Required reading:

• McDermott, R. and Varenne, H. "Culture as disability" Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26: 324-348. 1995. (expanded version published on line by Serendip)

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This is the eleventh in a series of notes to fifteen lectures for my class Communication and Culture.

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1. Two cultural facts ("things," "actants," "inhabited practices")
   1. "Disabilities"
   2. "Merit" (intelligence, creativity, etc.) as a property of individuals for the polity to measure and use for major life rewards
2. The ongoing production of both facts and of the consequences of this production
   1. In the perspective of this course, such facts are not properties of individuals but of the interactional and communicational events that lead to the identification of individuals as a "person with a disability" or a "person with an IQ of xxx."
   2. Thus, and from my point of view, the identification of abilities and the institutionalized impact ("consequentiality") of these identifications is grounded in historical moments ("cultures"). Thus (dis-)abilities are constructed as facts by interactional (social) processes. They are not simply the product of better diagnostic procedures identifying a-cultural disabilities (e.g. dyslexia, "Learning Disability," etc...)
      1. recall
         1. Durkheim on social fact as external constraints (1982 [1895])
         2. Benedict on the integration of traits into overwhelming patterns (1932)
         3. system theory on the feedback processes that actually produce factual patterns
         4. Lévi-Strauss on totemism: identifications of human subgroups within a larger group as "good to think" a statement that I interpret as referring to the organization of human communication through the making of distinctions and associations that associate properties to the original properties.
         5. Turner, Foucault, Bourdieu on the costs of all this for individual human beings caught within these integrated systems of constraints.
   3. and, further, the difficulties these identifications produce for individuals are themselves an ongoing production of many people organized in a particular fashion to make salient the idenfications and enforcing their consequences
      1. "deafness" is not a personal dis-ability but it is transformed into a handicap for particular persons by particular other persons. Dislexia, autism, etc., are not "discovered" but rather, for any number of historical, contingent, reasons, a particular way of being human is identified as "different," sectioned off from other ways, and then, as an identification with consequences.
3. The (cultural) "problem":
   1. stated as a question about what to do next:

      If all human beings were created equal, on what grounds can human beings be denied certain positions in the polity; how can they be legitimately recruited into them?

      Given liberal democracy as it evolved in the 18th century, the uncontroversial answer focuses on the some aspect of the child's inner constitution, that is on some presocial (genetic) characteristics. It was also uncontroversial that, before these could be measured, they needed to be developed--thus the importance of the School as it was given the authority

   2. The "solutions":
      1. develop native merit:
         1. thus schools
         2. thus public, free, compulsory schools
         3. thus "comprehensive" schools (a recent movement)
      2. measure developed merit
         1.  to determine "for all institutional intent and purposes" (through exams and the granting of degrees) the exact rank of the person on any number of scales.
4. The new problem
   1. Given the overwhelming legitimacy of a discourse that has been inscribed more and more profoundly in institutions and regulations almost all human beings now inhabit across the world, the dilemma of modern liberal democracies is usually, but not helpfully, stated as

      How can a person's (in-)ability to be recruited into a particular position be explained?

      1. leading to the ongoing production of stream of "reasons" which we classify as
         1. deprivation explanations ("they are dumb")
         2. difference explanations ("they are the product of a different culture")
            1. When culture was understood above all in psychological terms, it was argued that most inabilities are not genetically grounded but are produced by a combination of social factors (from the nutrition of the mother during pregnancy), to the attitude of teachers and peers in high school and later.
            2. When culture was understood as a matter of communication and practice one might note that physical differences (deafness, blindness) are not necessarily related to the ability to perform social tasks that they may appear to preclude.
   2. however:

      This question makes only sense within a particular cultural system where physical (dis-)abilities are a matter of fundamental concern. As culture theory has developed, it has become necessary to pay attention to the way the cultural process is involved in the production of an identified (dis-)abled person. The recognition of the involvement of cultural processes in (dis-)ability has taken many forms.

      1. When one brings into play all that we have talked about recently (particularly the conversational aspects of hegemony), one will argue that the (dis-)ability is a property of a particular whole as continually reconstituted by the activities of all those who have no choice but to act in terms of this whole because they are accountable to it. It is not a property of any particular person
         1. Again: One cannot separate the dancer from the dance
   3. In (temporary) conclusion:
      1. Any distinction of focus (e.g. (NOT)-HEARING)) is never self-generated (whether by biology or the sharing of similar conditions);
         but mutually constituted (i.e. a product of collective action by human beings in communication, that is "with" each other) in the history of a society. In the process some people are plausibly (see fish in water, common sense, etc.) identified as either abled or disabled.
      2. No one in a society that identifies such differences as relevant can escape these processes.
      3. To the extent that the resulting conditions are both historical and constructed (invented, arbitrary) they are "cultural" so that, eventually, and provocatively, one can talk of culture AS that which disables people in particular ways all involved must construct even as some (most? all?) resists and, sometimes, change.
   4. Yes, and...
      1. On NCATE and constructing a new conversation about how the State is to handle education and its personal consequences.
      2. Koyama on NCLB, "Supplementary Education Services" providers, New York City, school principals, parents