Sport in the Lives of Young People with Intellectual Disabilities: Negotiating Disability, Identity and Belonging

Whilst there is now a growing body of sociological research on the role of sport in the social, gender and identity rehabilitation of people with physical impairments, research on the role of sport in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities primarily focuses on improving fitness, health and social interactions. Yet sport is not only a form of physical exercise, competition or leisure-it is also a powerful social institution within which social structures and power relations are reproduced and, less frequently, challenged. You don\u27t need an entire sports team or YourEllipticals meant for heavy performing athletes, you just need to be mentally into it. This paper provides insights into the role of sport and physical activity in the lives of four young Australians with intellectual disabilities or cognitive limitations from their own perspectives. Data from life history interviews elicits rich and in-depth insights, revealing that the meanings these young people give to their sporting experiences include-but also go beyond-concerns with fitness, health and social interactions. Though by no means representative of the role of sport for all young people with intellectual disabilities, it is evident that these four young people use sport to negotiate complex emotional worlds around disability, identity, and belonging-much like their physically impaired counterparts

We have contact! : women, girls and boys playing Australian Rules football : combat sports, gendered embodiment and the gender order

This study investigates both the reproduction and subversion of patriarchal gender relations in sport, with a particular focus on gendered embodiment. The research is fuelled by feminist concerns, especially women's embodied resistance to male domination. It is comprised of case studies of three Australian Rules football teams - a women's, a schoolgirls' and a schoolboys' team. The case studies are based on life-history interviews with players. Data was also collected through participant observation with all three teams. The data are analysed as both individual case studies and also in groups and the analysis is informed by Connell’s (1995) theories of gender construction and gendered embodiment

The dilemma of disabled masculinity

A much-cited point by those who study the intersection of gender and disability is that masculinity and disability are in conflict with each other because disability is associated with being dependent and helpless whereas masculinity is associated with being powerful and autonomous, thus creating a lived and embodied dilemma for disabled men. This article maps and critically evaluates the conceptual development of this dilemma of disabled masculinity, tracing how several developments in the fields of disability studies and the critical study of men and masculinities have shaped sociological understandings of disabled masculinity. We suggest that, while social science scholarship has increasingly moved beyond a static understanding and toward a dynamic view of the articulation and interaction between masculinity and disability, there are nevertheless several problems that require attention. The most critical issue conceptually is that the focus of study has been more on masculinity and how it intersects with ‘disability’ as an almost generic category, rather than on how masculinity (or masculinities) intersect(s) differently with various types of impairment. Thus, though there is quite a bit of research on the dilemma of disabled masculinity for men who acquire a physical impairment post-childhood and for groups of men with diverse impairments studied as if they were a homogenous group, less research has been conducted with men who have specific impairments, particularly early-onset, intellectual or degenerative impairments. In this paper we urge researchers to open up the concept of intersectionality to accommodate a range of differences in bodily, cognitive, intellectual and behavioral types (impairments) in their interaction with various masculinities and to show more explicitly how context and life phase contribute to this dynamism

An eye opening experience: a critical turning point in the life of a young woman with a severe visual impairment

Research on social inclusion often focuses on social exclusion. However, in order to gain greater insights into ways to facilitate social change, it is equally important to research the social inclusion of those normally excluded. Indeed, while one important purpose of studying disabilism is to catalogue and critique all its forms, another critical purpose is to better understand how disabilism can be resisted and/or ameliorated at individual and/or societal levels. Thus, it is equally important to understand when, why and how disabilism does not negatively impact the lives of people with impairments as well as when it does. This paper presents a single case study of Lynette, a young woman with a severe visual impairment who has a life-changing experience in an inclusive environment. In particular, it explores the impact of exclusive and inclusive contexts on Lynette\u27s identity development as she transitions to adulthood. By juxtaposing Lynette\u27s experiences of exclusion with those of inclusion, it highlights contexts in which there is a critical mass of people with impairments living alongside able-bodied people as a possible antecedent/impetus for greater social inclusion of people with impairments in society more generally

