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Bodies, Disability and Spaces: The
social model and disabling spatial
organisations
Peter Freund
Published online: 01 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Peter Freund (2001) Bodies, Disability and Spaces: The social
model and disabling spatial organisations, Disability & Society, 16:5, 689-706, DOI:
10.1080/09687590120070079
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Disability & Society, Vol. 16, No. 5, 2001, pp. 689706
Bodies, Disability and Spaces: the
social model and disabling spatial
organisations
PETER FREUND
Department of Sociology, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043,
USA
ABSTRACT This essay examines the relevance of socio-material space to the social model.
The social model has been criticised as being disembodied. While there is some basis for this
critique, the social model, in fact, has bodies in space as a central concern. A distinction
is made between disability as a sociocultural and biomedical category, and as a state of not
being able to. The latter usage is not just relevant to people with disabilities. In order to
illustrate the strength of the social model, disabling social organisations of space-time
practises are examined with a special emphasis on transport-public space. It is concluded
that the social model offers insights into relationships between bodies, embodied agency and
the social organisation of space-time.
Introduction
Despite its enormous implications for related academic disciplines, the social model
has been given scant attention (Barnes, 1998; Shakespeare & Watson, 1997). Even
sociology with its interest in minority groups and cultural underdogs has, on the
whole, ignored its possibilities (Williams & Busby, 2000). Sociologies of the body,
and health and illness, while critiquing the social model, have not explored its
broader and deeper implications. My goal is to show how a sociology informed by
a social-materialist approach, which locates mind-bodies in space, can contribute to
the social model. I hope to show how the social model can further the understanding
of more general relationships between embodied agency, psychosomatic capacities
and societyparticularly in their social material aspects.
Sociological concerns with chronic illness and disability have focused on em-
bodiment and the complex, often contradictory and ambiguous relationships be-
tween bodies, selves and social environment. However, they have, on the whole,
neglected spatial and temporal macro- and micro-geographical contexts in which
movement is organised and mind-bodies function. This essay explores such issues,
particularly those relating to the movement of bodies in space-transport.
ISSN 0968-7599 (print)/ISSN 1360-0508 (online)/01/050689-18
2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/09687590120070079
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690 P. Freund
Absent Bodies, Absent Spaces in Sociology and the Social Model
Pinder (1995) argues that the social model takes a disembodied approach to solving
problems. Social arrangements (e.g. the environment) can be over-emphasised,
since disability is not simply a social construction, but may, at least partly, reside in
an objective impairment and not just the context in which a person is situated. It
is said that the social model ignores bodily change and decay (Williams & Busby,
2000). This means that, for instance, unruly, unpredictable mind-bodies cannot
simply be accommodated by social-cultural changes. Chronic arthritis, for instance,
may be difcult to manage no matter what temporal-spatial (or attitudinal) accom-
modations are made (Pinder, 1995). Even for those with a stable impairment,
relationships between bodies, selves and environment are not as neat and unambigu-
ous as the social model suggests.
Pinders critique should not be construed as an attack (as it has by some
supporters of the social model, e.g. Shakespeare & Watson, 1997), but as an attempt
to show its silence about some complex relationships between self, body, social
context and deeply seated cultural attitudes. To neatly separate impairment from
disability glosses over the complexity of individual lives (Pinder, 1997). The elu-
sory body thus needs to be addressed (Radley, 1995). In short, the social model as
even Oliver (1996) grants, has limits to its explanatory value (Pinder, 1997) and
needs to avoid tendencies toward reductionism.
From within the discipline of disability studies, a number of similar critiques
have emerged. These critiques call for a sociology of impairment that would use a
phenomenological perspective to address embodiment and related issues. Thus,
Hughes & Paterson (1997), also argue that there is a tendency for the body to
disappear in the social model. On the other hand, the sociology of the body
emphasises uidity, elusiveness of and differences between bodies.
Sociological critiques, however, have over-emphasised differences. This post-
modern, post-structural love affair with difference, eclipses not only structural
considerations, but situations that might be shared by different individuals. One
critic (Williams, 2000, p. 48), for instance, argues that the social model glosses over
differences between people with disabilities. Thus, a middle aged woman with
chronic rheumatoid arthritis, an old man with senile dementia and a young man in
a wheelchair because of a spinal cord injury, have very different interests, desires,
wishes and needs. While on one level this is true, it should not gloss over what these
individuals might have in common. All three, because of their conditions, will most
likely nd themselves segregated and sequestered in either institutional or domestic
space. They will also, given their various psycho-motor impairments and disabling
organisation of space, have difculty moving through and using public space. Their
lack of access and mobility are, at least to some extent, a function of the design of
space, the rhythms of social time, the available material culture (technology), the
way the use of the material culture is organised and, most signicantly, the t
between their psychomotor capacities, and the organisation of space, time and
motion. In regard to the former, a person with a visual impairment may not be able
to drive and thus in car-dominated space (particularly where trafc signals are not
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 691
geared to those with visual impairments) is disqualied as a driver and handi-
capped as a pedestrian. Whether or not a person is conned to a wheelchair or
nds the wheelchair just another transport modality (just as my eyeglasses do not
conne, but enable me) similarly depends on spatio-temporal arrangements.
