Physical Disability and Social Policy

Dominique Marshall is an assistant professor of history at Carleton
University in Ottawa.

Comparative histories of the French and the British welfare states have
shown how the development of the former involved wider debates over
values. These debates may have slowed down the process, but they made
for a stronger enshrinement in the laws of the country. The history of
the Canadian welfare state belongs to the pragmatic and piecemeal
British tradition, and the public programs for the physically disabled
that are at the centre of this book are no exception.

In the first part of the book, Bickenback, a philosopher trained in
law, uses the sociology of illness and the history of ideas and sciences
as a basis for what he labels the medical, the economic, and the
social–political models. Corresponding to each set of values is a
group of experts and a particular way of conceiving the
phenomenon—“impairment,” “disability,” and “handicap.”

In his examination of the medical model, for instance, he shows how the
scale of evaluation of disability invented by practical insurers at the
turn of the century, with an exclusive emphasis on the physical aspects
of disability, has successively been appropriated by doctors, approved
by efficient public administrators, and unchallenged by judges.

In his examination of the contradictions brought about by the
pre-emptive and watertight treatment of policies by various groups of
experts, Bickenback provides the reader with a clear vocabulary for
detecting false logic, reductive reasoning, and circular arguments. His
book is informed by a liberal belief that the existing impasses can be
transcended. The author ponders the legitimacy of each model, and then
proposes an overarching model rooted in the goal of equality.

In its pursuit of intellectual and practical goals, this accessible,
evocative, and comprehensive book sets a high standard for future
bearers of the Bora Laskin Fellowship in Human Rights.