Shop Window for East Asians With Disabilities: Book Review
By M. Miles (m99miles@hotmail.com)
Joseph K.F. KWOK, Raymond K.H. CHAN & W.T. CHAN (2002) Self-Help Organizations of People With Disabilities in Asia. Westport, CT and London: Auburn House. xii + 191 pp. Hardback. isbn 086569320X
SHOP is the acronym for "Self-Help Organization of People with disabilities" in this research report by members of the Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, studying the functioning and impact of such organizations in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The book title is slightly inflated, as the responding countries could more accurately be focused in "East and South East Asia"; but the contents are refreshingly free of hype. The authors conducted a survey using a wide-ranging, self-administered, mostly tick-box questionnaire, here printed as a lengthy appendix (pp. 151-169). This is said to take 45 minutes to complete, and assumes either omniscience on the part of the respondent (e.g. Question 1.8, "Does participation in SHOP enable members to have a clearer understanding of self-help philosophy?"), or a willingness to make guesses at considerable speed.
Responses were obtained from 300 people in leadership positions in a sample of national or provincial organizations of at least ten years' standing, across the target countries. This material could have been (mis-)used to lend authority to some big claims about disability in Asia, but happily the authors resisted the temptation and maintained appropriate caution (p. 131) in presenting and interpreting the results from widely disparate situations.
After describing the scope and methodology of their study, Kwok et al turn briefly to history (pp. 7-8). Surprisingly, they omit the centuries of documented historical experiences of East Asian SHOPs (especially of blind people's guilds in China and Japan), while giving space to some organizations in the USA since 1935. More Western academic literature is reviewed (pp. 7-20), as though normative for the rest of the world. However, the Asian balance is partly restored elsewhere. The bibliography (pp. 171-180) contains 156 items, among which 73 clearly belong within East and South East Asia.
Chapters 3 to 5 review topics across all the responding countries, such as the development and leadership of SHOPs, their apparent impact as players in Civil Society, as educators of the public, promoters of more inclusive communities and environments, and participants in regional or global networking and policymaking. It is not quite clear whose views are being reported here -- probably the authors' own, informed by the results of the survey plus their own background studies. The sober academic shop-front is occasionally lit by sparks, as in discussion of the hot topic of "quotas" in education and employment, and in advocacy for an International Convention for the Rights of Disabled People:
There is now a consensus around the world that the Standard Rules could not possibly help the international disability movement deal with challenges of the new millennium. (p. 68)
Instead, an international convention would be the answer, to "recognize the human rights of disabled people and build on the basic principle that disabled people must not suffer discrimination." Such a convention must be "comprehensive ... universal ... unconditional ... holistic" (p.68), and voices would doubtless add, "non-fattening ... harmless to the ozone layer" and other kindly thoughts. What is missing here is any comparison with the past 50 years of international rules, conventions and legal instruments intended to protect the weak from the strong (though sometimes designed so that they actually protect the strong from the weak). There is no explanation of how the cumulative ineffectiveness of all these rules would be overcome in any new convention designed to promote the interests of a minority that, on most accounts, stirs little genuine interest either among international policy-makers or among national legislators.
On employment quotas (e.g. two or three workers per hundred should be registered disabled persons, at least in larger companies, otherwise the employer pays an equivalent amount into a disability fund used for generating employment or some other worthy cause), Kwok et al also break cover. They suggest that Asian countries and SHOPs are "rather enthusiastic about the quota system" (though not Hong Kong or Vietnam, among the countries surveyed); but some European countries and ILO consultants are doubtful or actively discourage quotas, while other strong western countries do operate them (pp. 66-67). Kwok and colleagues conclude that these "contradictions" need more investigation, "so that a better informed policy could be promoted at the world level" (p. 67). Again, this seems rather idealistic. There are benefits and drawbacks to quotas, depending on how they are operated and on a wide range of local social and economic factors. Knowledge of the vital local factors is precisely what is lacking "at the world level". That is one reason why 'global policy' seldom appeals to anyone other than global policymakers.
Chapters 6 to 12 (pp. 71-130) cover each of the seven countries or territories separately, presenting in greater detail the survey responses. Big questionnaire surveys notoriously produce vast amounts of data that only a computer could find sexy, and this faces authors with a challenge of presentation. The Hong Kong team have done quite well in packaging the bloodless material under topics and details. These chapters might interest or surprise disabled people in each of the responding countries, but could be of best use in comparative work where some other approaches have been used independently to gauge the ambient attitudes and practices. Japan, for example, has contributed data to the present study, and also to the WHO study of attitudes and discrimination attempting to show that the revision of ICIDH-2 was of universal cultural applicability. [1]
In chapter 13 (pp. 131-149), the authors derive some general points from the mass of data, to assist theoretical understanding of East and South East Asian SHOPs and their leaders. Here they confront a curious phenomenon. The study produces the public thoughts of SHOP leaders across countries that are extremely diverse in political, cultural and socio-economic terms (e.g. Vietnam, GNP below $400 per capita; and Japan, GNP over $32,000); yet the findings "clearly present a rather homogeneous perception by SHOP leaders of the characteristics of SHOPs in the seven territories covered" (p.136). An obvious reason could simply be window-dressing at each SHOP front.
Another possible explanation is the effect of 'globalisation'. The past 20 years have seen a plethora of high-flown UN statements and policy mantras in the disability scene, reiterated in endless meetings, minutes and reports, with slogans booming from what looks like the high moral ground. To continue successfully in post, and to raise funds in the international disability market, SHOP leaders are obliged to chant the mantras and reflect back the slogans, in a process very similar to 'aid ventriloquism'. This generates a convergence of top-level response, rewarded by the continued kudos of participation in international committees, travelling effortlessly on a bandwagon into the future. The slogans and buzzwords are the same whether the leader is from one of the powerful urban economies or the poorer rural populations.
Joseph Kwok and colleagues stop diplomatically short of probing behind the SHOP fronts. They suggest correctly that, "The actual impact of the globalization of disability issues through the United Nations has yet to be assessed" (p. 145). They wish to see an International Convention, though this will almost certainly try to entrench some strongly western solutions, ignoring the diversities and cultural richness of Asian societies. Their stance exposes a dilemma facing both minority groups and majority cultures in a rapidly changing region.
[1] M Tazaki & Y Nakane (2001) Japan. (Culture-specific findings from the CAR study), in: TB Ustun, S Chatterji, JE Bickenbach et al (eds) Disability and Culture. Universalism and Diversity, pp. 141-156. Bern: Hogrefe & Huber.
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