The principal concepts which will be used for analysis in this thesis are reviewed in this chapter. It begins with an analysis of the work of Antonio Gramsci and discusses why his theories of ideology, good sense, common sense, hegemony and the role of organic intellectuals are relevant to this research. It illustrates how an analytical framework based on these concepts can be applied to disability issues in general and with specific reference to this research. The concepts of ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’ are discussed and it is shown that (when used in parallel with Jewson and Mason’s analysis of equality approaches examined in the previous chapter) they can be used to provide a broader understanding of how people with a variety of impairments can be offered greater employment opportunities. Finally, Euske and Euske’s (1991) model of different organisational rationalities is reviewed to help explain the operational realities of the two case study organisations.
Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci’s work is relevant to this thesis for several reasons. Firstly, it offers a
theoretical concept of power which acknowledges economic and ideological interests. He argues that agents perform inside economic and ideological structures and that economic, cultural and social factors cannot be separated theoretically. Hence, from a Gramscian perspective, the social model dependence on structure as the principal cause of oppression on passive disabled agents (Abberley 1987; Barnes 1990; Brisenden 1986; Finkelstein 1980; Hunt 1966; Oliver 1990; UPIAS 1976) becomes
been recognised as difficult to sustain by contemporary writers on disability issues as, ‘disabled people are not merely passive recipients of the built environment, but actively seek to challenge and change it’ (145).
There are other approaches which could be applied to this research such as post- structuralism or postmodernism. As this research shows that from both a historical and contemporary position disabled actors have been influential in removing disabling societal barriers it was important to use an analytical framework that could
accommodate both structure and agency as sources of power and this is what
Gramsci’s theories do. So it was possible to avoid some of the problematic issues that would have arisen had either post-structuralism or postmodernism been used as the division between structure and agency does not appear in the accounts of either theory. For some post-structuralists the body is considered devoid of social meaning, a passive vessel on which authoritarian discourses of power are imposed (Paterson & Hughes 1999, 598). Whereas for some postmodernists all that is witnessed in the social world are competing discourses where any judgments regarding validity are formed on the basis of which discourse produces the most convincing account
(Kitzinger 1987; Kvale 1995, 25-27). Both the above approaches have been applied to disability research, (Corker 1996, 1998; Corker and French 1999; Meekosha 1998; Shakespeare 1998). However, whilst such formulations may be capable of explaining how power is exercised, they do little to explain why power is exercised. The role of agency in Gramsci’s work maintains that subjects exercise power in order to support the material interests of rival groups.
Moreover, some writers on disability draw on Gramsci’s work to argue that a
historical continuity of oppression of disabled people can be found in the dominance of the medical profession. For example, Barnes states:
For Oliver this ‘personal tragedy theory’ of disability has, in turn, achieved ‘ideological hegemony’ (Gramsci 1971), in that it has become translated into common sense and everyday assumptions and beliefs. (Barnes, cited in Barton and Oliver 1997, 11)
Additionally, Shakespeare assigned the label of Gramscian organic intellectuals to those writers who from the mid 1960s forged the social model of disability
(Shakespeare 1994, 73). However, although these authors applied individual concepts from Gramsci's work, none applied a critical framework which drew together several key aspects and applied such a framework to either historical data, or to contemporary everyday actions by disabled people. This thesis adds to the body of knowledge on disability by addressing this point. Gramsci’s concepts can be extended to include disabled people through his analysis of intellectuals and their tendency to construct a critique of common sense. They can also be used to examine how some disabled academics have attempted to challenge the dominant ideological understandings of disability. However, it would be incorrect to suggest that applying Gramsci's concepts is unproblematic, and the following discussions considers some of the difficulties in using his work.
Gramsci did not live long enough after his imprisonment to interpret his prison notebooks into a comprehensive theory of class struggle in Italian society (Sassoon 1982). Hence the interpretation of his concepts has been undertaken by other authors who have found inconsistency in his application of terms. For example, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony takes as a principal reference the nature and mechanisms of bourgeois class rule in stable capitalist societies (Anderson 1976/7, 1985; Mouffe and
Laclau 1985). However, Gramsci is not consistent in his employment of the term hegemony or the related concepts of state and society (Hoare & Nowell 1976; Anderson 1976/7). The latter concepts receive explicit address in the work of Donzelot (1979; 1980), with Laclau focusing on the constitutive character of
antagonisms and the logic of contingency and hegemony in the formation of political discourse, ideology, and identities as the basis for a radical democratic politics (Laclau 1977). The inter-related concepts of ‘hegemony’, ‘civil society’, ‘political society’, ‘domination’ and ‘direction’ are all held to undergo persistent slippage in Gramsci’s work along with the need to move beyond conceptions and strategies derived from an analysis of the nineteenth century and the discourse of Marxism. Gramsci can be held to be sensitive to the limits of the cornerstone Marxist principle of ‘economic-determination-in-the-final-instance’ (Smart 1986) with the concept of hegemony forming a new but inadequate analysis of politics and power with little said on the complex matters of the establishment of forms of hegemony and economism (Mouffe 1979). Consequently the theoretical interpretations of Gramsci contain contradictions which can make applying his theories problematic. These inherent problems are increased for non-Italian speakers who are dependent on the translation and interpretation of his concepts (Hoare & Nowell 1976) which should include any cultural influences on Gramsci (Verdicchio 1995).