Southern gendered disability reflections: The everyday experiences of rural women with disabilities after the armed conflict in Sri Lanka

The Global South contains 80 per cent of the world’s disabled people, who are located mainly in rural and poverty-stricken areas (Grech 2012). There is an emerging and insightful body of work that engages with the everyday experiences of people with a disability living in the Global South (see Soldatic and Grech 2014; Ghai 2015; Samararatne and Soldatic 2015). As Meekosha and Soldatic (2011) suggest, a politics of disability that considers the struggles in the Global South to help understand the social dynamics in bodies does much to recognize the multiplicity of disabled identities as well as the identities of impairment that can further mobilize the global disability movement. This is an important advancement for critical disability scholarship. Until recently the epistemological and methodological focus of the experience, meaning and interpretation of disability has been grounded in Northern (European and North American) urban, post-industrialist settings (Grech 2012). While this setting is relevant to the experiential logic of disability in the Global North, when applied outside this context, such logics too often hide the nuanced and negotiated lives of people with disabilities living in the Global South (Soldatic 2013). Writers of the South, such as Ghai (2015), explicitly argue that disability epistemologies of the North fail to comprehend the complex layering of class, gender and caste embedded in a political situational logic that shapes the reality of disability in the Global South

Sport in the lives of young people with intellectual disabilities: negotiating disability, identity and belonging

Whilst there is now a growing body of sociological research on the role of sport in the social, gender and identity rehabilitation of people with physical impairments, research on the role of sport in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities primarily focuses on improving fitness, health and social interactions. Yet sport is not only a form of physical exercise, competition or leisure&mdash;it is also a powerful social institution within which social structures and power relations are reproduced and, less frequently, challenged. This paper provides insights into the role of sport and physical activity in the lives of four young Australians with intellectual disabilities or cognitive limitations from their own perspectives. Data from life history interviews elicits rich and in-depth insights, revealing that the meanings these young people give to their sporting experiences include&mdash;but also go beyond&mdash;concerns with fitness, health and social interactions. Though by no means representative of the role of sport for all young people with intellectual disabilities, it is evident that these four young people use sport to negotiate complex emotional worlds around disability, identity, and belonging&mdash;much like their physically impaired counterparts.<br /

Mother of a problem! : are the needs of mothers with intellectual disability being addressed in the NDIS era?

The National Disability Insurance Scheme was introduced to provide rights-based entitlement support for Australians with disability, replacing the previous welfare-based policy framework. However, there are indications this rights-based support has not eventuated for mothers with intellectual disability, with growing reports of their reduced access to the parenting support to which they are entitled under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. Despite the NDIS promise of an equitable disability care system that would seamlessly complement State-funded services, reports from mothers with intellectual disability and their advocates suggest that cost-shifting between the Commonwealth and State Governments has reinforced service silos and opened up service gaps for a group of women who need support from both the disability and family support systems. Moreover, a concerning absence of reliable, transparent data makes it difficult to monitor the wellbeing of families headed by mothers with intellectual disability and also suggests these families are no longer a priority for Australian Governments. In this commentary, we advocate for: i) publicly available data on how the NDIS identifies and addresses the support needs of mothers with intellectual disability; ii) the integration of State and Commonwealth funding mechanisms to enable mothers with intellectual disability to access a parenting supplement linked to their NDIS funding and; iii) the rebuilding of national capacity in evidence-based parenting education and support for mothers with intellectual disability across all Australian service systems

Far from ideal : everyday experiences of mothers and early childhood professionals negotiating an inclusive early childhood experience in the Australian context

Using narrative interviews underpinned by an ecocultural framework, this Australian study investigated the experiences of 39 mothers of children with disabilities and 27 staff members from the early childhood services which these children attended. The data highlight serious limitations of current government policy and provisions in Australia to facilitating the inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream children's services. The small number of successful inclusions evident in this study appears to be in spite of current government policy and may be attributed more to staff personnel. This article concludes by calling for policy change that actively facilitates the successful inclusion of children with disabilities into generalist early childhood services.13 page(s