Robert Wilton

Seeing People Differently: The Sociospatial Construction of Disability

In this paper the authors develop the concept of difference as it applies to people with disabilities. The production of difference is characterized as necessarily a social and a spatial process which allows the self to be partitioned from the Other. In the aggregate, such processes facilitate the stigmatization of whole classes of people and the institutionalization of rules for boundary maintenance between different groups. One important consequence among the population at large is a ‘hierarchy of acceptance’, that is, a structure of preferential ranking among various disability categories. A metaanalysis of 44 acceptance hierarchy studies since 1968 reveals both stability and change in community preference structures. The largest impetus for change derives from the appearance of new ‘disabilities’ including most especially people with AIDS, and homeless people. Evidence also suggests that significant attitudinal variations occur through space as well as time and when different facility types are considered and that actual behavior may differ from expressed attitudinal preferences. This paper concludes with remarks directed toward a more adequate sociospatial theory of disability.

Putting policy into practice? Poverty and people with serious mental illness

This paper addresses the effects of chronic poverty on people with serious mental illness. More specifically, we are concerned with the extent to which welfare restructuring, by deepening the poverty facing people with serious mental illness, undermines the expressed intent of mental health policy to improve the quality of life (QOL) of this population. The province of Ontario in Canada forms the setting for the study. The paper first examines recent trends in mental health care and social assistance policy in Ontario. While income support is consistently recognized as a core element of mental health care, welfare restructuring has led to a significant decline in the real value of income supports received by people with serious mental illness. The paper then examines the implications of this trend for the QOL of residential care facility tenants in Hamilton, Ontario. Here, the case study is explicitly connected to QOL scholarship. In addition, the study is grounded in an analysis of the broader transformation of the welfare state in Ontario. Interview data suggest that tenants experience chronic poverty that has a deleterious impact on multiple life domains including basic needs, family, social relations, leisure and self-esteem. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Alternative spaces of ‘work’ and inclusion for disabled people

Western governments have emphasized paid work as a key route to social inclusion for disabled people. Although the proportion of disabled people in ‘mainstream’ employment has increased in recent decades, rates remain significantly below those for non-disabled people. Moreover, disabled workers continue to face discrimination and a lack of workplace accommodation. This paper critically examines the potential of three alternatives to the current situation. First, how might stronger ties between disabled workers and the labour movement allow for greater control over the nature of mainstream work? Second, can more enabling work opportunities be created beyond the ‘mainstream’ in social economy organizations? Finally, how might other forms of unpaid and creative work usefully challenge the dominance of paid employment as a route to social inclusion?

Structures and solution properties of two novel periplasmic sensor domains with c-type heme from chemotaxis proteins of Geobacter sulfurreducens: implications for signal transduction.

Periplasmic sensor domains from two methyl-accepting chemotaxis proteins from Geobacter sulfurreducens (encoded by genes GSU0935 and GSU0582) were expressed in Escherichia coli. The sensor domains were isolated, purified, characterized in solution, and their crystal structures were determined. In the crystal, both sensor domains form swapped dimers and show a PAS-type fold. The swapped segment consists of two helices of about 45 residues at the N terminus with the hemes located between the two monomers. In the case of the GSU0582 sensor, the dimer contains a crystallographic 2-fold symmetry and the heme is coordinated by an axial His and a water molecule. In the case of the GSU0935 sensor, the crystals contain a non-crystallographic dimer, and surprisingly, the coordination of the heme in each monomer is different; monomer A heme has His-Met ligation and monomer B heme has His-water ligation as found in the GSU0582 sensor. The structures of these sensor domains are the first structures of PAS domains containing covalently bound heme. Optical absorption, electron paramagnetic resonance and NMR spectroscopy have revealed that the heme groups of both sensor domains are high-spin and low-spin in the oxidized and reduced forms, respectively, and that the spin-state interconversion involves a heme axial ligand replacement. Both sensor domains bind NO in their ferric and ferrous forms but bind CO only in the reduced form. The binding of both NO and CO occurs via an axial ligand exchange process, and is fully reversible. The reduction potentials of the sensor domains differ by 95 mV (-156 mV and -251 mV for sensors GSU0582 and GSU0935, respectively). The swapped dimerization of these sensor domains and redox-linked ligand switch might be related to the mechanism of signal transduction by these chemotaxis proteins.

Poverty and Mental Health: A Qualitative Study of Residential Care Facility Tenants

The impact of poverty on daily living was assessed for twenty-two mental health consumers using qualitative in-depth interviews. Consumers reported considerable difficulty meeting basic needs, such as clothing, shoes and personal care items. A majority reported running out of money before the end of each month. Respondents used strategies including careful budgeting, borrowing and employment to cope with poverty. Analysis indicated that the poverty experienced by respondents worked directly against participation in meaningful activities and their ability to build and sustain social relationships. Moreover, poverty directly contributed to stigma experienced by respondents. Findings suggest that a failure to recognize poverty as a key mental health policy issue will continue to constrain efforts to facilitate consumer empowerment and social integration.