Verdicchio (1995) cites Harris (1992) as stating that ‘Gramscianism’ is as varied as the number of those referencing their writing to his name. Verdicchio insists that Gramsci must be understood as a Sardinian introduced to Italian culture and in the context of the ‘Southern Problem’ involving the integration of Italy as a state (see Gramsci 1957; Forman 1988; Schneider 1998). This understanding of Gramsci’s past,
taking cultural references into account, renders his work useful in the modern context as:
Gramsci needs to be read and studied, first and foremost, as a representative of the condition from which he was “educated” into Italianness. It is in such a re- reading that Gramsci can best lead us to “a new way of being Gramscian. (Verdicchio 1995, 175)
This said, it must be noted that similarities as well as differences can be found amongst ostensibly vying factions of Marxism. Stokes (1995) reminds us that Wittgenstein’s (1958) notion of ‘family resemblances’ suggests that no perfectly uniform set of characteristics need be found in order to identify members of a collective identity. The arguments put forward here concern the subtlety of cultural awareness and returning to a better understanding of the past so as to better
understand the present and future possibilities. Key features and nuances in the journey back are to be built on in order to produce skills in the present analysis taking account of present conditions.
It was her knowledge as a native Italian which drew Danieli (1994) to return to the Gramsci’s original Italian texts and applying her cultural knowledge she uncovered subtle but important differences between the original and translated versions (Danieli 1994, 18-22). From this starting point Danieli (1994) provided a Gramscian
framework in order to analyse patriarchal and gendered power relations in three organizations. In this thesis, Danieli’s re-translation has been adapted to the concept of ‘disability’ by identifying how power is exercised in organisations ‘of’ and ‘for’ disabled people. The following explains how Gramsci's concepts of ‘ideology’, ‘good sense’, ‘common sense’, ‘hegemony’, and ‘intellectuals’ will be applied to an analysis
of the ideology and practice of equal opportunity for disabled people in the job market.
Ideology
An awareness of ideology is important in understanding the current models of disability. The ideology which underpins the social model is used to ‘accuse’ the medical model of being the fundamental cause of disability. At the same time it is also used to claim that the social model offers a remedy for all disabled people in terms of its ability to remove disabling barriers (Barnes 1997; Finkelstein 2001; Swain et al 1993). Oliver (1990) has argued that one consequence of industrialisation was an ideological belief that
individuals who could not meet the physical requirements necessary to adapt to the new industrial systems became, in the main, excluded from work. For people with
impairments this led to greater exclusion from the workforce compared with earlier times when work in a predominantly agricultural society allowed more chances of inclusion for impaired people.
For Oliver (1990), work plays the important role of facilitating social interaction in addition to providing a monetary means of support. He argues that those who are excluded from opportunities to take part in this are regarded as victims of a personal medical tragedy directly caused by their impairment (44). In his analysis Oliver promotes an alternative view of disability in terms of a homogenised mass of impaired people increasingly disabled by industrialisation’s demand for an able-bodied workforce. However, this ideological stance is problematic, because it does not account for groups of impaired people who could work within the new industrial systems making any claims of homogeneity difficult to sustain.
The relationship between ideologies and practices requires an analysis which Gramsci’s work provides. For Gramsci (1971), ideology is not a system of ideas that arises out of a single aspect of the social (in this case the economic) base but a function of the totality of a society’s lived practices and experiences which influences personal acts and moral behaviour. He argues ideology is simultaneously a system of belief and practice (326- 327). In accepting that both ideas and practice form ideologies, Gramsci also observes that often a contradiction appears between theory and practice:
Various philosophies or conceptions of the world exist, and one always makes a choice between them. How is this choice made? Is it merely an intellectual event, or is it something more complex? And is it not
frequently the case that there is a contradiction between one's intellectual choice and one's mode of conduct? Which therefore would be the real conception of the world: that logically affirmed as an intellectual choice? Or that which emerges from the real activity of each man [sic], which is implicit in his mode of action? And since all action is political, can one not say that the real philosophy of each man [sic] is contained in its entirety in his political action? (326)
Gramsci argues that multiple ideologies based on practice are likely to be present in a society. Although (as noted above) it has been claimed that the dominant ideology of disability is embedded in a model of personal tragedy which has led to
institutionalisation and medical interventions for impaired people (Oliver 1990, 83) nevertheless, a competing ideology must have existed to some extent since not all impaired people were disqualified from work. It would be fallacious to argue, for example, within the logic of Oliver’s model, that people with hearing impairments would necessarily be excluded from the extremely noisy environment of a cotton mill. Hence Oliver’s analysis of the ideological effects of industrialisation on disabled people contradicts that of others with different impairments from his own. Based on their particular personal experiences, such people may not necessarily accept his arguments, So, although the common term ‘disabled’ has been used, in reality, contradictory
ideologies seem to be at work within it. Gramsci’s work allows an understanding to be developed which can account for these contradictions. It also can enable comprehension of the reasons why a common sense acceptance of an apparently homogenous group – ‘the disabled’ – can exist when members of that group experience disability in such disparate ways.
