Interrogating inclusion with youths who use augmentative and alternative communication

• Published in: Sociology of health & illness 2020-06, Vol.42 (5), p.1108-1122
• Main Authors: Teachman, Gail, McDonough, Peggy, Macarthur, Colin, Gibson, Barbara E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Augmentative and alternative communication; Bourdieu; Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002); Communication; disability; Discourses; Habitus; Health services; Social exclusion; social inclusion; Social integration; Social norms; Social services; Social values; visual methods; youths
• ISSN: 0141-9889; 1467-9566
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13087

Even as the goal of social inclusion underpins health and social services for disabled youths, those with communication impairments continue to lead narrowly circumscribed lives. In this Canadian study, we combined visual methods and interviews with 13 Canadian youths who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to understand how they make ‘practical sense’ of discourses of inclusion. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, we suggest: (i) participants’ narratives reveal habitus – a socially constituted set of dispositions – that predispose them to accommodate the devalued social positions and constricted conditions of existence imposed on them; (ii) some forms of ‘inclusion’ perpetuate symbolic violence, as youths who use AAC internalise, as seemingly ‘natural’, dominant social norms and values that privilege ‘normal’ bodies; and (iii) although their practices primarily reproduced the status quo, youths in the study also worked at the margins to create locally produced forms of inclusion that attempted to transform the ‘rules of the game’. We argue these results suggest a need for systemic shifts past reified notions of inclusion towards fostering social spaces where alternative ways of being in the world are positively valued.