This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this post.Connectivity, as I see it, is about the way people use mediating technologies to engage meaningfully in the world. Connectivity is about real life, real people's abilities, real problems - the very things that physiotherapists face every day. In some ways, it's nothing new to physiotherapy, but it carries with it the possibility of a radical revision of our purpose and function as a profession. Here are some thoughts on how connectivity might enhance and/or challenge our practice. Physiotherapy has always followed a reductive biomedical model … [Read more...] about Connectivity #3 – Connectivity and physiotherapy
Connectivity #2 – Connectivity explained
This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this postFirst off, a qualifier...connectivity is a complex subject. It would be very hard to sum it up in a few hundred words. My task here is to outline how I understand it in a way that brings other people in to the discussion. Apologies if this explanation misses the mark for you...by all means feel free to offer up your own interpretations in the comments box below. Having argued in the last post that the two prevailing models of disability (the medical and social) rely on the idea that the disabled person is 'other,' connectivity is striking … [Read more...] about Connectivity #2 – Connectivity explained
Connectivity #1 – Critique of the medical and social models of disability
This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this post.One of the best ways I know to understand connectivity is as a powerful critique of both the medical and social models of disability. The medical model of disability is based on the premise that you are disabled if you have an impairment. You are disabled, for example, if you are blind, have lost sensation down the left side of your body, or have chronic lung disease. By contrast, the social model of disability works from the assumption that it is not impairments that are inherently disabling, but social environments that present barriers to … [Read more...] about Connectivity #1 – Critique of the medical and social models of disability