Complexity and disability: Drawing from a complexity approach to think through disability at the intersections

Authors

Louisa Smith, University of WollongongFollow
Leanne Dowse, University of New South Wales

RIS ID

134318

Publication Details

L. Smith & L. Dowse, "Complexity and disability: Drawing from a complexity approach to think through disability at the intersections", in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability: Looking Towards the Future (eds K. Ellis, R. Garland-Thomson, M. Kent & R. Robertson), (Routledge, Abingdon, United Kingdom, 2019) 123-130.

Abstract

This chapter outlines how a complexity approach can help us think through disability. It explores how complexity thinking can help understand disability in the lives of people who experience disability and their interactions with other social divisions and systems or institutions of power. A complexity approach to systems and their inherent principles is particularly useful for social scientists - S. Walby states that this is because it recognises that each system takes all other systems as its environment. Casey, a young Indigenous Australian woman, has been ascribed various diagnostic labels including intellectual disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a range of behavioural, emotional and mental health diagnoses. On the ninth occasion, a doctor from the hospital informs the police that "it was his professional opinion that the young person was not in need of medical or mental intervention" and Casey is refused admission to the hospital.