The Construction of Disability & Health:

The Role of Spaces & PlacesAPHA Disability Section Chair’s Forum 2013

Welcome and IntroductionTwitter

• @APHADisability

• #APHADisability

ContributorsRTC: Rural at the University of Montana

Tannis HargroveLillie GreimanCraig RaveslootMeg TraciRebecca GoeRobert Liston Andrew MyersMary OlsonHelen Russette

RTC: Community Living at the University of Kansas

Glen WhiteDot Nary

Social Dimensions of Health Institute at the University of Dundee

Thilo Kroll

The Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at Brandeis University

Student Participants:Morgan CrossmanLeah Igdalsky

The Environment• People with disabilities have recognized the role of the

environment in disability experience for decades.

• This awareness has continued to grow among researchers and policy makers since publication of the ICF.

• The focus is usually on accessibility of places and equal opportunity for participation in society.

Geography• Geographers have examined various aspects of the

environment for decades.

• Far beyond the creation of maps, they investigate how people and place interact.

• They recognize that people create place even as they themselves are created by place.

• This line of inquiry pushes the disability, accessibility and universal design paradigms.

TopicsThe Socio-spatial creation of disability

Visitability

Ableism Universal design

Beyond “Special places for special people”

Integration versus Inclusion

Social dimensions of health Social Exclusion and Institutionalization

Disabling spaces of the home Healthy homes in tribal communities

Healthy Housing Virtual Space & Social Media

Five slides in Five minutes with Five minutes of discussion. Wrap up with 30 minutes of discussion across topics.

The Socio-Spatial Creation of Disability

Andrew Myers

“They [landscapes] are read and struggled over because the meanings attached to landscapes, working together with the landscape’s built form, establish the ‘conditions of possibility’ for how people live in place.” ~ Don Mitchell 2005

Landscapes: The Groundwork of Life• Physical (streets, buildings)

• Cultural (significance, affect)

• Landscapes are not given, they are created

• A text that can be read, interpreted, and obeyed

• Not fixed, always in flux and active

Power in LandscapesSocial values are instilled into landscape

• Landscapes as a function of power

• Categories of exclusion• Proper behavior • “Conditions of possibility”

Creating a Disabling Situation

“If we are to understand disability and the experiences of disabled people we must deconstruct the landscapes of power and exclusion, and the geographies of domination and resistance.” ~ Rob Kitchin, 1998

For Your Consideration• What meanings and values do our landscapes

convey?

• How might landscapes contribute to and sustain the dominant power?

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Learn more about the RTC:Rural!

http://rtc.ruralinstitute.umt.edu/