Mind And Body Spaces : Geographies Of Illness, Impairment And Disability

322 Pages·1999·4.861 MB·English

by  Ruth Butler, Hester Parr

MIND AND BODY SPACES
Geographers are increasingly engaged with both the theoretical debates
surrounding ill or impaired bodies and the lived realities of ill/impaired
experience. Just as geographies of race, gender, class and sexuality have drawn
attention to how complex power relations in society are spatialised, so
geographies of illness and impairment offer a deeper understanding of the world.
Mind and Body Spaces highlights new international research—from Britain,
USA, Canada and Australia—on bodily impairment, mental health and disabling
social worlds. A range of different spatial ‘settings’ in which different minds and
bodies are always located are examined, including the nation, urban and rural
spaces, work spaces, the ‘caring’ institution, the street and the home.
The contributors discuss varied issues concerning physical impairment and
mental health, ranging from historical conceptions of the body and behaviour to
contemporary political activism. This range of concerns also includes matters of
identity and employment, accessible housing, parenthood and child carers,
psychiatric medication use, masculinity, sexuality, autobiography, social
exclusion and inclusion.
In a deliberate attempt to extend conventional geographical research
concerning disability, this collection clearly illustrates the complex
interconnections between mind/body states and wider socio-cultural, economic,
political and medical environments. Bringing together entities traditionally kept

apart—mind and body, illness and impairment—this book seeks to invigorate
debate about the diverse geographies of ableism.
Ruth Butler is Lecturer in Applied Social Research at The University of Hull
and Hester Parr is Lecturer in Geography at The University of Dundee.
CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES
Edited by Tracey Skelton
Lecturer in International Studies, Nottingham Trent University
and
Gill Valentine
Senior Lecturer in Geography, The University of Sheffield.
This series offers cutting-edge research organised into three themes: concepts,
scale and transformations. It is aimed at upper-level undergraduates and research
students, and will facilitate inter-disciplinary engagement between geography
and other social sciences. It provides a forum for the innovative and vibrant
debates which span the broad spectrum of this discipline.
1. MIND AND BODY SPACES
Geographies of illness, impairment and disability
Edited by Ruth Butler and Hester Parr
2. EMBODIED GEOGRAPHIES
Spaces, bodies and rites of passage
Edited by Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather
3. LEISURE/TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES
Practices and geographical knowledge
Edited by David Crouch
4. CLUBBING
Dancing, ecstasy, vitality
Ben Malbon
5. ENTANGLEMENTS OF POWER
Geographies of domination/resistance
Edited by Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison

6. DE-CENTRING SEXUALITIES
Politics and representations beyond the metropolis
Edited by Richard Phillips, Diane Watt and David Shuttleton
MIND AND BODY SPACES
Geographies of illness, impairment
and disability
Edited by
Ruth Butler and Hester Parr