Gramsci’s theories will be used to explore the following questions:
Are there any contradictions between the theory and practice of those attempting to find employment for disabled people?
How do theory and practice fit with the outcomes that disabled people want from employment?
What understandings are employed in everyday practices, and how are such practices accounted for?
These questions entail much more than a simple analysis of whether contradictory ideas are at work inside organisations, as in Jewson and Mason’s formulation (1986). SMO is run and controlled by a majority of disabled people and claims to offer better
opportunities for disabled people by following the social model. One of the objectives of this research is to determine whether disabled people found the social model was unproblematic in practice, or whether they felt that theory and practice were incommensurate with each other. This is more than simply an academic question, because if politically committed disabled people have difficulty translating the social model usefully into practice then there would appear to be little chance of the model gaining acceptance in wider circles. It will also be examined whether NDDP were able to apply their method consistently when providing opportunities for disabled people.
Again if ideas are not translated into practice, then policy as originally framed would appear to have a reduced chance of success.
This thesis will also address one particularly pertinent problem raised by Gramsci. It will consider how the contrast between thought and action is made possible as:
the co-existence of two conceptions of the world, one affirmed in words and the other displayed in effective action [...] is not merely reducible to the explanation of self deception. (Gramsci 1971, 326-27)
Or in other words, it is not a consequence of false consciousness. Gramsci’s work is used in order to push the concept of ideology further by considering his concepts of ‘good sense’ and ‘common sense’.
Common sense and good sense
The concepts of good sense and common sense are useful to this thesis because they help to explain how contradictory ideologies function and co-exist. They help to distinguish between the good sense of regarding disability as a collective form of discrimination, a product of disabling social attitudes and environments which disable impaired people and the common sense which can argue that impairment is an individual phenomenon which prevents some people from engaging fully in social activities and thus it is primarily the impairment that disables. Before expanding this discussion it is necessary to identify the starting position that Gramsci (1971) adopts:
It must first be shown that all men [sic] are ‘philosophers’, by defining the limits and characteristics of the ‘spontaneous philosophy’ which is proper to everybody. (333)
He argues that this spontaneous philosophy, available to everybody, can be revealed through their common sense understandings of the social world. In expanding the character of common sense, Gramsci maintains:
Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the ‘folklore’ of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is. (419)
For Gramsci, ‘common sense’ represents the lens, the uncritical and un-reflexive way by which individuals interpret the world based on received or conventional wisdom (Simon 1982, 63). Common sense is essentially ‘a’ theoretical as it is informed by an individual’s feelings, perceptions and experience rather than by deliberate cognitive reasoning. Gramsci compares it to a philosophy of folklore, and like folklore it exists in many forms. Even in one individual common sense will be contradictory as it is based on pragmatic considerations influenced by social and cultural factors and constituted through ‘diffuse, uncoordinated features of a general form of thought’ (Gramsci 1971, 330).
Gramsci argues that once an individual has accepted a particular form of common sense based on experience, opinions, convictions, criteria for discrimination and standards for personal conduct (339) then it does not follow she/he will change that interpretation even if the assumptions it is based on were shown to be incorrect by a third person who holds a different view. This is because common sense is not a function of reason; rather it derives from the diffuse convictions based on the understandings within the social group the individual shares. Even when the person cannot defend their position against a reasoned attack they tend to persist with their common sense understanding because they know someone in their social group is capable of providing an equally powerful reasoned defense as they have heard it before. (339). Common sense is a collective form, widely diffused, shared and accepted by social groups.
However Gramsci (1971) contends that within common sense is contained ‘a healthy nucleus of good sense’ which, he argues, ‘deserves to be made more unitary and coherent’ (328). For Gramsci, ‘good sense’ is analogous to philosophy, in that it is inherently coherent, logical and critical. Good sense is thus an ‘intellectual unity and a conformity with a perception of reality that has gone beyond common sense and become, if only within narrow limits, a critical conception’ (333).
Good sense displays a consistent, rational, philosophically intelligent stance. Consequently it holds an elevated moral and intellectual position over common sense, and can be used to express theoretically certain perceptions of the world. Good sense is an understanding found through a critique of common sense and is identified by Gramsci when he differentiates between philosophy and common sense ‘in order to indicate more clearly the passage from one moment to another’ (330):
In philosophy the features of individual elaboration of thought are the most salient: in common sense on the other hand it is the diffuse, uncoordinated features of a generic form of thought common to a particular period and a particular popular environment. But every philosophy has a tendency to become the common sense of a fairly limited environment (that of the intellectuals). It is a matter therefore of starting with a philosophy which already enjoys, or could enjoy, a certain diffusion, because it is connected to and implicit in practical life, and