Sociological approaches to the body and disability take the individual body as
their point of departure, neglecting (as advocates of the social model might point
out), social structure and its enabling as well as disabling features. Williams (1999,
2000) correctly emphasises embodiment and the bodys materiality, yet he and
many other sociologists (particularly those in the sociology of the body) neglect
socio-material space and organisation.
While the body, per se, may be a limiting factor, mind-bodies move in, engage
and modify the material environments (including material culture, e.g. technology)
in which they carry out activities. The social model recognises the inseparability of
the body from its social structural, material integument. Unfortunately, much of the
social models materialism is conned to relating political economy to disabling or
enabling material conditions. There is a need to look more closely at the material
organisation of everyday life (e.g. work places) and the spaces in which life activities
are carried out (e.g. in public spaces).
Critics have used Olivers (1996) assertion that the body and its impairments
have nothing to do with disability, as evidence that the body is absent in the social
model. However, one can read Olivers observations as overstatement and hyperbole
meant to shift the focus to structure. It is possible to agree with Oliver that the body
as an isolated and individual body is a limited determinant of disability, but the body
in situ, the body engaging a particular social-material structure, is highly relevant to
disability. While Oliver (and other radical advocates of the social model) do not
sufciently problematise the body, they do (at least implicitly) problematise mind-
bodies utilising material culture in spatial temporal contexts. Most critics miss this
spatial element, which however underdeveloped theoretically and empirically, is still
present in the social model. This is not surprising, since much of the sociology of the
body, health, illness, chronic illness and disability is based on the despatialised
conception of the body.
To recognise the unreliability, unpredictability and untidiness of bodies and
the inability to subsume their troubles under social arrangements is important. It is
equally important to not neglect the socially constructed nature of categories, such
as impairment and disability, and the contexts that can ameliorate or signicantly
decrease the transformation of impairments into disabilities. In order to look at the
former issue one must turn to structurestructures that meet the needs of a range
of bodies. By focusing on structure, one can move from asking what bodies can
function in a particular context (or looking at needs in the abstract) to asking what
types of structures can accommodate the widest range of bodies. From individual
bodies, we need to move to the social body and its materiality.
Two Disabilities
The term disability can be used in two different senses. It can refer to a social status
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692 P. Freund
and a cultural category or ones bio-medical status. In disability theory, a second
usage of disability emergesa restriction on activity generated by an impairment
transformed by a particular socio-cultural context into a disability. Like any label,
being labeled as a person with a disability has socio-political consequences ranging
from exclusion (e.g. job discrimination) to the ability to claim special accommoda-
tions (e.g. parking spaces for people with disabilities).
The rst disability is a dichotomous categoryone either qualies according
to governmental, bio medical or activist criteria as a person with a disability or one
does not. The second sense in which disability can be denedas not being able
to, is, of course, a sociocultural construction, but one that can seem as part of a
continuum where one is disabled in different spheres of life and to different degrees.
The focus in this essay, is on disability in the latter sense.
The charge is made by critics that the social model by default accepts a
biomedical reading of impairment. This is not completely the case. For example,
Oliver (1996) has alluded to the social production of impairments in various
political-economical contexts, as well as to historically variable denitions of impair-
ment. More recently, disability theorists have called attention to the ways in which
impairments in disabling contexts can inuence the experience of embodiment
(Paterson & Hughes, 1999).
Denitions for both these categorisations change over time, along with rules for
applying them. Political economic contexts heavily inuence such constructions
(Oliver, 1996). The number of individuals who are eligible for such categories
changes over time as well. Thus, with demographic changes (such as the graying
of society), more and more non-disabled people are coming to see that people with
disabilities do not constitute an other (Wendell, 1996, p. 18). In a sense, many
individuals have deviant bodies that are not easily accommodated in standard
spatial arrangements.
Impairment as a social construction (like disability) carriers a negative conno-
tation and is limited by its mostly biomedical perspective (Shakespeare, 1999). As a
biomedically grounded concept, it excludes differences and variations in bodies
which, while not impairments, are nonetheless disabling in particular contexts
(Shakespeare, 1999). Being very tall or short, small or large can be disabling in a
one size ts all socio-material environment. In the nal analysis, it is not only
impairments, but also physical-mental differences and their relationship to socio-cul-
tural arrangements that are at issue. By extension, thus many bodies, not just a few
bodies, share some problems with disabling design, spatial organisation, etc.
There is, of course, no universal discourse for dening either a disability or an
impairment. Thus, what constitutes functioning (and certainly normal functioning)
is problematic and understandable only in reference to a particular cultural and
socio-material context. There is, however, a danger in over-relativising denitions
within a particular socio-cultural setting. It is possible to arrive at a tentative,
however, context bound, denition of an impairment and difference as well as some
insight into how various cultural norms and socio-material environments can be
disabling (in the second sense of the term).
