Ableist STS? Reconsidering Our Field’s Engagement with Disability Studies

• In Event: Making Disability: Disability Culture, Design, and STS

Abstract

Discussions about “assistive” devices and technologies are not new in the field of Science & Technology Studies. Scholars such as Blume and Winance have used classic STS approaches to analyze acceptance or rejection of, and adaptation to, technologies developed for disabled people (Blume, 2009; Winance, 2006). The field of disability studies has also proposed its own approaches to analyzing technological development, problematizing it for the ‘normative’ value that often follows its promises (Wolbring, 2008). Despite STS’s sensitivity to the political dimensions of technology, it has less often questioned its own engagement with and treatment of the category of disability itself, or has even gone as far as proposing the field’s own theories as alternative explanans to the ordering of disability. This presentation argues that this type of intellectual colonization can lead to the incorporation of ableist framings of disability, to the detriment of a more nuanced understanding of both disability and technology. As scholars of technologies, we must first question categories inherited from the developers of technology, including the category of ‘assistive’ (Hendren, 2013). Secondly, rather than attempting to replace other fields’ concepts and theories, we should engage productively and symbiotically with their work while using our own concepts to engage in new research topics.

Cited:

Blume, Stuart. The artificial ear: Cochlear implants and the culture of deafness. Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Hendren, Sara. “All Technology Is Assistive.” Wired, Conde Nast, 16 Oct. 2014, www.wired.com/2014/10/all-technology-is-assistive/.

Winance, Myriam. "Trying out the wheelchair: the mutual shaping of people and devices through adjustment." Science, Technology, & Human Values 31.1 (2006): 52-72.

Wolbring, Gregor. "The politics of ableism." Development 51.2 (2008): 252-258.

Author

• Raquel Velho, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute