Big Society? Disabled people with the label of learning disabilities and the queer(y)ing of civil society

Dan Goodley; Katherine Runswick-Cole

doi:10.1080/15017419.2014.941924

Big Society? Disabled people with the label of learning disabilities and the queer(y)ing of civil society

Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research

Volume 17 (2015): Issue 1

By: Dan Goodley and Katherine Runswick-Cole

Open Access

|Aug 2015

Abstract

This paper explores the shifting landscape of civil society alongside the emergence of ‘Big Society’ in the UK. We do so as we begin a research project Big Society? Disabled people with learning disabilities and Civil Society [Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K004883/1)]; we consider what ‘Big Society’ might mean for the lives of disabled people labelled with learning disabilities (LDs). In the paper, we explore the ways in which the disabled body/mind might be thought of as a locus of contradictions as it makes problematic Big Society notions of: active citizenship and social capital. Our aim is to queer(y), or to trouble, these Big Society ideas, and to suggest that disability offers new ways of thinking through civil society. This leads us to three new theoretical takes upon civil society: (1) queer(y)ing active citizenship, (2) queer(y)ing social capital and (3) shaping, resisting and queer(y)ing Big Society. We conclude by suggesting that now is the time for disabled people with LDs to re-enter the fray in a new epoch of crip civil society.

