Carleton social work professor Roy Hanes’ 30-year career and passion for disability issues led him to the United Nations on Sept. 13, where he presented a research paper at the UN Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities.
Hanes was invited to discuss his paper, “Exploring the Social Construction of Disability in a Cross Cultural Context” by the World Disability Union at the conference.
Hanes said he uses a “social model of disability,” which looks at “how different societies are structured in such a way that difficulties are created for people with disabilities,” including issues of accessibility, employment, housing and education.
“A social model wouldn’t say that the reason why a person can’t get a job is because it’s his or her fault, they would look at the environment,” he said.
“And part of that also has to do with not only structures like that, it’s also about stigma and attitudes as barriers.”
In his work, Hanes expands his analysis to “how disability is located in different cultures,” describing an approach that is “part historical, part sociological, part anthropological.”
He strongly cautions against taking a simplistic comparative approach to disability studies across cultures, however, explaining that he looks for “nuances.”
“[I am] not saying that, in one country people with disabilities are treated in a certain way and in another country they’re not, because that would be the wrong impression,” he said. “But what I try and get people to look at cross-culturally [are] value systems, belief systems, and other things that lead to how we look at people with disabilities, how we envision disability.”
Hanes said he began his career as a social worker with disabilities 32 years ago, and was exposed to disability issues from a young age.
“I grew up in a coal mining town, so you see a lot of coal miners with impairments, missing limbs, missing fingers, scars, you know, serious injuries. So it wasn’t a huge issue. People were part of the community, so it was quite interesting,” he explained.
“It’s not something I just came into. I was a frontline social worker . . . with people with various disabilities, with spinal injuries, people with strokes, amputations [and] multiple sclerosis for a number of years . . . And when I first started working [as a social worker in 1980], I never transferred out. I’ve always been either a direct practitioner, an educator, or an advocate in some ways.”
A professor at Carleton for the past 20 years, Hanes said he tries to get his students to look at disability from a different perspective than they might normally, and to understand that disability is not a fixed concept.
“In some societies, what may be defined as ‘disability’ in one society…is not defined as a disability necessarily in another…[so it’s both] the person and situation,” he said.
“I recognize that there’s a lot of difficulties and hardships, but a lot of those difficulties and hardships come from the outside, not from the individual or family, but they’re put in situations that [may be challenging].
Hugh Shewell, director of the school of social work had nothing but praise for Hanes, citing his international influence in disability and social work and Hanes’ past presentations in China, Austria, England and Turkey.
“Roy is probably one of the leaders in Canada on the issue of disability and the social context of disability. He’s developed and taught some of the original social work courses on disability in Canada [at Carleton],” Shewell said.
“He’s been pretty important, I think, in promoting issues around disability in the context of social work education, both here and at other schools of social work across Canada.”
Hanes and Shewell each highlighted the ubiquity of disability to deconstruct the social stigma they often come across in their research.
“Disability and impairment are for all intents and purposes ‘neutral human traits,’ but it is social and cultural variables which in turn leads to the stigmatization of disability,” Hanes said via email.
“At some point in our lives, we all face a disability. Whether it’s now, or when we’re older, even wearing eyeglasses,” Shewell said.
