Module 2: Medicalization and Reframing Expertise
Who Gets to Define Disability?
Key Terms: Medicalization and Reframing Expertise
The following key terms are used throughout this module and linked in the glossary:
What is Disability Placeholder
What is disability section SHORT-and include jessica smiths ted talk
–what is it
-how do we define it
-“in every society and throughout history…” .”a problem to solved..WHO
-so how we tend to solve it…we cant underestimate how it shapes our lvies
-think of all the times you require /use medicine. reflect…
-how does that shape routine…
-ambivalent relationship between disability and medicine
-but in other ways it has also narrowed our scope of understanding disability.
Media Moment
Time: 11 minutes, 29 seconds
In this talk, Jessica Smith reflects on how disability is shaped not only by the body, but by social attitudes, environments, and assumptions about who counts as an expert. Watch the following video here, access it at the link below, or the transcript.
Living in an inaccessible world | Jessica Smith | TEDxGEMSNewMillenniumSchool
Activity
The following questions invite you to reflect on key ideas and examples from Jessica Smith’s talk.
Knowledge that is recognized as authoritative, often based on having certain credentials.
The process through which access to services, resources, or recognition is controlled by institutional or professional authorities.
Knowledge rooted in people's own direct experiences of their body, health, and the world.
The social and institutional power granted to medical professionals, knowledge, and systems to define health, illness, disability, and appropriate responses to them.
A perspective on disability that views disability as an individual problem that needs to be diagnosed, treated, or cured in order to return to the able-bodied norm.
The process of assigning medical meaning to behaviors and conditions, and positioning medical practices as the primary method of treatment or resolution. It often results in the lives of disabled people being imbued in medical meaning.
When something is made real because humans agree that it is real. For example, the value of money is a social construct. Money has no inherent value (e.g. it can't be eaten), but it has value in our society due to human consensus.
