Who’s Listening? Practices of social justice listening within an advocacy coalition for policy change around hearing and deafness

• In Event: If a Body Meet a Body: Making People in Daily Practice

Abstract

We examine the Breaking the Sound Barrier (BSB) lobbying campaign which aims to shape hearing health policy in the Australian context as an example of social justice listening. BSB has developed an agenda agreed on by a range of Deaf community organisations, hearing loss charities, hearing aid manufacturers and audiology associations. The campaign was launched at the National Deafness Sector Summit in 2016, after which it was presented to parliament with the aim of making hearing loss an official National Health Priority, and is ongoing via face-to-face lobbying, mainstream and social media. This campaign brings together groups with longstanding fundamental differences in the ways that they frame their membership and develop claims based on personal experience and scientific authority. Organisations representing sign language-using Deaf people, for example, frame Deafness as a cultural identity centred on a shared community language, rather than Deafness as a health difficulty or disability. Deaf culture organisations emphasise the importance of accessible communication and services, such as captioned media or access to sign language interpreters, from a standpoint of Deafness not as ‘hearing loss’ but as ‘Deaf gain’. Deaf culture organisations have been critical of emphases on technologies, such as hearing aids or cochlear implants, as a ‘solution’ to Deafness. In contrast, audiology professional bodies and charitable organisations have understood hearing through concepts such as ‘hearing loss’. These differences make this advocacy coalition of particular significance to understanding how claims for social justice arise within contestations of policy and expert knowledge.

Authors

• Nicole Matthews, Macquarie University

• Justine Lloyd, Macquarie University