January 24: Early conceptions of disability
Read:
1) Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States, pp. xi-xxiii and 1-40 (introduction, ch. 1-3, and part of ch. 4).
2) English and colonial poor laws
Then, please answer one of the questions below:
1) Nielsen presents two major frameworks for understanding disability and dealing with disabled people in early America (religion/science and the poor law). Do you think these views are still present today? Why or why not?
2) What were your “muddiest points” in Nielsen and or the poor laws? That is, what points did you find most confusing in these readings and why?
Honestly, I think my muddiest point feeds into question 1. While I feel like I understand the frameworks dealing with disability discussed in the book, I can’t say with certainty how it is present today. While, I believe similar practices must be in place, I honestly don’t know the details. Under the poor laws in the book either family members or the community were responsible for the care of the disabled, whichever had the resources to do so. In some cases this meant being institutionalized. I have heard of people being wards of the state. As such, they have case workers who manage their finances and the wards live off of an allowance. When considering question 1, this was the first thing that came to my mind.
Nielsen, in the introduction declares the importance of of words and how “words matter”, so I was expecting her to delve deeper into the meanings and uses of the names used in the past and the significances of the names used by the indigenous peoples and the settlers.
As far as the poor laws I had the most trouble understanding the verbage and their different use of words i.e. (Perish & Quorum).
I believe that there are remnants of those frameworks that still linger in today’s society. My best friend’s church believes that if you are “afflicted” with illness, poverty, or disability then you are lacking faith. This is much like the belief of Cotton Mather. While lack of faith is not a sin, it is most definitely straying from the “straight and narrow.” Society as a whole, though, no longer looks to churches to diagnose these “ailments,” but instead to doctors who generally add no shame with their findings.
As far as the poor laws, I think that those have dissipated almost entirely. I think that they have transitioned into a moral standing and are slightly upheld by families who are able (and other times, the care of the government is needed which is reminiscent of the poor laws). I do think, though, that we have several programs that were birthed from the poor laws: welfare, social security, subsidized housing, medicaid, state funded psychiatric hospitals, etc.
I believe that the frameworks Nielsen describes do exist in today’s society. The poor law concept can be applied to people with disabilities who are on assistance such as Social Security in this case, the community provides for the disabled population financially, and in some cases provide them with jobs and housing.
for the idea that disability is the result of sin or some sort of cosmic imbalance,I believe this is also very true. My dad and I once met a man in a restaurant who told us very emphatically that I would not have been born disabled if only my parents had trusted God. At the time, I did not understand this. How could anyone think that God was punishing us? I now realize that this is not a new concept. As discussed in class disability implies there is something wrong with the person, and it is human nature to try to put right what is wrong this attitude exemplifies the medical model of disability previously mentioned .
I do believe that the frameworks Nielson presents for understanding disability and dealing with disabled people in early America are still present today. In Chapter Two, Nielson notes the Puritan social ethic pervaded all aspects of life in early New England. Believing that God had created the world to be orderly and hierarchical, the Puritans sought to replicate that design in their social structure and community covenants. By creating and implementing disabled benefits in 1636, then the Body of Liberties in 1641 while establishing legal protections for those considered mentally incapable of making sound financial decisions are part of the civil liberties we are allowed to partake in today.
Each of these frameworks remains prevalent in modern American society. In the present day, most people view religion and science as mutually exclusive principles, but in the case of colonists (particularly Puritans in New England) the two merged to be one and the same. In terms of disability, this meant that colonists attempted to define disabilities in empirical terms whether as a fault of the soul or a fault of the body. Perhaps the terminology and scientific expertise has changed fairly dramatically over the centuries, but the model remains the same. Colonists and many present-day Americans still describe disability using the medical model whatever that may be in the context of either particular society.
On the other hand, colonists sought to define disability in terms of economic productivity. As Nielson and the primary source documents point out, colonists throughout North America sought to ensure that the disabled could provide for themselves, or that they would not become a burden to the community at large. Granted, their viewpoint was far more harsh than that of the present-day with our extensive social safety-net. Still, by defining the disabled as capable of economic production, and therefore as part of society, the colonists stumbled upon a prototypical version of the social model of disability. Again, there are major differences that remain between the modern and past conceptions of disability, but there also remains a kernel of similarity between them.
1. When I first started reading Nielson’s introduction, I did not understand much of what he was saying until he started to speak about how disabilities are caused from a sin or “imbalance” as he states. Honestly, I had never heard of these type of things before, so I am not able to clearly answer this question.
2. Furthermore, the muddiest point to me was the fact that people believe that disabilities are caused from sinning. I disagree with that, I just truly believe that there is a reason why a person goes through a certain situation and that is it. However, the stories he states are very interesting which kept me reading.
In response to Christopher, I am honestly amazed at his second paragraph because I have never heard of this. A disability is not caused because someone sinned, at least, I would hope not to think so. As for the poor laws, we discussed in my microeconomics class that they tried to use the same concept by substituting it with the National Assistance Act as a social safety net for people with disabilities, homeless, and unmarried women who did not pay national insurances. It is used for the Social Security system today as Christopher mentioned, but the idea of the poor laws still stand behind the National Assistance Act as well.
I think the religion and science view are still partly around. The science part is still around. When someone is born with a disability everybody wants to find them a cure. People feel that their life would be better off if they did not have the disability. When people get a disability another way than being born with it want to find a cure because they do not like being disabled. The fact that one day they could become disabled without a cure scares people and they feel if there was a cure for some of these illness they may never get them. The religion part I feel is no longer around. In the past they felt that if they had a disability they did something bad that caused them to have the disability. We now know that this is not the case. Becoming disabled can happen to anybody no matter what they have done. For the poor laws I am not real sure if we still have those around today or not. We do have programs that can help people if they are unable to work. But what happens to the people who are really bad off that their families have to take care of them. The families take care of them because they know that there is no where they can go to get the care that they need. There is nothing that says that we have to help these people we do so because we know that they may or may not need it one day.
The muddiest points in the online reading on English and Colonial Poor Laws came, at most every point, from the way the laws were written. Old English and Colonial persons spoke very differently, compared to how people speak now. With Legalese added into the mix, it becomes near impossible to decipher some of those Laws, at least in my mind. If I had a small translation or a paragraph describing what the law was trying to accomplish, I think it would be a much easier read. Additionally, I’d like to know precisely what is meant by the term “Overseer,” or what that job position entails.
I found it interesting as well how the poor and the unemployed were subject to the wills of these Overseer’s, and how the term Vagabond came about.
I wonder, though, what the Massachusetts law of 1760 has to do with the poor.
3 The framework of religion/science in regards to dealing with disabilities that Nielsen presents is still somewhat present today. The idea that every disability is something that needs to be cured is part of the medical model. There is also the idea that every disability can be cured given enough time and scientific research. The issue that Otis had with his father in chapter three is also still somewhat present today with the general attitude toward invisible disabilities. The general consensus concerning invisible disabilities amongst those who have no experience with them seems to be “if it cannot be seen, then it does not exist,” and “stop lazing about and do it yourself.”
The frame work of poor law does not seem to be present in today’s society. A city or community banding together to take care of the people who could not take care of themselves is largely lacking in present day. That attitude requires a more communal philosophy. In an individualistic society, taking care of others becomes less important. While there are welfare programs to provide assistance, they are not community based.
Nielson’s introduction of the two system framework for understanding and dealing with disabled people permeate greatly throughout our nations framework today. It appears as though, according to Nielson, the true definition of disability has remained unchanged since the time of Native Americans. These people believed that the only real disability was “someone who lacked or had weak community relationships”, and that each person possessed their own set of gifts capable of furthering the community. Although the majority view towards the disabled changed once America became colonized, it still rings true that the easiest way to create a disabled person is to cut them off from society and the help that it can offer.
The poor laws were very difficult to comprehend and at times I found them to be contradicting. The Elizabeth poor law stated that the parishes were seemingly responsible for the lame, blind, old, etc., but later stated that the poor people were expected to pay some type of monthly sum. The confusing part about this is that it is called “a relief for the poor”, but it was actually making the poor pay more money towards the parish and making it harder for them to live with more restrictions, so it wasn’t really helping.
The point in the second poor laws “The settlement Act” that I found confusing and contradicting is that one was not allowed to leave and move to another place or parish without paper work and paying a sum, but during the harvest season one could move with paper work and stay as long as the season was holding out, which would in return make a better harvest which at times would be used to pay back the parish and overseers so they are helping the poor by allowing them to get jobs other places, but limiting them on when they can do so.
All in all there is an obvious connection between the church/parish and the poor. Going to church will help you spiritually and in return you do not have to pay that fine. The government is trying to make the poor in a sense normal working citizens, but are still putting restrictions on them, which not only makes their living situation complicated, it prohibits where and when they can find work, and the amount of income they have for themselves
I think the part of the poor laws that I found the most muddy was that fact that it left me wondering who exactly many of these laws were there to help. Most of them talk about putting those poor that are physically able to work, yet they do not talk about how to support those that are not. So they left me wondering what were the laws and treatment of those that had disabilities that made it so that they could not physically do manual, unskilled labor. Were they found jobs that they could handle, left to their families to deal with, or just left to mercy of charity.