References

Alcock, Pete. 2010. Big Society or Civil Society? A New Environment for the Third Sector. London: Third Sector Research Centre.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Aspis, S. 1997. “Inclusion and Exclusion.” Paper presented at the Social History of Learning Disability Conference: ‘Inclusion and Exclusion’, The Open University, Walton Hall Milton Keynes, December 10.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bates, Peter, and Davis A. Fabian. 2004. “Social Capital, Social Inclusion and Services for People with LD.” Disability & Society 19 (3): 195–207. doi:10.1080/0968759042000204202.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1994. Alone Again: Ethics after Certainty. London: Demos.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Blond, Philip. 2009. “The Rise of the Red Tories, Prospect Magazine.” Accessed May 20. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/riseoftheredtories/.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Burrington, Debra. 1998. “The Public Square and Citizen Queer: Toward a New Political Geography.” Polity 31 (1): 107–131. doi:10.2307/3235369.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Chappell, Anne Louse. 1998. “Still Out in the Cold: Disabled People with LD and the Social Model of Disability”. In The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives, edited by Tom Shakespeare, 211–220. London: Cassell.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Crines, Andrew, and Jamie Halsall. 2012. “Remoulding Welfare Britain: The Philosophy of the Big Society in Cameron's Britain.” Public Policy and Administration Research 2 (7). Accessed May 20. http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/PPAR/article/view/3778/3827
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Department for Communities and Local Government. 2010. Decentralisation and Localism Bill: An Essential Guide. London: HMSO.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Department of Health. 2001. Valuing People. London: HMSO.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Department of Health. 2012. “Department of Health Review: Winterbourne View Hospital”. Accessed May 20. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/141591/Department-of-Health-Review-Winterbourne-View-Hospital-Interim-Report1.pdf.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Diamond, Patrick. 2011. “From the Big Society to the Good Society.” Civitas Review 8 (1): 1–8.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Dowse, Leanne. 2009. “‘Some People Are Never Going to Be Able to Do that’. Challenges for People with Intellectual Disability in the 21st Century.” Disability & Society 24 (5): 571–584. doi:10.1080/09687590903010933.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Evans, Kathy. 2011. “‘Big Society’ in the UK: A Policy Review.” Children & Society 25: 164–171. doi:10.1111/j.1099-0860.2010.00351.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gibson-Graham, J. K. 1999. “Queer(y)ing Capitalism in and Out of the Classroom [1].” Journal of Geography in Higher Education 23 (1): 80–85. doi:10.1080/03098269985623.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gill, Stephen. 2000. “Toward a Postmodern Prince? The Battle in Seattle as a Moment in the New Politics of Globalisation.” Millenium - Journal of International Studies 29 (1): 131–140. doi:10.1177/03058298000290010101.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goodley, Dan. 2011. Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goodley, Dan. 2014. Theorising Disablism and Ableism. London: Routledge.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goodley, Dan, and Rebecca Lawthom. 2005. Disability & Psychology: Critical Introductions and Reflections. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goodley, Dan, and Katherine Runswick-Cole. 2011. “The Violence of Disablism.” Journal of Sociology of Health and Illness 33 (4): 602–617. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01302.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goodley, Dan, and Katherine Runswick-Cole. 2012. “The Body as Disability and Possibility: Theorising the ‘Leaking, Lacking and Excessive’ Bodies of Disabled Children.” Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 15 (1): 1–19.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goonewardena, Kanishka, and Katharine Rankin. 2004. “The Desire Called Civil Society: A Contribution to the Critique of a Bourgeois Category.” Planning Theory 3: 117–149. doi:10.1177/1473095204044778.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2005. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Jacobs, Ronald N. 2000. Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511489211.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Linton, Simi. 1998. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lister, Ruth, and Fran Bennett. 2010. “The New ‘Champion of Progressive Ideals?” Cameron's Conservative Party: Poverty, Family Policy and Welfare Reform Renewal 18 (1–2): 84–109.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mallett, Rebecca, and Katherine Runswick-Cole. 2012. “Commodifying Autism: The Cultural Contexts of ‘Disability’ in the Academy.” In Disability and Social Theory, edited by D. Goodley, B. Hughes, and L. J. Davis, 33–51. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
McKeever, Patricia, and Karen-Lee Miller. 2004. “Mothering Children Who Have Disabilities: A Bourdieusian Interpretation of Maternal Practices.” Social Science & Medicine 59 (6): 1177–1191. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.12.023.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
McRuer, Robert. 2006. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: New York University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
McRuer, Robert. 2012. “Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism.” S&F Online: The Scholar and Feminist Online 10: 1–12.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Meleo-Erwin, Z. 2012. “Disrupting Normal: Toward the ‘Ordinary and Familiar’ in Fat Politics.” Feminism & Psychology 22 (3): 388–402. doi:10.1177/0959353512445358.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Namaste, V. 2009. “Undoing Theory: The “Transgender Question” and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” Hypatia 24 (3): 11–32. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01043.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Peck, Adam, and Jamie Tickell. 2002. “Neoliberalizing Space.” Antipode 34 (3): 380–404. doi:10.1111/1467-8330.00247.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Powell, Fred. 2009. “Civil Society, Social Policy and Participatory Democracy: Past, Present and Future.” Social Policy and Society 8: 49–58. doi:10.1017/S1474746408004570.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Power, Marcus. 2005. “Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 37: 605–612. doi:10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00513.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Ramlow, T. R. 2006. “Bodies in the Borderlands: Gloria Anzaldua's and David Wojnarowicz's Mobility Machines.” Melus 31 (3): 169–187. doi:10.1093/melus/31.3.169.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Roulstone, A. 2011. Coalition Disability Policy - A Consolidation of Neo-Liberalism or Benign Pragmatism? Accessed November 1. http://www.social-policy.org.uk/lincoln2011/Roulstone%20P4.pdf.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Runswick-Cole, K. Forthcoming. “‘Us’ and ‘Them?’ The Limits and Possibilities of a Politics of Neurodiversity in Neoliberal Times.” Disability & Society. doi:10.1080/09687599.2014.910107.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Runswick-Cole, Katherine, and Dan Goodley. 2011. “The ‘Big Society’: A Dismodernist Critique.” Disability & Society 26 (7): 881–885. doi:10.1080/09687599.2011.618743.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Scott, M. 2011. “Reflections on ‘The Big Society’.” Community Development Journal 46 (1): 132–137. doi:10.1093/cdj/bsq057.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sears, Alan. 2003. “Queer Anti-Capitalism: What's Left of Lesbian and Gay Liberation?” Science and Society 69 (1): 92–112. doi:10.1521/siso.69.1.92.56800.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sedgwick, E. K. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Seidman, G. 2008. “Transnational Labour Campaigns: Can the Logic of the Market Be Turned Against Itself?” Development and Change 39: 991–1003. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7660.2008.00525.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sheldon, Alison. 2004. “Women and Disability.” In Disabling Barriers, Enabling Environments, edited by John Swain, Sally French, Colin Barnes, and Carol Thomas, 69–74. London: Sage.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Slater, Jenny. 2013. “Construction, Perceptions and Expectations of being Disabled and Young: A Critical Disability Studies Perspective.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Metropolitan University, Manchester.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sothern, Matthew. 2007. “You Could Truly be Yourself if You Just Weren't You: Sexuality, Disabled Body Space, and the (Neo)liberal Politics of Self-help.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: 144–159. doi:10.1068/d1704.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sykes, H. 2009. “The qBody Project: From Lesbians in Physical Education to Queer Bodies In/Out of School.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 13 (3): 238–254 doi:10.1080/10894160902876671.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Thomas, Carol. 2007. Sociologies of Disability, ‘Impairment’, and Chronic Illness: Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. London: Palgrave.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Whitney, Clare. 2006. “Intersections in Identity–Identity Development among Queer Women with Disabilities.” Sexuality and Disability 24 (1): 39–52. doi:10.1007/s11195-005-9002-4.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Williams, Andew, Paul Cloke, and Samuel Thomas. 2012. “Co-constituting Neoliberalism: Faith-based Organisations, Co-option, and Resistance in the UK.” Environment and Planning 44: 1479–1501. doi:10.1068/a44507.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wilton, Robert, and Stephanie Schuer. 2006. “Towards Socio-spatial Inclusion? Disabled People, Neoliberalism and the Contemporary Labour Market.” Area 38 (2): 186–195. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2006.00668.x.
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wood, Claudia, and Eugene Grant. 2010. Destination Unknown. London: Demos.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2014.941924 | Journal eISSN: 1745-3011

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English

Page range: 1 - 13

Submitted on: Sep 23, 2013

Accepted on: Mar 21, 2014

Published on: Aug 1, 2015

Published by: Stockholm University Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

© 2015 Dan Goodley, Katherine Runswick-Cole, published by Stockholm University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 17 (2015): Issue 1