Making life work
Subtitle: freedom and disability in a community group home
By: Jack Levinson.
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9780816650811; 9780816650828
Subjects: Group homes for people with mental disabilities -- New York (State) -- Case studies; People with mental disabilities -- New York (State) -- Case studies
Genres: Case studies
Description: ""Making Life Work is a wonderful book jack Levinson p̀resents' insightful, thought provoking, and, well-written ethnographic portrayals of d̀ependent' adults and their and their caregivers, "--WENDY SIMONDS, Georgia State University" "Group homes emerged in the United States in the 1970s as a solution to the failure of the large institutions that, for more than a century, segregated and abused people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Yet community services have not, for the most part, delivered on the promises of rights, self-determination, and integration made more than thirty years ago, and critics predominantly portray group homes simply as settings of social control." "Making Life Work is a clear-eyed ethnography of a New York City group home based on more than a year of field research. Jack Levinson reveals that rather than being seen as the antithesis of freedom, the group home must be understood as representing the fundamental dilemmas between authority and the individual in contemporary liberal societies. No longer inmates but citizens, these people who are presumed---rightly or wrongl---to lack the capacity for freedom actually govern themselves. Levinson, a former group home counselor, demonstrates that the group home depends on the very capacities for independence and individuality it cultivates in its residents. At the same time, he addresses the complex relationship between services and social control in the history of intellectual and developmental disabilities, interrogating broader social service policies and the role of clinical practice in the community."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Locating the problem; title: Intellectual disability: a brief history; title: Governing disability in the community; title: The work of everyday life; title: All in a day's work; title: Endless uncertain work; title: The clinical problem of everyday life; title: Expertise and the work of staff meetings; title: Paper technologies: doing and documenting; title: Goal plans and individual conduct; title: What everybody knows about Paul; title: Conclusion: making life work.