Now it does not help while reading that the speech and writing, both in legal matters and not, has changed greatly in the time since these laws were written. So their terming of certain things is not clear without a basis of knowledge of how they were used at the time they were written. An example of this is the fact that those talked about, in much of the laws, are referred to as “the poor,” are these people monetarily poor, disabled in some manner, or both?
I am not sure if the points that I found muddy or hard to understand were more on what was not clear in the laws, in the language used in them, or a combination of both.
The religion/science view is seen today more than the framework of the poor law. There are numerous religiously based communities who may still imply that disability is caused by sin/imbalance of some sort; however, there is certainly an even greater push to try to categorize and treat persons by a medical model in the majority of American culture. As an example of how this is still the same in some ways, note that “the economic resources of one’s family often mattered tremendously. Unless one was considered threatening, mental disability could be of relatively benign consequence (Nielsen, p. 47).” A premature child, for instance, in today’s society with wealthy parents, may have greater chances at success later in life, than one born to a poor family would if the prematurity of the child were to cause learning disabilities, for instance, because the wealthy parents can use use medical knowledge to a greater advantage due to their ability to pay for more services. By being more science oriented, the modern American culture may seek to make a person with disabilities to appear as “normal” as possible through treatments of various sorts.
The poor law framework is less seen in that, while there are some state institutions, medicare, etc., the burden of care for a person with disabilities will often fall more upon that person’s immediate family circle, and instead of an expectation if an individual with disabilities does not have family support that the community will step in, a large portion of the homeless population in the United States today is comprised of persons with disabilities, around whom many other people may feel uncomfortable, and not feel a sense of obligation to help. On the other hand, the Puritans, would, perhaps, also have found it difficult to comprehend that instead of giving persons physically capable of labor some work to do, that welfare and unemployment benefits are available. The Puritan work ethic created a harsh environment at times, but there was in some ways a greater safety net available for persons with disabilities than there is today, economically, even though modern day ideas of empathy and inclusion may have been lacking.
I do not feel that the framework for understanding disability are still predominantly present in the United States today, as they where during earlier time. I am sure there are so people that feel that by sin we are being punished and that is our way of God showing the world our punishment. People also often do feel that when a child is born ill that it is something that the women did wrong during pregnancy. Although, with medical technology and the change in life that has occurred, the things that women did “wrong” has evolved from simply dietary concerns. In 2001 I had a son that was born disabled and due to health issues he passed away as an infant. People that knew me had no problem expressing that it was something that I did “wrong” during the pregnancy. With that being said though, I do not believe that the majority of the population is that uneducated to think that way.
I do think that America has a similar concept of dealing with disabled people today. From Nielsen’s reading I learned that as long as disabled person could provide a valueable survive to the community they where aloud to be included. However, the part that was no as clearly written was regarding those individuals had to survive to make it to the time they could show a valuable contribution to the community. I am sure, as Nielsen included, many infants with disabilities died at an early age. Like we discussed in class, with medical technology many more people are surviving with disabilities. Of course any people during that time would have become disabled after birth due the lack of medical technology and a high rate of injury due to the life styles they had.
I am not sure that I completely understood poor law. From both readings my understanding was that the legal system forced communities to provide for mentally disabled people when they had no family to supervise them or when their family was to poor to provide for them. The courts could take property that those individuals owned in order to help financially. Later it seemed that it started to include a larger group of people that just did not take care of themselves for various reasons such as homeless and street walkers. From what I understood from the reading it seems like this was the start of the institutions and prisons that these individuals would later become to know. I think that this is still a view on how to deal with these individuals today. The United States has a decreased accessibility to resources for individuals that are mentally disabled and often they are unable to get the help that they truly need. Those individuals families struggle with the issues and have limited resources when they are unable to provide for them. At the same time, the people that where excluded from the poor law seem to be the people that had family with financial resources. I think that this a major concern because that still is how it seems to be today. As long as families can provided than everything is taken care of effectively and the general population does not have to “deal” with those people but if the general population had to provide for those individuals I feel that would become a big concern and would never happen.
People seem to think that when you have a disabled person in the family, it is that families responsibility to take care of them and to provide for them no matter what. Although, that is not always possible for many reason.
Throughout the history of man, supernatural explanations have developed and been accepted when natural explanations were not available. Religion, in other words, has always supplemented what science could not explain. Within the history of disability, this same supernatural-religious explanation occurrence is no different. Native populations in the Americas and early European settlers both found reasons to explain what they could not otherwise understand: a deformity, a disability, or an impairment could all be explained by means of the supernatural world. A man’s sin was the cause of his blindness. A woman’s wandering off the prescribed path, the cause for her child’s affliction. This aspect of the Early Modern worldview is not limited to North America; it can be found across the globe, and back into the centuries of history which precede our modern era.
