“SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY AND DISABILITY
STUDIES MAKE A ‘GOOD MARRIAGE’?!
Studying ‘jammed’ life trajectories and creative strategies of
people with intellectual disabilities and their environment.
LIEN CLAES – GHENT UNIVERSITY
Disability Studies Conference Lancaster 2010
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION…
PhD research:
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Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology & Educational
Sciences, Department of Special Education
-
“Jammed trajectories and creative solutions for people
with intellectual disabilities and their environment: life
story research from a cross-fertilization of the
perspectives ‘disability studies’ and ‘social geography’.”
-
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Geert Van Hove
INTRODUCTION

People with intellectual disability (ID) and
additional mental health problems: complex
support questions and limited support (“jammed
situations” – “falling between two stools”)
- Exclusion criterions
-

General lack of expertise
Long waiting lists
Little coordination/collaboration between mental
health care and support system for people with ID
At the same time: people are (supposed to) and
should be very mobile (cf. endless trajectories in the
care/support system)
INTRODUCTION

Current research: medical-psychiatric discourse
(focus on: individual problems, symptoms, diagnoses,
treatment,… – without charging the context)

This research: social interpretations
-
(focus on: life (hi)stories and trajectories of people with ID
ánd their environment)
‘Space’ and ‘place’ as valuable indicators
5 (?) extensive case studies
Variety of research methods
-
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

Looking for a theoretical framework that:



Could capture the apparent field of tension (‘jammed’ vs.
‘mobile’)
Fits with the ambition to focus on life (hi)stories,
trajectories and personal experiences of ‘space’/‘place’
Disability Studies



Disability as socio-cultural construct widens the target
The choice/wish to describe, analyze, understand,
change,.. (rather than diagnose or treat)
But…disability studies doesn’t highlight a spatial
approach?
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

Social Geography:
Studies socio-spatial processes regulating and
reproducing social exclusion and oppression and
wants to bring the perspectives and lived experiences
of marginalized groups
 Different view in studying life trajectories,
spatialities and processes of in/exclusion of people
with ID and mental health problems

“Could a creative cross-fertilization of the
perspectives make a Good Marriage?”
THE PLACE OF (INTELLECTUAL)
DISABILITY IN SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY

Social geography: what’s in a name?!
From ‘science of places’ to ‘social science’, from ‘the
study of people and nature in intricate relation’ to
‘the analysis of social phenomena in space’…
 Evolutions in scope, content and methodology
 Concerned with social issues affecting people’s lives
(eg. class, gender, poverty,…) and the role of space in
the creation of social relations, identities, social
inequalities and oppression
 Involves the understanding of the patterns which
arise from the use social groups make of space and of
the processes involved in making and changing such
patterns

THE PLACE OF (INTELLECTUAL)
DISABILITY IN SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY

Geographies of disability:
Before ‘90: disability was hardly considered
 By the end of the ’90s: more attention (‘an important
area of scholarship within human geography’)
 Initially: physical disability and mental health
problems



Geographies of intellectual disability remained
neglected and marginalized
Paradigm shift: from medicalized/positivist to
social model/social constructionist perspective
OPENING SPACE…
Opening space for geographies of (intellectual)
disability in social geography
 Opening space for the spatial and geographical in
disability studies

-> Marriage is ‘reflected’ in 3 sections of research
questions:
1. Boundaries in spatial trajectories
2. Space, place and the construction of meanings
3. Space, place and relations
OPENING SPACE

Boundaries in spatial trajectories:

How are people with ID and mental health
problems moving within the institutions that are
created and organized for them?

What are boundaries in their spatial moving?

How can ‘mobility’ – as an interdisciplinary studied
metaphor – counter the idea of ‘jammed
situations’?
OPENING SPACE

Space, place and construction of meanings

How are space en place contributing to disability
as social construction?

What is the meaning of ‘spaces’ (eg. Isolation
rooms) and ‘places’ (eg. Place on a waiting list)?

On which apparent conflicting ways are people
(re)presented and (re)presenting themselves (from
stucked to mobile subjects)?
OPENING SPACE

Space, place and relations
How can space enable or limit interactions en
relations?
 Who are ‘significant’ others in the natural and
professional networks of people?
 How are space and place defining processes of
inclusion/participation/belonging and processes of
exclusion/marginalization/othering?

-> Exploring intimate social and spatial worlds of
people: less traditional creative research approaches
(cf. disability studies)