Bad Samaritan: Very Cognitively Disabled People and the Sociological Sensibility

Introduction In this paper I examine critical sociologists' and social historians' lack of interest in very cognitively disabled people. In a more general sense, the paper is about the selection and development of academic problems within critical social science, and about the identification of the social problems of disadvantage and oppression by critical social scientists, since the two types of problem, academic and social, are intimately related. I raise the issue of forms of extreme social disadvantage and oppression which do not seem to stimulate a critical social scientific response. In this way, I am confronting fundamental issues of critical social science practice, but I am not using very cognitively disabled people as a mere example for a broader purpose; I show why the experiences of very cognitively disabled people should be a central concern of critical sociologists, social historians and social theorists. The terms "very cognitively disabled people" and "very extensive cognitive disability" used throughout this paper are not intended to carry a technical meaning, such as a defined range of estimated I.Q., a specific level of retardation, or a set of particular cognitive disabilities, but to denote the most serious levels of cognitive or intellectual disability in a general way. However, I am not thereby intending to avoid the obvious "constructedness" of more technical terms, and to achieve some sort of natural relation between term and referent. The issue of the constructedness of terms relating to cognitive disability (including "cognitive disability") is central to this paper, and is tackled directly, using the terms I have chosen. Indeed, I begin by examining Philip Ferguson's sympathetic critique of social constructionism (Ferguson, 1987) which is aimed directly at explaining critical social scientists' abandonment of very cognitively disabled people. The examination of Ferguson's position allows me to set up and initiate my discussion of academic disinterest in very cognitively disabled people. While accepting his critique of constructionism, I argue that Ferguson does not successfully explain the neglect of very cognitively disabled people within critical analyses with objectivist elements. In addition, he fails to fully acknowledge the significance of very cognitively disabled people's social powerlessness as a cause of their academic neglect. I go on to show how constructionist analyses of cognitive disability are variants of the constructionist approach to "social problems," and I discuss the ways in which the academic neglect of extremely powerless groups has been handled by constructionist "social problems" theorists in recent years (Collins, 1989; Miller, 1993). I argue that their treatment is superficial because, despite appearances, it relies solely on a sociological, as opposed to an ethical, orientation to develop a response. I claim that the lack of interest of critical social scientists in certain vulnerable groups, such as very cognitively disabled people, is a product of the sociological orientation itself, or what I call the sociological "sensibility," and of the engagement of this sensibility with the socially critical impulse. A central element of the sociological sensibility is the sense that academic problems relate to significant social-historical forces or processes, but very cognitively disabled people cannot constitute themselves as a social-historical force. A key component of the critical impulse is the desire to avoid a paternalistic relation to disadvantaged and oppressed subjects through an insistence that critical social science elaborates the existing political speech of disadvantaged and oppressed subjects and does not simply speak for them, but very cognitively disabled people cannot speak for themselves. I do not attempt to destructively deconstruct the sociological sensibility. My aim is rather to identify and examine it, and to discuss some of its limitations. …