Running out of steam? the impact of research on disability policy and the disability rights agenda
Gerry Zarb (Plenary Speaker), Disability Rights Commission
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of research on the development of disability policy over the past decade, particularly in relation to its influence on promoting disability rights. The starting point for the discussion is the author's earlier (1992) paper on development of the emergent participatory and emancipatory research paradigms which argued that the transformative potential of disability research is significantly constrained by the social and material relations of research production. The paper examines the extent to which the early promise of the participatory and emancipatory agendas for disability research has been fulfilled and whether or not the constraints posed by the organisation of research have been either strengthened or weakened. The paper also discusses some of the critiques of disability research that have been developed in response, from both the post-modernist and materialist perspectives.
The paper argues that research that has contributed directly to improving the position of disabled people in society continues to be the exception rather than the rule. In practice the transformative potential of disability research appears to be declining in the face of an increasingly centralised policy setting agenda. The paper further argues that, in addition to the barriers created by traditional relations of research production, the impact of research has, since the mid 1990s, been further constrained by the reification of very particular forms of 'evidence' relating to the economic and managerial efficacy of policy and practice. This has led to a demotion of alternative research outputs influenced by the disability rights agenda which, as a result, have tended to become marginalised in the policy making process. Finally, the paper considers the potential for reversing these trends and argues that this can only be achieved by an explicit re-alignment of research and political agendas and by reasserting the social model basis for disability research.