Disability Cultures and Artifacts. Wheelchair as Silent Helper and Little Black Dress

Abstract

Studies on disability culture have been conducted since the mid-90's, by American scholars, and since 2000, by the British ones. Researches on this topic states that disability is a separate culture and that there are different voices, some of approval andsome of disapproval, among persons with disabilities. The article discusses, describes and justifies the idea of disability culture, as viewed by Brown (1996; 2002), Barnes and Mercer (2001), like cultures of disability characterized by internal diversities. The article doesn’t deal with the whole spectrum of subsequent structural differences in disability culturesbut emphasizes the differences regarding a single element of culture -a physical artifact, which is the wheelchair. The first part of the article contains the analysis of the general anthropological concept of culture in the American and British researches, the analysis of the concept of disability culture and its internal differences which create the disability cultures. In the second part, I analyze thesecondary data analysis artifact itself -a wheelchair conceptualized by 8 Polish women with a physical disability. The data from the secondary analysis indicated the role of the wheelchair, furthermore the informants’ wishes for the optimal wheelchairs and the information about the unaccepted ones, as well. 8 female informants treat the wheelchair as an artifact of everyday life, enabling independence, the organizationof daily activities and sex. They have their own preferences regarding the construction of wheelchairs, the color and binary functions; moreover, they give it names, such as cabriolet, legs, Gandalf or a Little black dress.