Today, modern industrialized societies tend to rely more on scientific evidence and explanations. This, though, is not a result of our great intelligence compared to the “weak” intelligence our ancestors. Rather, we rely on science simply because we now can. If the founders of this country had understood the gene sequence, medicine and technology as we do today, they would have responded to their “poor and infirm” differently, though that is not to say “better.”
In Early Modern Europe and America, capitalism was on the rise though not fully the dominant worldview yet. Vestiges of the community spirit still pervaded and, consequently, the community was still in some ways superior to the individual. As a result, the poor, the infirm, the insane and labor-unsuited, were all cared for at the expense of the community, out of a sense of community. As the modern capitalist state would develop though, the rise of the individual would win out over the community, often to the detriment of those most in need.
As a result of this dramatic shift in worldview, today the concept of disability is often disturbing to the American populace, not merely because it represents “different” and “otherness,” but because both the idea of disability and the consequences of disability are at odds with our modern capitalistic individualistic sense of self and nation.
In part of chapter 2, the “muddiest point” i came across were situations with Anne Hutchison and Dyer. Anne Hutchinson had 15 children, but 30 children were stillborn. The chapter explains that “fetus or children considered monstrous, whether dead or alive, were those with extreme bodily variablities” (Nielson, 28). What did the towns people expect of these stillborn children, though. There was not prenatal vitamins or other medical advances during this time to help with assuring a baby was born healthy. Because of these stillborn children, Anne is sent to Rhode Island. Dyer, like Hutchinson, had stillborn children as well, but she was hung for this. Neither instance were intentional but the society did not understand why stillborns where happening. They figured that these women were practicing bad things or had evil/bad inside them. This obviously was not the case. Today, we would comfort these women and figure out ways to make the situation not happen again.
In part of chapter 3, the “muddiest point” i noticed was how both Collidge and Jame Otis Jr. were used a teachers even though they were shuned my society. Why would they want them teaching their children if they could not except them as “normal” humans in the first place.
1. The answer to this question in my opinion is yes and no.
No I do not believe that religion still affects people the same way today as it did back in older times. For example: On p.28 of Nielsen’s book,she talks about how the Puritan society emphasised the household and how males were the rulers. Any deviation from this would be sinful. In today’s society it is not uncommon to have the woman rule the roost if you will. Being a single mother is not sinful in many religions. Some say that it actually shows signs of strength and autonomy. Most women who do choose to have children have very normal healthy kids.
The part I say yes to in Nielsen’s book is about the scientific understanding. I still think that today, science plays a huge role in disabilities. For example: It has been shown that African Americans are more likely to develop sickle cell than say white people. Nielsen points out on p.47 that ” the experiences of people with disabilities in colonial America varied tremendously according to one’s familial resources(economic as well as physical), race,legal status,gender, and class.” I do agree with this statement and how it is prevelant in today’s society. As Melissa Hall pointed out in her post,people do feel that being disabled without a cure scares people. Everyone wants to find a cure for all diseases,especially if they know someone with a particular disease.
2. The muddiest points for me in Nielsen’s poor laws were about the vagabonds. It was sort of confusing and hypocritical for me. What I mean by this,is that it stated “all person’s able in body,and fit to labour…….”. Is Nielsen referring to vagabonds as disabled or not? It is very vague to me on what exactly her point is here. I think I understand, but I would like more clarification. I also wanted to say that I agree with Rebekah Karth’s statement in her post on the poor law framework, and how it is portrayed in today’s society. Good posts!
After reading and becoming more familiar withthe concepts of the Poor laws, I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with them at certain points.
I did agree with their idea of structure and that was to keep all of those persons deemed unfit to support themselves to be cared for and protected. i also agreed with the idea of leaving those physically disabled alone if they were capable of supporting themselves whether by their own accord or support from others.
The idea of keep those that had cognitive and mental incapabilities was a well thought intention. yet, it had its flaws in my opinion. First, I did not agree with the idea of ALL unabled bodies being submitted into the program. For example those with supportive families. I belive that if support is available it should not be on the responsibilty of the community as a whole. I also did not agree with the locking up of the school teacher because he was seen as unfit for the community and society but deemed fit for the teaching of children….I found that the idea of monstrous births at this time was very perplexing. The idea of “strong faith, strong health,’ only hindered people. At this point in time in histroy people were becoming more and more enlightened tothe ways of life and how nature affected it. I found it disheartening that people would condemn others in such a way.