Despite the argument that one cannot, in fact, make sharp the distinctions
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 693
between an impairment or a difference and a disability, nevertheless, the distinction
is analytically useful for understanding how culture and, most signicantly, socio-
material environments inuence functioning (however, one may wish to construct
deconstruct such a concept). Such an understanding is not just relevant for people
with disabilities, but for a constantly changing range in populations of mental and
bodily physiological structures and functions (Shakespeare, 1999). If people with an
impairment are not automatically or naturally disabled, it is also possible that those
who are not impaired may be disabled in a particular temporal-spatial context. Thus,
not only people with disabilities and those temporarily impaired, can benet from
enabling socio-spatial modications that enhance functioning. An able-bodied
mother pushing a pram or a delivery person a hand cart, can both benet from the
same ramp that makes the built environment user-friendly for a wheelchair user.
Transport accessibility, thus, is also a concern for people other than those with a
disability (Gleeson, 1999). Spatial-temporal arrangements impact on virtually every
body. Thus, both normal and deviant bodies require particular sociomaterial
contexts, if they are to function (Wendell, 1996, p. 22).
The recognition that such denitions are cultural-social and to some extent
political is also essential. What is signicant is that not only do categories change,
but so does the number of individuals over time who qualify for membership in such
categories. The boundaries of categories are blurry. As Zola (1982, p. 242) argues:
any person reading the words on this page is at best momentarily able
bodied. But nearly everyone reading them will, at some point, suffer from
one or more chronic diseases and be disabled, temporarily or permanently,
for a signicant part of their lives.
Impairments and differences are normal conditions of humanity, and thus to
predicate changes in the environment on head counts of special populations,
particularly as a society changes demographically (e.g. the graying of society) is
misleading. Furthermore, counting the number of people with disabilities as a basis
for determining spatial-motional design is misleading on yet another level. The kinds
of benets and uses that might accrue to non-impaired bodies in such a space are
also incalculable.
The questions surrounding the relationship between impairment and disability
might thus be posed in a different way, given the uid and widespread relevance to
an unspecied number of individuals in any society. What socio-material arrange-
ments enable the widest range of mind-bodies to function (within standards and
contexts of particular society)? For disability rights activists, the question can be
framed asking, to what extent do the interests and material needs of those who have
disability coincide with those who do not? Should difference or universality be
emphasised (Wendell, 1996, p. 30)? If we focus on difference, do we miss common
structural features of environments that disable or enable people? Of course, for
political activism, in most contemporary societies, claiming difference and minority
group status is very important. Claiming a minority group status gives a focus and
group identity and cohesion to the battle against disabling conditions. Yet the
dualism of such categories militates against universalising the acceptance and
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694 P. Freund
incorporation of differences into the social body. As Humphrey (2000, p. 94) points
out, while this hermeneutic closure is designed to ward off incursions and, there-
fore, oppressions from non-disabled people, it may also have unfortunate conse-
quences. Among these is a purism and separatism (Humphrey, 2000). For my
purposes, the problem with such dichotomies lies in the limits that such exclusive
categories impose on theorising about bodies in spaces.
Introducing Space
Sociomaterial space is the medium in which people act, intersect, move and locate
themselves. Recently, it has been argued that space and place are neglected in
sociological studies of health and health inequalities. For instance, Popay et al.
(1998, p. 641) argue that social scientic studies of health must analyse social
structure and process as situated concretely in time and space. While disciplines
such as medical geography have long studied the spatial distribution of health and
illness, and its determinants, little attention has been given to the social organisation
of space as contributing to the production of health and illness. The sociology of the
body, similarly, has been silent about spatial organisation.
Space may be dened as a dimension in which phenomenon are distributed
(Curtis & Jones 1998). Here I stress sociomaterial space. The social organisation of
space is not merely a place in which social interaction occurs, it structures such
interaction. Congregating, avoiding people, movement and other practices consti-
tute spatial patterns. Thus, trafc is a spatial system inuencing how people function
in cities. Spatial congurations are linked with movement and movement is a
fundamental correlate of space. Most urban space is movement observes Hillier
(1996, p. 170). Movement inuences spatial congurations (or what we call
the social organisation of space) and such an organisation inuences movement.
Sociomaterial space is not simply inert materiala conguration of asphalt and
concretebut expresses and structures social life. Social space is space that is used
and, hence, Hillier (1996, p. 170) argues we need to replace static conception of
space with a movement based one. In movement, time and space are inextricably
linked.
The ideas of the social model about exclusion and marginalisation are inher-
ently geographic suggesting socio-spatial boundaries and margins (Gleeson, 1999,
p. 36). In order to explain the socio-cultural contexts of disability, it is important not
just to look at bodies, embodied agency, but at oppression as a socio-spatial
phenomena (Gleeson, 1999, p. 36).
Gleeson (1999), who has studied geographies of disability, argues that rst,
the historical-materialist approach to disability has produced little detailed empirical
analysis. Secondly, despite its materialist approach and implicit focus on space, the
social model has not fully grasped the importance of space to the constitution of
society and human identity (Gleeson, 1999, p. 27). Space is also important because
of the way its organisation constructs bodies and offers bodily possibilities and
constraints. The body is not simply a culturally constructed representation nor is it
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 695
physically shaped like clay by social force, but it is experienced and lived-in
differently in various socio-material environments and material cultures (e.g. tech-
nologies). Historically, different modes of production and consumption have de-
manded that different bodily rhythms, capacities and spaces in which activities are
carried out (Gleeson, 1999, p. 47).
