Negotiating Cultures of 'Disability' and 'Therapy': An Ethnographic Account of the Quantum Leap Farm Community

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar I
  In Paper Session: Breaking the frame: Disability as embodied discourse of change

Abstract

This paper offers an ethnographic account of Quantum Leap, a facility which provides therapeutic services to disabled adults through equestrian activities. I explore the manner in which staff, volunteers, able-bodied persons, and disabled persons within this community negotiate the constructs/concepts of ‘disability’ and ‘therapy,’ within the larger society. More explicitly, I encompass an analysis of performance as talk in action —how is disability, ability, and therapy enacted, manifested, and practiced daily—and discourse—how does the prefix ‘dis’ affect the construction of ‘disability’, to interrogate identity. With respect to the theme of stability and change, this account inquires about the ways in which the concepts of ‘therapy’ and ‘disability,’ and the identities associated with them, are altered, subverted, and negated within this unique setting (e.g. what changes?). Conversely, this paper also addresses how the societal aspects of these concepts transcend to, and are impressed upon, this community (e.g. what stays the same?).

Author

• Shelby Forbes, University of South Florida