Disability as a Social Construct: Legislative Roots

2 Disability and Human Capital: Wounded Soldiers

CHAPTER 2 Disability and Human Capital: Wounded Soldiers Analyzing military1pension laws demonstrates three ways that legislation conditions the abilities of physically impaired people to function. Laws disable physically handicapped individuals by prescribing their activities. Less directly, and perhaps more effectively, laws also construct disability by promoting particular expectations among the ablebodied segment of the population. And third, because knowledge of these expectations can shape the personality and behavior of handicapped individuals, laws can lead to an ostensibly "self-inflicted" disability. This chapter demonstrates these three methods by looking at two sets of laws: those of the colonial period and the Revolutionary War era and those of the Great War of the early twentieth century. 'The selection is in one sense arbitrary, for groups of laws from any period indicate that social functioning of wounded soldiers depends in major part on legislation. In another sense the selection of these laws is purposeful. The early statutes both establish a policy of public responsibility for wounded soldiers and support the argument that the form of that responsibility depends upon the prevailing idea of usefulness. For example, when the young nation's needs were acute, specific legislation allowed, and sometimes compelled, wounded soldiers to continue to help defend their country. When those needs diminished, injured soldiers were seen as useless, and the nation apparently considered its responsibility fulfilled by legislation that mandated their maintenance. Over the years, this "utility model" of treating soldiers has become less apparent. When the Veterans Bureau was established in 1921, the nation aided veterans simply because they were veterans , and no longer based aid on expectations that they would resume economic productivity. As will become clear, this chapter looks at the 20 DISABILITY AND HUMAN CAPITAL treatment of soldiers as a model for the treatment of handicapped civilians . The second set of laws contains three pieces of federal legislation: an act to promote vocational education in public high school^,^ an act intended to achieve vocational rehabilitation for discharged soldiershnd an act to extend vocational rehabilitation to civilian workem4This legislative sequence is of special importance to this book because it represents the federal government's first attempt to use methods of rehabilitation to deal with the social problem of physical abnormality. By studying these early twentieth-century laws against the background of the colonial legislation, one can see the criterion of usefulness develop into a doctrine of human capital and the meaning of disability change from an attribute requiring public maintenance to a modifiable obstacle to gainful employment. For the many decades prior to 1920, handicapped civilians who were unable to become economically productive were ignored by the federal government. Considering that lapse of time, these laws, despite the new government approach that they expressed, appear to have continued, and perhaps to have strengthened, the tradition of relating the value of physically abnormal people to the ability to work. America's use of handicapped people as economic instruments-conduct in accordance with a "doctrine of human capitaln-places behavioral limits on them. Moreover, via the complex of actions that comprise "socialization ," defining such people as instruments helps to form the rules of how society should act, or react, toward them. Almost surely, therefore, institutionalization of this doctrine has substantially contributed to their marginal social position. But human capital theory does not always or entirely rationalize the laws that deal with physically impaired civilians, for practices perfectly reflective of this theory would allow physically impaired people every opportunity to become self-supporting. Clearly, this is not the case. The most obvious explanation for the inconsistent application of this doctrine centers on the ancient tradition of negative assumptions about handicapped people themselves-assumptions that are part of the history of almost every religious and social institution of the Western world. One of the more interesting formulations of how such beliefs are developed can be derived from Lerner's "Just World Hypothesi~."~ In what appears to be a variation of cognitive consonance theory, Lerner's argument indicates one reason that people tend to see physical defect as a certain indicator of defect in other domains, and as a sign that the personal history of handicapped individuals has been evil. However, some part of the explanation for the imperfect expression of Disability and Human Capital 2 I "human capital" may be unrelated to negative assumptions about handicap . Instead it may have to do with the complexity of feelings that parents have for children. A focus on helplessness and dependence can often insure that society...