London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1999 Ruth Butler and Hester Parr for editorial and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-203-97966-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-17902-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-l 7903-3 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors viii
Preface and acknowledgements xi
1 New geographies of illness, impairment and disability 1
HESTER PARR AND RUTH BUTLER
2 The body, disability and Le Corbusier’s conception of the 25
radiant environment
ROB IMRIE
3 The moral topography of intemperance 45
MICHAEL L.DORN
4 Rhetoric and place in the ‘mental deficiency’ asylum 69
DEBORAH CARTER PARK AND JOHN RADFORD
5 Can technology overcome the disabling city? 97
BRENDAN GLEESON
6 Body troubles: women, the workplace and negotiations of a 117
disabled identity
ISABEL DYCK
7 Workspaces: refigu ring the disability-employment debate 135
EDWARD HALL
8 Autobiographical notes on chronic illness 151
PAMELA MOSS
9 What it means to be a man: the body, masculinities, disability 163
GILL VALENTINE
10 Bodies and psychiatric medicine: interpreting different 177
geographies of mental health
HESTER PARR
11 Double the trouble or twice the fun? Disabled bodies in the 199
gay community
RUTH BUTLER
vi
12 Without these walls: a geography of mental ill-health in a rural 217
environment
CHRISTINE MILLIGAN
13 Accommodating difference: social justice, disability and the 237
design of affordable housing
FLORA GATHORNE-HARDY
14 ‘Caught in the Cinderella trap’: narratives of disabled parents 253
and young carers
JANE STABLES AND FIONA SMITH
15 Body politics: disabled women’s activism in Canada and 267
beyond
VERA CHOUINARD
Index 293
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plates
2.1 Vitruvian image of the body 28
2.2 Le Corbusier’s Radiant City 37
2.3 Workers’ housing at Pessac, 1925 and 1969 41
4.1 Why is it necessary to control the sex impulses? 90
10.1 Herbal medicines for mental health 184
11.1 Stupid question no. 154 205
11.2 Our rights, our lives, our choices! 207
11.3 If at first you don’t succeed, try a new position! 210
Figures
2.1 Positioning architecture within Cartesian dualisms 29
4.1 Constituent components in the evolution of the mental deficiency 75
asylum
4.2 What we pay for the feeble-minded in Ontario 79
12.1 Population of settlements within Dumfries and Galloway 222
14.1 Child carers need help themselves 259
CONTRIBUTORS
Ruth Butler is a lecturer in Applied Social Research in the School of
Comparative and Applied Social Sciences, University of Hull, where she
teaches a course on disability policy, identity and society. She has written on
the oppression and resistance of people with disabled bodies in general, and
visually impaired people and disabled youths in particular. She is currently
working with Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine on an ESRC-funded project
on the experiences of deaf, gay and lesbian youths.
Vera Chouinard is Professor of Geography in the School of Geography and
Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. Her research is concerned
with state intervention in cities, political and legal regulation of urban
struggles and alternative services, and the role of differences such as class,
gender and disabilities in people’s capacities to struggle for social change. Her
current research projects include socio-spatial factors influencing disabled
women’s experiences of activism in Canada and the impacts of state
restructuring on disabled people’s lives and capacities to contest oppression.
Michael L.Dorn is a doctoral candidate in Geography at the University of
Kentucky. His work addresses socio-medical geographies of physical
difference (especially disability, race and gender), the historical geography of
medical environmental science, and social theories of scientific rationality and
the body.
Isabel Dyck is an associate professor in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences,
University of British Columbia. Her research interests in the area of
geographies of disability focus on feminist analyses of the experiences of
women with chronic illness. Other current research concerns integration issues
for immigrants to Canada, including family reconstitution and immigrants’ use
of traditional and biomedical health care systems. Recent publications include
‘Women with disabilities and everyday geographies: home space and the
contested body’ in R.A. Kearns and W.Gesler (eds) Putting Health into Place:
Landscape, Identity and Wellbeing, Syracuse: Syracuse Press and
‘Methodology on the line: constructing meanings about “cultural difference”
in health and health care research’ in S. Grace, V.Strong-Boag, J.Anderson
ix
and A.Eisenberg (eds) Painting the Maple: ‘Race’, Gender and the
Construction of Canada, UBC Press.
Flora Gathorne-Hardy is a PhD student at the Department of Geography,
University of Cambridge. Her thesis examines issues of social justice and the
politics of decision-making about the design of affordable housing, with
comparative research being carried out in the UK and the US. This work has
been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Her research
interests revolve around the relationships between people’s experiences of
social injustice and the geography of the built environment.
Brendan Gleeson is presently a research fellow in the Urban Research
Program at the Australian National University. His research interests centre on
urban social policy, environmental policy and spatial regulation. His most
recent book, Geographies of Disability, was released in early 1999.
Edward Hall is a research fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The
Open University. His research centres on issues of disability, embodiment and
employment. He has recently completed a PhD thesis on disability and flexible
employment and is currently researching the impact of the UK Disability
Discrimination Act (1995). He has presented at several UK and international
conferences.
Rob Imrie is Reader in Human Geography at Royal Holloway University of
London. At present he is directing an ESRC-funded project on property
markets and disabled people’s access needs in Sweden and the UK.
Christine Milligan is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of
Geography at the University of Strathclyde. Her principal research interests
are focused around the social and spatial manifestations of health and social
care restructuring—in particular for community-based individuals with mental
illhealth and the frail elderly. Her research has recently been published in
Health and Place (1996) and Social Science and Medicine (1998). She is
currently completing her doctoral thesis, which focuses on the role of informal
care providers to comm unity-based groups in the Scottish context.
Pamela Moss (Associate Professor) teaches as a feminist geographer at the
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada. Her interests in commonplace
activities and the mundane has led her to explore the everyday lives of low-
income women, older women living with arthritis, and women diagnosed with
chronic illness. She is also active in feminist community politics.
Deborah Carter Park received her PhD in Geography from York University
in 1995. She is currently studying at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education of the University of Toronto. Her research interests are in the field
of intellectual disability. She has published papers in the Journal of Historical
Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers and, more
recently, in Progress in Human Geography and Disability and Society.