Smith Abby Arthur
University of Michigan Department of Sociology, 500 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
SSM Qual Res Health. 2025 Jun;7. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmqr.2025.100561. Epub 2025 Apr 24.
How do people with physical disabilities characterize their encounters with inaccessible infrastructure? I draw on interviews and focus groups with older adults with spinal cord injuries from the Midwestern United States to argue that participants experienced inaccessible space as morally harmful, damaging their sense of worth and dignity. They developed strategic bodily "" to squeeze through narrow corridors, scale ledges, navigate the back of rooms and buildings, and avoid filth and garbage-resulting in situations of exclusion and marginalized inclusion. Maneuvering established inaccessible spaces and disabled bodies as " and " two stigmatizing classifications which participants experienced as hurtful and unfair. Denied space was exclusionary and associated participants' disabilities with what they could not do. Undignifying space facilitated a sidelined, dirty, burdensome sense of inclusion. These were moral experiences: they made participants feel less whole and welcome. While denied space offered fewer mobility opportunities, participants felt most stigmatized by undignifying space, precisely because they had greater opportunity to encounter its degrading features by navigating through it. Participants articulated forceful moral judgments toward degrading and exclusionary infrastructure. In instances when opportunities for maneuvering space were totally unavailable or too degrading to bear, most participants maneuvered from it. Through such embodied micro-protests against marginalizing spaces, participants constructed themselves as moral agents worthy of inclusion and dignity. This process developed out of encounters between the body and the material forms of inaccessible space, speaking to literature that indicates the relevance of material things-like infrastructure and the body-to sociologists of morality and disability.
身体有残疾的人如何描述他们在遇到无障碍基础设施时的经历?我通过对美国中西部脊髓损伤老年人的访谈和焦点小组讨论得出结论,参与者认为无障碍空间在道德上是有害的,损害了他们的价值感和尊严感。他们发展出策略性的身体动作,以挤过狭窄的走廊、攀爬窗台、在房间和建筑物的后部通行,并避开污秽和垃圾,这导致了被排斥和边缘化的融入情况。将无障碍空间和残疾身体操纵为“被排斥的”和“有失尊严的”这两种污名化分类,参与者认为这是有害和不公平的。被剥夺的空间具有排他性,并将参与者的残疾与他们不能做的事情联系起来。有失尊严的空间促成了一种被边缘化、肮脏、累赘的融入感。这些都是道德体验:它们让参与者感觉自己不那么完整,也不受欢迎。虽然被剥夺的空间提供的移动机会较少,但参与者最受有失尊严的空间的污名化影响,恰恰是因为他们有更多机会通过在其中穿行而遇到其有辱人格的特征。参与者对有辱人格和排他性的基础设施表达了强烈的道德判断。在完全没有操纵空间的机会或空间过于有辱人格而无法忍受的情况下,大多数参与者会从中抽身。通过这种针对边缘化空间的身体微抗议,参与者将自己构建为值得被包容和有尊严的道德主体。这个过程源于身体与无障碍空间的物质形式之间的相遇,这与表明物质事物(如基础设施和身体)与道德和残疾社会学家相关的文献相呼应。