April 7, 2006
On Friday, April 7, the Center welcomed a large audience of academics and practitioners for a day-long discussion of issues of disability, welfare, and age under the title “In/Dependence: Disabililty, Welfare, and Age” organized by Anne Basting (Theater, Center on Age & Community) and Andrea Westlund (Philosophy, Center for Women’s Studies, Fellow 2004-05) through the Center’s call for conference proposals.
Sanford Schram (Social Work, Bryn Mawr) kicked off the symposium with a detailed, data-oriented presentation aimed to reveal the true nature of Florida’s welfare-to-work program and its impact on the people it ostensibly serves. Emphasizing that rather than a roll-back of government, the Florida program represents a roll-out of a different kind of government, Schram discussed the arrival of a “neo-liberal paternalistic state” as a successor to the traditional welfare state originating in the era of the Great Depression. Critical especially of the sanctions regime built into Florida’s system, Schram concluded that welfare reform in this case is not really compassionate: “tough love is just plain tough.”
The next speaker, Eva Feder Kittay (Philosophy, SUNY-Stony Brook), in a probing and sensitive paper, examined the question of what constitutes equal dignity for a severely disabled person. Recognizing the obvious difficulties that severely disabled have in claiming equal dignity, Kittay argued that it is the role of a just society to help all of its members to aquire the necessary attributes required for a dignified life. (Throughout the day, the quest for such a “just society” emerged one of the central preoccupations of the symposium). One way in which we might begin do so, she suggested, is to locate the source of dignity in the human capacity to care and to need care: “we are all some mother’s child [and] caring is a conduit of worth.”
The third speaker, Margaret Morganroth Gullette (Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis), gave an impassioned account of what she called her “year from hell” under the title “My Mother and I Fall.” Her account of the aftermath of her 90-year-old mother’s accident conveyed directly and movingly the obstacle a daughter encounters when called upon to care for an injured elderly mother living in another part of the country. In addition, Gullette raised questions about what she identified as “decline” or “duty to die” narratives in our society and abroad, suggesting that instead we should move away from the emphasis on cost and burdens and talk more about the possibilities for recovery and quality of life in old age.
Finally, under the guidance of Atwood Gaines (Anthropology, Bioethics, Nursing, and Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve) the audience and speakers further reflected on the state of the welfare state in the United States and abroad. The symposium concluded with an art exhibition and reception and a dance performance.