Wellbeing’ and the production of disability in the university

Erasure, effacement and institutional exceptionalism

Bibliographic Data

ID6445871
AuthorsVivienne Orchard (0000-0002-2795-1901, University of Southampton), Eleanor K Jones (0009-0009-2120-1083, University of Southampton)
Year2024
Volume17
Issue1
Pages53-66
Publication date2024-03-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePower and Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1757-7438 • E-ISSN: 1757-7438
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17577438241239840
OpenAlexW4392963319
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited23

This article uses ‘wellbeing’ as deployed within UK higher education as a starting point for examining the relationship between disability and the university. We explore various strands of scholarship that seek to critique wellbeing, universities, and/or connections between disability and these institutions. Work on ‘wellbeing’ identifies the harmful logics underpinning its political appropriation, but erases disability by declining to consider it as political experience. Critiques of the university efface disability by considering disablement only insofar as it affects the non-disabled, and reify ‘intellect’ as neutral entity and sole true purview of higher education. Work on the political economy of disability exposes crucial connections between disability and capitalism, and the role of economic and political institutions in upholding them, but relies on a distinction between worker and surplus that cannot reckon with institutional complexity. Finally, scholarship that directly confronts the university as disabling institution accounts for complexity, but hinges on an ultimately utopian vision of the university as an exceptional, salvageable space, neglecting key mechanisms by which it continues to marginalise disabled people. We suggest that reaching a fuller understanding of the university as producing disability must involve moving away from this exceptionalism and toward dialogue with critiques of other institutions

Ableism · Appropriation · Capitalism · Disability studies · Epistemology · Exceptionalism · Higher education · Marketization · Medical model of disability · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Gender Studies · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology