SOC352H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Nel Noddings, 3 Women, Emotion Work
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Lecture 8: Gender, Care and disability
For today:
• Medical vs. Social Model of Disability
• Parenting and Disability
• Disability, Gender, and Care
o Nurturance and Dependency
• Mutual Support
o Communities of Care
o Ethics of Care
Disability as socially constructed
• Definition varies
• Can be fluid (anyone can become disabled)
• Everyone will encounter some form of disability
• Social norms are what disables people rather than actual impairments
Disability (4 main aspects)
• A system of interpreting and disciplining bodies
• Considers the relationship between bodies and their environment
• Set of practices that create normal or abnormal people, or abled or disabled bodies
• A way to describe the instability of the bodied self
Medical vs. Social Models of Disability
• Medical Model
o Historically the dominant way of looking at society
o During the enlightment era there was a focus on classifying
▪ Discovering differences between people and animals
▪ Development of taxonomy
▪ Period of the scientific revolution mid 17- late 18th century
▪ But also an imperative to focus on preserving people
▪ Bodies that were considered abnormal were suggested to be corrected
▪ People who were abnormal were either exploited for profit, hidden away, or
“fixed”
o Differences need to be fixed in some way in order to have people fit more closely to
social norms
o These problems are also supposedly fixed medically
▪ Seen as sick
▪ Disability is a sign of impairment
▪ Rhetoric of tragedy: people need to be cured
▪ Assumptions about quality of life
o Normal vs. Abnormal
▪ Focus on cure
▪ Assumptions about quality of life
▪ Focus on the individual as a problem
o Focuses on changing the individual
• Social Model
o Disability is contextually dependent
o Difference between impairment and disability
▪ While impairment causes physical limitation, disability is seen as the barriers
beyond our own bodies that prevent people from living their life
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