RECLAIMING THE WHOLE - SELF, SPIRIT, AND SOCIETY

Science, bureaucracy and organized religion have played an important r ole in shaping the construction of disability - as the broken, incompl ete and imperfect self, as the case requiring management, and as the o bject of pity and charity. This paper looks critically at the way in w hich concepts such as the medical model of disability and the evolving genetic model of disability have shaped the way in which we construct disability and, consequently, the way in which we treat people with d isability - through isolation, segregation and elimination. These cons tructions of disability also operate to define and confine the spiritu al journey of people with disability. The author argues for a more int egrated conception of self, based not upon an empirical, mechanized an d bureaucratic world-view, but upon an integrated, interdependent and holistic view of self and society.