Material culture and built environments are made for a limited variety of
bodies. Thus, a geographer comments: Modern landscapes seem to be designed for
forty-year-old healthy males driving cars, (Relph, 1981, p. 196). In a small Egyptian
village, trachoma (an infection that affects the eyelids) is widespread, but the
Western standards of blindness do not apply to those who are aficted. Instead, the
social organisation of space-time makes it possible for many villagers with severely
impaired vision to function without disability.
Most visually impaired adults are illiterate, so they do not need signs to
read. There are no street signs or house numbers to read in the hamlet.
The structure of the village changes very slowly. If a new house is built
every ve years the visually impaired can learn their way around it
Plowing, sowing seed and harvesting ripe produce do not require much
vision. If there is some small task they are unable to do, their extended
family does it for them. Thus, they do not perceive themselves as disabled.
(Quoted in Cockburn, 1988, p. 13).
Here the social organisation of space and time (things change slowly, the pace of life
is slower) keeps a visual impairment from becoming a disability. It also shows how
social-material arrangements can be deconstructed as natural givens, and can be
seen as historical, cultural and social-material constructions that favour some, but
not others.
Impairment, difference and disability thus, must be considered in the context of
the social space of material practices (Gleeson, 1999, p. 47). Disability is a social
experience that to some degree emerges from the organisation of basic life activities
(e.g. work, transport, etc.). Attitudes, of course, are important not only to the
construction of self identity, but because biases are materialised through the social
practices which society undertakes in order to meet its basic needs (Gleeson, 1999,
p. 25).
Disabling Space-time
The materialist thrust in the social model is illustrated by Olivers (1996) analysis of
walking and walkism. In a satirical fashion, Oliver analyses the cultural hegemony
of walkers (as opposed to non-walkers). A kind of walkism is materialised in spatial
structures that favour walkers over non-walkers. It is often argued that enabling
modications of space and material culture for people with disabilities are costly.
Oliver counters that the subsidy given to non-yers in our society is very expensive,
requiring a special technology and infrastructure. An airplane is a mobility aid for
non-yers in exactly the same way as a wheelchair is a mobility aid for non-walkers
(Oliver, 1996, p. 108). Extending Olivers reasoning and the applicability of the
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696 P. Freund
social model, one can argue that in spaces dominated by cars, the walker (a mere
pedestrian) may encounter barriers and walker unfriendly spaces. Thus is, in a
sense, he or she could be seen as disabled. Spatial social organis ation is not neutral,
but rather political in the priority it gives some transport modalities and in the way
it handicaps others.
The disabling city is replete with physical barriers to movement and inaccessible
architecture. It has a transport system which a few modalities dominate space and
which assumes that drivers, passengers and pedestrians are not impaired (Gleeson,
1999, p. 136). Spaces are disabling when activity sites (work places, homes, shops,
public spaces and transport sites) are separated from each other either by barriers or
distance (requiring a great deal of mobility). In the US the dispersal of activity sites
is most pronounced [largely because of auto-centred transport systems (Freund &
Martin, 1993)]. Denser and varied uses of public space allow for easier access with
less mobility. Activists might argue that the emphasis should be on public spaces
(shared by all kinds of people), rather than spatially designed, segregated and
isolated communities. Car technology can be made user-friendly for some people
with disabilities, and provide them with means of mobility and freedom. It cannot
do that for others whose impairments (e.g. visual) make it difcult to participate in
auto dominated trafc and space. Thus, transport systems in which one modality
dominates will exclude a certain number of individuals who have difculty using that
modality (driving) or maneuvering through the spaces it dominates (which is
particularly true when trafc is dominated by large, high speed vehicles).
Spatial-temporal structures are particularly important material factors in the
social construction of disability. Included here is the pace of life (the social organis-
ation of time and attendant social rhythms; Wendell, 1996). An incompatibility
between socially generated rhythms and the rhythms of various bodies can be
produced in workplaces, trafc systems, etc., with disabling consequences. Sicken-
ing schedules may penetrate all spheres of life, including play and leisure (Freund
& McGuire, 1999).
When the pace of life in society speeds up, expectations of normal perform-
ance and high level functioning increases.
For example, the more the life in society is conducted on the assumption
of quick travel, the more disabling are those physical conditions that affect
movement and travel, such as needing to use a wheelchair or having a kind
of epilepsy that prevents one from driving a car, unless compensating help
is provided. These disabling effects extend into peoples family, social, and
sexual lives and into their participation in recreation, religious life, and
politics. (Wendell, 1996, p. 38)
Time-space compression is a feature of late modernity and has accelerated in
post-modern societies. Such a compression is fueled by political-economic tenden-
cies inherent in contemporary capitalism (e.g. the need to extend markets and
prots, increase consumption of goods, reduce cost of production, etc.; Harvey,
1996). Accordingly, speed rules transport space (as well as much of public space).
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 697
Faster and larger vehicles are valorised and trafc participants (both drivers and
others in trafc) are forced to accommodate their bodies to its rhythms.