Critical geographies of drugs and alcohol

Drug use/addiction and alcohol consumption/alcoholism are increasingly recognized as embedded and constitutive elements of social, family, and recreational life as well as sites of intervention for a broad array of state and non-state actors focused on regulation, treatment, and recovery. Within geography, a growing body of critical scholarship has begun to explore the complex relations between spaces, places, and bodies of drug use/addiction and alcohol consumption/alcoholism (e.g. Curti and Moreno 2010; Draus, Roddy and Greenwald 2010; Jayne, Holloway and Valentine 2006; Kneale 2001; Moreno 2009; Saldanha 2007). This work has largely been concerned with the ways that the use of drugs and alcohol intersects with the health and vitality of cities, families, places of work, and wider relations of governance and flows of capital. Scholarship is also concerned with the construction of ‘problem’ drinking and drug (mis)use and the nature of therapeutic and disciplinary relations in treatment and recovery programs and institutional contexts (e.g. Curti and Moreno 2010; DeVerteuil and Wilton 2009; Jayne, Holloway and Valentine 2006; Jayne, Valentine and Holloway 2010; Wilton and DeVerteuil 2006). The scholarship spans the social, cultural, urban, and health sub-disciplines, and while still in its infancy, it is beginning to demonstrate the value of intersecting geographical approaches that use critical theory and qualitative modes of encounter to offer insights into drug and alcohol consumption, addiction, treatment, and recovery. Such scholarship is also beginning to explore the relational ontologies of illness/health, the body, and the production and consumption of space and place in different urban, familial, institutional, and recreational contexts. This is being done in order to make explicit and, perhaps, challenge and reconfigure the ethics and politics of addiction. Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 13, No. 2, March 2012

GROUNDING HIERARCHIES OF ACCEPTANCE: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DISABILITY IN NIMBY CONFLICTS

The NIMBY syndrome remains a complex and costly social problem. Research into public attitudes toward disability and difference using “hierarchies of acceptance” has provided considerable insight into the underlying causes of NIMBY reactions. However, hierarchy of acceptance studies have several limitations, most notably their reliance on quantitative survey research to gauge respondent reactions to disabled persons. In this paper, I use data from an in-depth case study in Southern California to explore public reactions to disability and difference as they are expressed “in place.” Case study data support some findings from existing research, but they also provide additional insights. These concern the dynamic and contested nature of public perceptions, the way in which attitudes are mediated by place, the conflation of different disabilities, and the intersection of disability with other dimensions of difference. A dynamic, place-based hierarchy of acceptance is constructed to represent public attitudes expressed during the conflict. Together, insights from the case study help to demonstrate the myriad factors that shape public attitudes toward disabilities within a particular sociospatial context. [Key words: disability, social construction, NIMBY, public attitudes, locational conflict.]

The service Hub concept in human services planning

Abstract. Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Problematic of Human Services Planning. The service hub concept. Planning for human services. A note on terminology. The Service Hub Concept. The service hub: some definitions. The assignment process in human services delivery. Service hubs and social support networks. Service Hubs in Practice. Case study 1: Rose Avenue, Venice. Case study 2: Raymond Avenue, Pasadena. The social structure of homeless communities. Building service hubs. Overcoming Community Opposition to Human Services. The rise of NIMBY-ism. Understanding the NIMBY response. Factors determining community attitudes. Alternative approaches to the host community. A blueprint for community outreach. Difference and Social Justice in Human Services Planning. A fair-share framework for human services planning. Interrogating difference. Extending the problematic: city life and difference. 17 line drawings, 122 lit. refs.

Investigating the Effects of Social Influence on the Choice to Telework

This paper contributes to the telework literature by investigating empirically the impact of social influence on the decision to telework. An innovative web-based telework survey was developed and used to obtain data from a sample of employees of a large postsecondary institution in Ontario, Canada, between January and March 2009. A unique feature of the survey instrument is that it allowed employees to easily construct their workplace social networks. Using a univariate (binary) probit model, we identify three mutually exclusive sources of social influence on the decision to telework: friends who telework, neighbors who telework, and colleagues at the workplace. With respect to colleagues, we find that the net impact of social influence is governed by both the composition and the size of an employees workplace social network. Composition is captured by interacting telework status with relationship strength.

Workers with Disabilities and the Challenges of Emotional Labour.

This paper explores the implications of emotional labour for workers with disabilities, drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 59 respondents who had disabilities and who worked in service sector occupations. The analysis illustrates that employer demands for emotional labour may prove difficult for workers with a range of disabilities, including psychiatric diagnoses, learning difficulties and physical impairments. Analysis also points to the ways in which the non‐accommodating nature of many workplaces often forces workers with disabilities to engage in ‘extra’ emotion work in the interests of fitting in and concealing/ downplaying their impairments.