(DIS4a) Sociology of Disability I

This session broadly explores the sociology of disability. Tags: Disabilities, Equality and Inequality, Health and Care

Organizers: Chris Churchill, University of Lethbridge, Yiyan Li, University of Toronto; Chairs: Yiyan Li, University of Toronto, Chris Churchill, University of Lethbridge

Presentations

Nathan Viktor Fawaz, University of Alberta; Danielle Peers, University of Alberta

Access as praxis: Pedagogies to nourish just imaginations

This session opens us to the question: What does it mean to be disabled in and by the higher education system? In mixed-ability settings – particularly institutions imagined around and for non-disabled people and normative rituals of acting and interacting, co-crafting an uncompromisingly disability affirming experience often does not include affirming the needs of the disabled leaders who are holding space for institutional access. Yet, we often find ourselves in positions of leadership in mixed ability spaces, not only because our arts and sciences of survival equip us with skill-sets for leadership, but —and most often because— if we are not leading, not holding the space with skill and precision we will not have access to these spaces at all, let alone to access with dignity, let alone access to space that has the chance to be affirming. Over the past three years, our professional collaboration has taken many forms: supervisor, doctoral student; co-developers and co-instructors of a graduate level course which takes a Disability Justice approach to integrating disability perspectives into adapted physical activity (APA) practice; as well Intern and Academic Lead, Equity Praxis and Systemic Ableism in the Office of the Vice Provost: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion who, along with other members of the Council on Systemic Ableism are tasked with imagining the university’s new Disability Access Hub. Which is to say, as people with lived experience of disability and members of disability communities within and beyond the academy, we find ourselves in a constellation of leadership opportunities within the university to support individuals and institutions poised to interact with members of our community who historically and in an ongoing way determine or delimit our access to “life chances” (Spade, 2015). Throughout this time, we have had opportunities to think deeply about and within the scholarship of critical disability and critical Mad studies. As well, we have had opportunities to think broadly about access practices which may be enacted in a range of settings, with a range of resources available, toward a range of desired harm-reductive and transformative ends. And, we have had the chance to consider and to follow several pedagogical impulses (Springgay and Rotas, 2015; Springgay and Truman, 2019) toward supporting the alignment of individual and institutional best intentions with the capacity to act, react, and interact in accessible and affirming ways. It has been our experience that teaching in favour of axiological articulations that can support Disability-Justice informed action to arise in novel contexts by non-disabled students, practitioners, and institutional leaders requires outlining and intervening in several of what we have come to refer to as ‘technologies of dehumanization’. These technologies of dehumanization each come through a historical context into modern articulations which are identifiable and can be countered, deflected, refused, and resisted in multiple ways. We would like to share some of what we have learned so far, particularly related to pedagogy as a promising site of intervention toward collective flourishing and to learn from others who are doing this work in other institutional and community contexts.

Katie Aubrecht, St. Francis Xavier University

University Student Mental Health Advocacy: A Human Rights and Equity Based Approach

A critical disability studies (Goodley, 2014) perspective recognizes that internal mental hardships are influenced by external structures, processes, and interactions. To provide useful supports for people experiencing mental distress, knowledge of the interactions between social and mental life is needed (Horwitz, 2003). When people have more valued social networks, they are less likely to report feelings of being mentally unwell (Horwitz, 2003). To date, much of the literature on student mental health in postsecondary education has focused on relationships between students and their friends and families (Yubero et al., 2018), or students and professors (Allen, Lilly, Green, Kerry, Zanjani, Vincent, and Arria, 2020). Less is known about the social networks among students with lived experiences of mental health with other students who have shared experiences. This may be attributed, in part, to the readiness with which mental health is understood as an individual problem, and a failure to consider student mental health as the product of inequitable social structures and institutionalized values and ways of knowing. Recently, researchers have begun to consider whether and how civic participation, and/or participation in collective advocacy efforts on postsecondary campuses could be understood as a determinant of mental and emotional health and well-being (Mitchell, Reason and Finley, 2019). Indeed, advocacy is widely understood as crucial to ensuring the rights of people with mental health experiences and identities are maintained (Stomski, Morrison, Whitely, and Brennan, 2018). What student mental health advocacy looks like differs across campuses but also within and across student populations. While students with disabilities groups are growing on some campuses, students with psychosocial disabilities do not always feel seen or fully represented in and by such groups (Kain, Chin-Newman, and Smith, 2019). At the same time as such questions are being posed, there is also growing awareness of the ‘extra work’ student advocates do, and the consequences of this labour for students mental and emotional health and well-being, with attention to the disproportionate impacts on students from equity-deserving groups (Linder, Quaye, Lange, Roberts, Lacy, and Okello, 2019). We seem then, at an impasse – how to understand and support positive experiences and outcomes of student advocacy for diverse students with lived experience? Addressing this question is crucial to supporting equitable and inclusive postsecondary environments and experiences. Postsecondary student mental health is a significant challenge in Canadian society that has been intensified by COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). This presentation describes a university-community partnered study that examined the relationship between participation in campus-based mental health advocacy and inclusive and equitable experiences of university education in Atlantic Canada. The research design was framed by an intersectional disability studies analytical approach and involved multiple methods – a scan of publicly available information related to mental health student advocacy at universities in Atlantic Canada, a review of current literature, and focus groups with student leaders and advocates with lived experiences to understand and center First Voice perspectives. Study results emphasize the importance of students’ perceptions of professors’ support to positive experiences and outcomes of student advocacy for diverse students with lived experiences.

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Non-presenting authors: Susan Hardie, Eviance; Mia Landi, St. Francis Xavier University; Tatianna Beresford, Dalhousie University

Eliza Chandler, Toronto Metropolitan University; Megan Johnson, University of Guelph; Carla Rice, ReVision Centre for Art and Social Justice; Elisabeth Harrison, ReVision Centre for Art and Social Justice

Enacting reciprocity and solidarity: critical access as methodology

This presentation explores how disability studies research can mobilize critical approaches to access through methodology to carry out projects that disrupt “academic ableism” and create physical and digital spaces that anticipated non-normative scholars and co-researchers at the centre of knowledge exchange. Working with critical access studies, we offer three examples from our shared research programs. We discuss how we build research designs through an approach to access that moves beyond logistics to foster “cultures of desirability,” respond to “access frictions” which inevitably arise, challenge notions that researchers can and should be seeking out verifiable truths, and build towards crip-feminist futures.