Though the value on time and speed does vary cross-culturally, it seems
part and parcel of contemporary views of industrialization and thus, the
modernization of many parts of the world. Such cultural cliches as time
is money and the quicker the better play themselves out not only in
building faster vehicles and accelerations, but are also germane to other
areas of transportation such as the speed of train and public elevator
closing doors, trafc lights and pedestrian signals. (Zola, 1989, p. 414.)
Poor pedestrian signals, short trafc lights, the designs of transport platform (e.g.
roadways) materialise an organisation of space-time that favors the quickly and the
spry, and disables those who are not.
While discourses about trafc accidents tend to shift attention to those who are
the most vulnerable (the elderly, people with disabilities and children), little
attention is paid to the social organisation of space and time in which such
populations must move. Hoxie & Rubenstein (1994), for instance, argued the US
urban trafc signals are out of sync with the walking speed of older pedestrians.
Thus, in their Los Angeles study, 27% of older pedestrians were unable to reach the
opposite curb before the light changed, and one-quarter of these were stranded at
least one lane away from safety. The social organisation of trafc ow in an
auto-centered system favors drivers over pedestrians, bicyclists and wheelchairs.
Three-quarters of the elderly pedestrians interviewed stated that fear kept them from
crossing streets as often as they would like to. The implication of this for disability
studies is clear.
Expectations of functioning are reected in the social organisation of society
and its physical structure. For instance,
built spaces in the postwar period have emphasized mobility over
accessibility and have placed a premium on, for example, individuals
owning a car. Indeed designers tended to generate and perpetuate exclus-
ive, segregated spaces primarily because of a stereotypical conception of
people as somehow being similar in their capacities both to get access to
and move around the built environment. (Imrie, 1998, pp. 132133)
Public and private spaces are sharply separated from each other in contemporary
societies. People with disabilities are often excluded from public space, and
sequestered in private or institutional spaces (as are increasingly, children).
Some have suggested a post-modern geographical perspective on space and
disability can lead to a broader conceptualisation of space, moving beyond a notion
of space as absolute (Glenn Smith, 1999). Disabling space from this perspective
might be formulated as semiotic spacea disabling space of values (Glenn Smith,
1999, p. 63). A space may be physically accessible, yet given its meanings, be
experienced as oppressive. This is certainly true, yet the aesthetic and feeling tone of
dimensions of space are at least to some extent inuenced by its social material
organisation.
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698 P. Freund
It is essential to recognize the role of socio-material space-time in reproducing
and maintaining disabling conditions (in the form of exclusion; Kitchin, 1998). This
need not mean taking a vulgar materialist or determinist position. Kitchin (1998)
focuses on the disablist organisation of space (e.g. car-designed cities). This
excludes people who depend on public transport and disperses activity sites through
its organisation of space. Thus, disabled people are forced to live in different spheres
even when in public spaces (e.g. using paratransit or sitting in the back of the
theatre; Imrie, 2000).
The disability movement has managed, to some degree, to have politicised
social and physical space (Hughes & Paterson, 1997). It has called attention to the
exclusion of people from access to various spaces (e.g. work). This politicisation
has been accomplished by deconstructing spaces that in appearance seem politically
neutral (Corker, 1999; Imrie, 1998). The politicisation of space, time and the use
of technology goes beyond the issues of disability, but points to the possibility
of socio-material spaces that accommodate the widest range of mind-bodies
possible.
Embodied Agency and the Social Organisation of Space
Paterson & Hughes (1999) critique an arid materialism they feel characterises some
of the social models approach. This is more the case for the British social model.
In the US, the minority group model (Hahn, 1994) comes closer in its approach
to cultural studies. The British model places a strong emphasis on critiquing access
to public spaces (Hughes & Paterson, 1997, p. 605). They argue that a phenomeno-
logical-embodied perspective can contribute to a post-Cartesian and to a politically
radical social model.
The social organisation of space inuences the relationship one has to the space
one moves through and how secure one feels in it (Curtis & Jones, 1998, p. 649).
For instance, in car-dominated spaces, some people with physical and mental
impairments will feel excluded, marginalised and insecure, and be at greater risk of
injury in public transport space. This exclusion and sense of ontological insecurity
adds to the disabling features of an impairment (Curtis & Jones, 1998, p. 651).
Thus, some bodies are more vulnerable and ill at ease in some spaces. In turn, how
ontologically secure (or insecure) actors feel in space, may inuence their sense of
place and how empowered they feel. From a phenomenological perspective, one can
argue that disabling features of socio-material environments produce a vivid but
unwanted consciousness of ones impaired body (Paterson & Hughes, 1999).
Anybody that cannot comfortably use and/or nd a home in spaces will not only
feel alienated from that space, but from his or her body as well.
Having a body as opposed to being embodied are experienced by agency in
different balances of positionality (for a discussion of H. Plessners concept of
positionality, see Lindemann, 1996). Different relationships may be experienced
between self and body, as well as different balances of presence and absence of ones
body in consciousness. Generally, when experiences and activities ow smoothly,
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 699
the body is absent in consciousness. When tensions occur between body, material
artifacts and social material space, or when pain, fatigue and difculties with the
body occur, the body becomes present in consciousness and experienced as an
object (Radley, 1996).
