved

without extensive financial support from Government or from traditional

organisations for disabled people. On the contrary, the BCODP was

criticised from the start as being elitist, isolationist, unrepresentative, and Marxist by a collection of

unrepresentative people with abilities, right and left wing academics, isolated and elitist staff and

management of traditional organisations and many professionals whose very careers were bound up

with keeping disabled people dependent.

Yet despite these attacks, BCODP has gone from strength to strength,

now representing over 90 organisations of disabled people and 300,000

disabled individuals. These initiatives not only established BCODP as

the only representative voice of disabled people in Britain but by its very success it stimulated an

ever growing number of disabled people to

adopt a disabled identity. Similar stories of the rise of the disability movement could be told from

other parts of both the developing and the developed world.

With this growing sense of a collective, political identity has developed the self-confidence not

simply to ask for the necessary changes but to demand them and to use a whole range of tactics

including direct action and civil disobedience. What's more, this movement is democratic arid

accountable to disabled people themselves (Dreidger 1988 Oliver 1990 Davis 1993) and its

collective voice is demanding that we be included in our societies everywhere by ending the

oppression that confronts us, not by offering us and our oppressors normalization or social role

valorization programmes.

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that normalization as a social theory is

inadequate in that it does not describe experience satisfactorily, its

explanation of why disabled have the kinds of experiences they do is

wholly inadequate, and its potential for transforming those experiences

to something better is limited. It is not only those unsympathetic to

normalization who question its future, however.

"What does normalization now have to do in order to

be a positive force for change in the 1990's. The

answer may lie in going back to its roots and

realigning itself in relation to other sociological

theories".

(Brown and smith 1992.176)

Whether such a realignment, even with materialist theory, is likely to

resuscitate normalization is itself doubtful, because what is at stake is a vision of the kind of

society we would like to live in. Normalization theory offers disabled people the opportunity to be

given valued social roles in an unequal society which values some roles more than others.

Materialist social theory offers disabled people the opportunity to transform their own lives and in

so doing to transform the society in which they live into one in which all roles are valued. As a

Oliver, Michael J. 1999. 15 (16)

disabled person I know which of those choices I prefer and I also know which most of the disabled

people I meet prefer.

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