Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Heide Castañeda, Ph.D.

Committee Member

David Himmelgreen, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Daniel H. Lende, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rebecca Zarger, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Dinorah Martinez Tyson, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Committee Member

Nicholas Rattray, Ph.D.

Keywords

social model of disability, rehabilitation, disability anthropology, health disparities

Abstract

This dissertation draws on ethnographic data to investigate the nature of spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation in Central Florida, using participant observation and interview data to understand how people with SCI (pwSCI) conceptualize their own disabilities after experiencing such radical alterations in their subjectivities. Using case studies and ethnographic vignettes, it argues that the extreme double binds in which pwSCI find themselves (where they are personally ordinarily disabled and socially extraordinarily novel; and where they are enabled resources to pursue “hopeful” therapy modalities while being designated as hopelessly disabled) is further polarized by the various legislative regimes of truth in which pwSCI rehabilitation participants find themselves – these include insurance logics, the therapy philosophy of the Dardzinski Method upon which this novel therapeutic methodology (activity-based therapy) is founded, and the various internal and culturally-supported standards that present themselves through various dichotomous categories.

This dissertation illustrates how these structural systems enable the various moral and emotional normativities present at this rehabilitation center – which I refer to throughout this dissertation as Keep Performing (KP). This dissertation also presents routes through which normative affects (i.e., ways that pwSCI are in/capable of being affected at KP) are both reinforced through motivational therapeutic processes (i.e., instances of joking) and challenged through daily experiences (e.g., where pwSCI are given opportunities to reorient themselves vis-à-vis their own subject positions and that of other pwSCIs). I conclude that activity-based therapy constitutes a novel therapeutic modality where pwSCI are enabled ways of reorienting themselves contra normative therapy modalities, carving a space for hypothesizing how hope can be useful both pragmatically/therapeutically and theoretically/philosophically.

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