Care in the Past by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
Publisher: Oxbow Books, Limited
Published: 2016-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Setting the Scene for an Evolutionary Approach to Care in Prehistory: A Historical and Philosophical Journey

David Doat

Introduction

Exclusionary behaviours and attitudes towards disability have existed throughout human history and in all human societies, and exclusion is a key focus of disability studies. “Disability” is an ambiguous term which is given different definitions in archaeology, depending on which model of disability scholars refer to. For instance, according to the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (WHO 1980), disability refers to the functional limitation resulting from an impairment. In contrast, the British Social Model of Disability defines disability as “oppression”, i.e. as exclusion and marginalisation imposed on impaired individuals within society (UPIAS 1976). Within this chapter I employ the word “disability” as a state arising from body impairment with subsequent activity limitations and/or participation restrictions, and that has a specific meaning in association with the societal context in which the pathology and any exclusion is experienced (WHO 2001).

However, when we focus on exclusion, we sometimes risk endorsing a theoretical bias in its favour. For example, we may come to “take – as given – the ideological and material exclusion of people with labels of physical, sensory or cognitive impairments” (Goodley 2010, xi). This is a dangerous assumption – if exclusionary attitudes are considered a priori as given, inclusive behaviours among groups risk being seen a priori as improbable, if not impossible. One of the key functions of this chapter is to help develop a theoretical approach regarding the relationship early prehistoric human communities had with their disabled members that could avoid a bias towards focusing purely on exclusion. This proposal means bringing palaeopathological and archaeological data into a new perspective and framework that provides nuance for what could otherwise be a systematic bias towards perceiving exclusionary behaviours as the dominant characteristic for how past humans behaved towards the disabled. This will provide a more nuanced set of criteria for examining the relationship societies have had with disabled individuals. This chapter can be considered the preamble to developing more complex hermeneutical models for future work on this subject. As I am a philosopher of science and an ethicist, the reader will note that the present study does not reflect the writing style or shared assumptions of an anthropologist, archaeologist, or palaeopathologist. As a philosopher, I am interested in interdisciplinary issues and ethical questions raised by the development of a bioarchaeological model of care, and it is from a philosophical perspective that I base my approach. This approach arises from examining the issues that stem from specific theoretical models and discoveries made in the past decades regarding human care in prehistory in palaeoanthropology and evolutionary natural sciences.

This study comprises seven sections. In the first section, I briefly summarise the influence eugenics had during the 19th and early 20th centuries concerning the interpretation of Darwinism, disability and care practices. I then demonstrate how the history of science highlights the abandonment of eugenics as a framework in the second half of the 20th century with the emergence of a new paradigm in the evolutionary sciences based on cooperation and altruism.

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