Social material conditions thus not only inuences the body itself, but how one
experiences ones bodythe quality of embodiment. Aging, for instance, may bring
about impairments. These changes make previously friendly spaces and temporal
rhythms unfriendly, potentially dangerous and uncomfortable. Hence, enclaves,
or safe spaces may become important, spaces in which people are not only physically
safe, but exist in ways that afrm their bodily sense of self. The ways in which groups
construct use, gain access to such places is not, as Radley (1996) emphasises, simply
an ergonomic issue. It is not an ergonomic problem in the sense of mechanistic,
a-social, subjectless ergonomics, but it is a problem of peoples embodied relation-
ship to physical artifacts and environments.
In order to illustrate the psychosocial dimensions of the civilising processone
that involves increasing self-control, Norbert Elias used the analogy of different road
systems. On the one hand, in the country roads of a simple warrior society, there is
little trafc and the primary danger is occasional, and is from human and other
predators. Such a system requires a subjective and physical readiness to ght or to
ee, and the ability to give free vent to ones emotions. On the other hand, trafc
on the main roads of a big city in a complex society of our time demands a quite
different molding of the psychological apparatus (Elias, 1982, p. 233). Here, there
is a constant, complex ow of trafc to be navigatedwith signals, pedestrians,
cyclists and other vehicles. Self-control and a state of vigilance are essential. A loss
of self-control can be lethal. Certain states of consciousness and the ability to utilise
ones body in particular ways for moving through space, come to be taken for
granted and expected of anyone using public spaces. Conversely, what constitutes
risky behaviour and what its consequences are, depend on the type of trafc in which
it occurs.
The technisation of the routines of daily life involve intensive and extensive
use of complex and potentially dangerous technologies and spaces. As individuals are
socialised into a technological society, historically unprecedented levels of psycho-
motor and technical capabilities and skills are developed in the mass of population
(Elias, 1995). Driving at high speeds, maneuvering trafc and even managing
movement as a pedestrian through transport space become a part of everyday
routines and taken for granted abilities. Yet the pervasive and intensive dependence
on being able to use or relate to such technologies can be a source of stress, and can
disenfranchise or put at risk those unwilling or unable to meet such demands.
Furthermore, at any given time, a number of participants in trafc will be distracted,
intoxicated, etc., and thus their capacity to function will be impaired. For instance,
what happens to those who have had a few drinks and should not be driving, but
must drive because the car is the only means of transportation? In this context,
Zolas observation that most of us are at best momentarily able bodied (Zola, 1982,
p. 242) takes on a new meaning broadening the potential pool of those who might
be temporarily or permanently disabled.
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700 P. Freund
City spaces may provide various symbolic reminders that this is a place where
one doesnt belong.
A city is not just a set of buildings, roads, and parks and other infrastruc-
tures, a city is also a (cultural) text to which we read and react. Spatial
structures and places within the landscape provide a set of cultural
signiers that tell us if we are out of place. (Kitchin, 1998, p. 349)
Yet spatial structures and places are not just cultural signiers, but additionally their
physical features make one feel out of place and alienated, insecure and fearful in
a particular space.
The emphasis of the biomedical model is on the normalisation of impaired
bodies. Such a normalisation may mean tting an unruly, different body into the
Procrustean bed of social space-time. It is in this context, that the issue of somatic
false consciousness becomes relevant for the social model. The ability to recognise
discomfort or pain as the result of an incompatibility between social-material
arrangements, and the body depends to some degree on how one denes ones
position in environments and the environments themselves. Zola (1982, pp. 205
206; after dening himself as a person with a disability) began to travel using a
wheelchair. He observes:
I now arrived signicantly more energetic, more comfortable, more free
from cramps and legs sores than in my previous decades of traveling. The
conclusion I drew was inevitable. I had always been tired, uncomfortable,
cramped and sore after a long journey. But since I had no standard to
comparison, these feelings were incorporated into the cognitive reality of
what traveling for me was. I did not experience the tiredness and dis-
comfort. They were cognitively inaccessible. What I am contending is
shockingly simple. The very process of successful adaptation not only
involves divesting ourselves of any identication with being handicapped,
but also denying the uncomfortable features of that life. (Zola, 1982, pp.
205206)
It is not simply that the standard of comparing realities of traveling was cognitively
inaccessible, but sensually and materially as well. In the past, Zolas normalisation
lead him to adapt to his spatial environment by pushing out of his psycho-somatic
awareness of any experience of discomfort. The present situation was naturalised
and sensual experiences of alternative possibilities escaped consciousness. There
were no body memories of other possible spatial arrangements that Zola could
draw on as a reference point prior to his accepting his status as a person with a
disability. In a similar way, people become acclimatised to noise pollution and
crowding, and do not consider how things might be otherwise. The experience of
environments depends on ones existentialphenomenological stance to it, the
organisation of materiality, as well as ones sensual experience of it (and on being
able to imagine sensual alternatives, more comfortable ways of organising
materiality). The problem thus for disabled people (and for many others), is to
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 701
become aware of the disabling properties of their world through the cognitive-sensual
change of consciousness (Wendell, 1996, p. 46).
Once people shift focus from their bodies and their capacities, and see such
capacities linked to the organisation of the spaces they utilise, their attendant mode
of being in space and how they relate to it changes. Resistance then becomes
possible. Inhospitable spaces can become focal points of resistance. US groups such
as ADAPT and in the UK, DAN (Direct Action Network) have occupied such
spaces and by changing themselves to inaccessible entrances, have protested and
called attention to disabling spaces. In the same way, when community groups
concerned about trafc occupy a street, they highlight the risks of the space, and by
reclaiming the street, they concretise other possibilities in a material way (e.g. the
joys of being on a street without trafc).
The important point is that disability and the experience of embodiment are, at
least to some degree, socio-spatially constructed. Critics of the social model fail to
focus on this, since space is absent in their analysis. Even the social model needs to
further develop the spatialities of disability (Kitchin, 1998, p. 354), and an
existential phenomenological analysis of the experience of space, time and move-
ment. The social model needs thus to deconstruct (and reconstruct) the spaces
which people inhabit and use. However, they need to also deconstruct ways in which
the body is used (e.g. body techniques) and cognitive-sensual dispositions towards
spaces (the habitus) that develop, become stable, sedimented and second nature
(Bourdieu, 1977; Elias, 1996).
Conclusions
Sociology and the Social Model
The sociology of the body and health and illness have focused on the narratives of
those who have a chronic illness or disability with the goal of capturing aspects of
their experiences, including embodiment experiences. This focus, while it is one of
its strengths, is also a limitation, because of its tendency to recede into the
subjectivity of the individuals and his or her bodily experiences and move away from
attending to the empirical features of the impaired individual s interaction with the
material world (Williams & Busby, 2000, p. 174)particularly in its spatial forms.
The social organisation of space is crucial to understanding living bodies in places
(Williams & Busby, 2000).
Phenomenological-existential and interactionist analyses of chronic illness and
disability have been viewed with suspicion by disability rights activists who see such
analyses as ideological justications for the status quo (Williams & Busby, 2000).
Yet some disability theorists are drawing on such traditions to go beyond the original
materialist analyses and to develop a richer version of the social model. Such
approaches are sensitive to detail, complexity and difference, as well as the micro-
social contexts, the particular habitus and body hexus (Bourdieu, 1977), which
characterise bodies in action. However, their analyses would be enriched if they also
considered everyday sociomaterial existence and its organisation. The almost whole-
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702 P. Freund
sale rejection of materialism in contemporary social theory is as simplistic as
embracing a vulgar materialism. Some (e.g. Williams, 1999) have suggested that a
critical realism in the sociology of the body, and health and illness can address
phenomenological, social and material aspects of phenomena. Unfortunately, such
analyses begin and end with the individual body and embodiment. However much
situated the body is in cultural-social contexts by these approaches, there is a silence
about the socio-material contexts in which embodiment agencies and bodies func-
tion.
Post-modern or post-structuralist approaches (both in sociology and in disabil-
ity studies) have the potential to point to structural sources of oppression by
deconstructing disability discourses (see, for example, Corker, 1999; Shakespeare,
1999). Such deconstructions challenge essentialist readings of both impairment and
disability, showing them to be socio-culturally and historically situated. However,
given the almost exclusive emphasis on language and discourse, there is a tendency
in these approaches to de-emphasise sociomaterial contexts. I would therefore argue,
following Williams (1998), for a materialist phenomenology, albeit one that is
spatially grounded. It is thus necessary not only to look at the material basis of
embodiment (Williams & Busby, 2000), but the socially constructed material world
in which bodies exist and act.
If one kind of body tends to be absent in discourses about disability, another
body, in fact, takes centre stage in the social model. In so far as the social model
looks at disabling spaces and their political aspects, it is looking at bodies and space
and active, moving bodies in space. The fundamental starting point of the social
model (unlike much of sociology and bio-medical approaches) is not the individual
body, but structural elements that organise space, time and motion. The emphasis
here is not on the different and special needs of particular mind-bodies, but on
exible spaces for all bodies (Zola, 1989).
The social model is capable of deconstructing the design of existing material
culture, the social organisation of its use and the spatial contexts in which such uses
take place. This deconstruction shifts the focus to structures with far-reaching
methodological implications for disability studies.
So, for example, rather than asking questions like how far an individual
with a mobility impairment can walk unaided, we are carrying out a
national designed to measure how much of the existing rail and bus
network is accessible to people with different kinds of impairments. Simi-
larly, we are carrying out surveys on the provision of accessible housing and
the degree of access which disabled people have to public spaces and local
amenities. (Zarb, 1995, p. 27)
As such, the social model can turn the world upside down in a manner which
requires us to question our framing of the relationship between individual experi-
ence and social circumstances (Williams & Busby, 2000, p. 178).
The social model needs to become more inclusive and recognise disability as a
normal, near universal condition of humanity (Williams & Busby, 2000). Fixed
denitions (of disability status or disability as inability) can exclude those that fall
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 703
between the cracks such as older people, those with invisible impairments, all of
those having an impairment, but not ofcially dened as disabled (e.g. people with
chronic illness) and, of course, those who are different, but do not have an
impairment.
