Non-disabled Ableism: An Autoethnography of Cultural Encounters between a Non-disabled Researcher and Disabled People in the Field

Abstract

This article describes situations where preconceptions about disabled people were made apparent in a non-disabled researcher's thoughts, words and actions in the course of fieldwork for a qualitative study into the lives of disabled young adults. The article uses these experiences as entry points to discovery and analysis of cultural ableism. It draws on critical theory and insights from the social model of disability and takes an autoethnographic approach to highlight the researcher's preconceptions and her process towards a more nuanced understanding of disability.

Ableism and the Life Stories of People with Disabilities

“…Such a construction places people with disabilities in an unequal position in the given narrative circulation because the ableist disability narrative feeds an understanding of disability as deviance or unwanted difference (Campbell 2009: 5, 39, 43;Schalk 2013). Furthermore, according to ableist logic, deviance demands medical treatment and interventions (Ahlvik-Harju 2015;Davis 2013;Svendby, Romsland & Moen 2018).…”