God, Money and Politics: English Attitudes to Blindness and Touch from the Enlightenment to Integration (review)

God, Money and Politics delivers what it promises in the title. The discussion of attitudes to blindness or, more accurately, visual impairments is divided into themes of religious, financial and political influences and their impact on cultural attitudes toward people with visual impairments. The reader is likely to finish the book understanding more about the considerable roles these factors have played in shaping social understandings of blindness and visual impairment. Toward the end of his discussion, Hayhoe explains that his reasons for writing this book emerged from a study of pedagogical practices in inaccessible, ‘undemocratic’ environments and his identification of the urgent need to reconceptualise blindness and disability. His forceful entreaty to rethink education and the need for classifying disabled people and special needs comes in the last few pages of the book. For me, this was the most engaging part of his argument and I would like to have read more about how this might be achieved.

This book is likely to be of greatest value to people working in education, particularly in demonstrating some of the ways in which disabling assumptions shape the institutional treatment of people with visual impairments. It also contains a wealth of interesting historical information on medical, psychological, and philosophical perspectives on visual impairments and social attitudes. Linking a range of approaches and values to religious, economic, and political history, Hayhoe provides us with greater understandings of the origins of various cultural beliefs about people with visual impairments and the ways these have worked to promote a range of vested interests or specific ideologies.

Broadly, after a general introduction, the book is divided into three parts. The first of these begins with the chapter entitled “Definitions and the Early Studies of Blindness and Touch.” This section, moving on to a consideration of “Modern Studies of Blindness and Touch,” is ambitious in its aim to examine definitions from philosophical, medical, psychological, academic, and other approaches, combining a focus on Enlightenment thought with later research into touch and blindness. Being fascinated by Derrida’s work on touch (On Touching), I was looking forward to extending my knowledge on this topic and was disappointed to find that touch was only addressed in a superficial manner, most directly in the second half of Chapter 3, in relation to blindness, spatial awareness, and, occasionally, perception. Part II sets the scene with Chapter 4, “Vocational Education in English Schools for the Blind,” for more specific studies of education in Chapters 5 and 6. This section examines differences between asylums and schools and compares the values attributed to vocational and aesthetic pedagogies in different institutions before a consideration of English education after 1944, focusing on the 1981 Act. Part III (Chapter 7) is the conclusion, a short summary of the book and Hayhoe’s “Personal Observations and Recommendations.”

The final chapters will be of particular value for readers interested in education. I especially enjoyed reading the correspondence between the Director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Society for the Blind to the Head of the Royal Blind Asylum workshops, dated 1930, and the Philanthropist’s poem printed in the Report of the Bristol Asylum (1799). This poem demonstrated the links made between indolence, morality, the work ethic, and the denigration of people classified as blind:

This night of nature striving to illume By their honest toil, to cheer this visual gloom, Fair Charity with kind, unwearied hand, Supports the cause of virtue’s chosen band

Their aim is blessings on the blind to pour, Make useful that, which useless was before; Yes, charity will flow the useful grain: And cheerful, industry each good obtain.

Evidence of this kind was informative, helping me to understand more about how history has been influenced by concepts of blindness. Other examples include: the ideas of philosophers such as Locke and Molyneux; religious...