It goes without saying that, in addition to disability status, gender, class, age,
race and ethnicity are signicant factors. They mediate the structure of space-time,
the individual s relationships to space-time, the spaces he or she inhabits, and the
resources for moving through spaces (or organising spaces for better access). The
following excerpt from a workshop on women and transport in Germany comments
on the politics of gendered spaces:
Our fear is built into streets that are too wide, the underground parking,
the empty inner cities and commercial areas, the pavements are too narrow
for friendly conversation The retreat to ones private life, to ones own
three rooms with kitchen and bath is preprogrammed. The streets have
completely lost their role as an important public space, as a social space.
(Cited in Wolf, 1996, p. 206)
These observations, however overstated, nonetheless illustrate how a politics of
gender-bodies is built into the organisation of the socio-material environments of
car-centered transport systems, where some bodies are more at risk than others.
Women are concerned about personal safety issues as pedestrians and users of mass
transit (especially at night). Older women and children are particularly vulnerable.
The poor and racial ethnic minorities may live in unfriendly, disempowering
spaces, and lack the access and mobility they need. Problems faced by people with
disabilities may be further compounded by their racial-ethnic, gendered, age and
socio-economic status. Such disadvantages are not simple additive, but processual
involving complex interactions and interpretations of mind, bodies, space and
material culture. In the US, to be a poor Black disabled woman is to be handi-
capped indeed. The social model would be greatly enhanced by including more of
these factors in its analysis of bodies in space-time contexts.
Enabling Spaces
What might non-disabling transport spaces look like? Activity sites would not be as
severated so as not to be accessible. Public space would be accessible to the widest
range of mind-bodies. Transport would be diversied and multimodal. The ability
to move from one modality to another would be made possible for as many
mind-bodies as is feasible. The built environment would combine accessibility
functions with an aesthetic dimension. It would incorporate design for those with
special needs in a fashion that would be seamless as possible and not sequester
entrances, lifts and other facilities. Spaces would be designed so as to be potentially
experienced as ontologically secure and as places, where one belongs and can be at
home in.
Indeed, within architecture there have been some movements towards what
Imrie (1998) calls emancipatory architecture. For instance, R. Mace, a US dis-
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704 P. Freund
abled architect, advocated a movement in architecture towards universal design
(Disability Rag, 1992). Universal design is a technical solution to designing the built
environment in such a way that it can be comfortably used by the widest range of
bodies possible. In some contexts, such design has been called trans-generational
since it involves designing environments that are safe, aesthetic, comfortable and
usable by the very young and by those who are old (Freund & McGuire, 1999;
Imrie, 1998).
Such an architectural paradigm remains a minority voice in the chorus of
architects. It has been primarily used to design private spaces (e.g. a home for an
elderly person). While applied to some public spaces (a park for wheelchair users
and where people with visual impairments can play baseball, for example), such
applications have been limited. For instance, the possibilities of the universal design
of public transport spaces has only been marginally explored.
The use of available technology would be optimised by emphasising the socially
organised use of technology as opposed to simply technological xes. Given what is
possible (e.g. light alloy vehicles of different sorts), it is amazing how limited options
for different modalities are High tech bikes, wheelchairs, Amigos exist, but are not
widely used and available. More signicantly, they cannot operate without an
appropriate infrastructureparticularly within spaces and temporal rhythms that are
car-hegemonic. The issue is not simply what is technically possible (and a great deal
is), but the social organisation of space, and the political, social and cultural barriers
to using such a technological potential to create enabling and safe spaces.
How much difference can be accommodated by social spatial-temporal arrange-
ments? This is a complex and difcult question asked by critics of the social model,
but ignored by its advocates. This question, of course, must be socio-historically and
spatially situated.
It is true that the limitations of the body cannot be ignored, and many chronic
illnesses and disabilities impose, by virtue of the impairment and symptoms,
restrictions on life activities. No spatial-temporal arrangement, technology or ways
of organising the use of technology, can eclipse bodily limitations and troubles (e.g.
pain; Williams, 2000; Williams & Busby, 2000). Yet in the space between such
limits (as yet to be ascertained) and spatial-motional-material possibilities, there are
a yet many unexplored avenues for comfortably accommodating a wide range of
mind-bodies. Over time, deconstructing and reconstructing the social organisation
of space would benet many bodies, not merely those that are impaired. In short, we
need to understand that socially just spaces and changed social-temporal arrange-
ments can eliminate a great deal of disability while recognizing that there may be
much suffering and limitations that they cannot t (Wendell, 1996, p. 45).
Unless one wishes to perpetuate segregated and unequal spaces, we must
universalise non-disabling spatial organisation (Zola, 1989, p. 401). The social model
needs to acknowledge the near universality of the possibility of having a temporary
or permanent impairment. On various levels and in different degrees, the social
model has something to contribute to spaces for everybody. In an ethically ideal
society where opportunities to develop and the specic resources people need to
participate socially, were universally available, categories such as people with
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Bodies, Disability & Spaces 705
disabilities (and special needs) would be less relevant. In a fully accessible society,
the main feature would be the universal recognition that all structures have to be
built and all activities have to be organised for the widest range of human abilities
(Wendell, 1996, p. 55).
Acknowledgments
My thanks to George Martin and Miriam Fisher for their helpful comments, and to
Kathryn Hammond for her typing and editorial assistance.
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