Shallow Inclusion (or Integration) and Deep Exclusion: En-Dis-Abling Identities through Government Webpages in Hong Kong

Alex Cockain
Additional contact information
Alex Cockain: Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Social Inclusion, 2018, vol. 6, issue 2, 1-11

Abstract: This article is primarily concerned with how government webpages in Hong Kong claiming to embrace social inclusion and provide services and support for persons with disabilities construct issues relating to disability. These texts are not read in isolation. Instead, they are considered in conjunction with discourse produced in several United Nations documents, especially the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Hong Kong is a signatory. These documents appear to both proffer and retract social inclusion in ways that complicate, if not undermine entirely, their purportedly inclusionary intentions. This article also reflects upon commentary produced by university students at a public university in Hong Kong responding to government discourse. Such focus upon ‘non-disabled’ readers reveals how texts do more than merely mediate pre-existing messages. Instead, they constitute a “social location and organizer for the accomplishment of meaning”, thereby counting as “a form of social action” (Titchkosky, 2007, p. 27). Through the texts they conspire to make about disability, authors and readers become complicit in the production, maintenance, and reinforcement of non-disabled (or abled)/disabled identities and dis/ableist ideology in ways that implicate the entire population in exclusionary processes.

Keywords: barriers; dis/ableism; exclusion; Hong Kong; integration; non-disabled (or abled)/disabled identities; othering; rehabilitation; social inclusion; United Nations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/1282 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v6:y:2018:i:2:p:1-11

DOI: 10.17645/si.v6i2.1282

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().