Blind People: The Private and Public Life of Sightless IsraelisSUNY Press, 1992 M01 1 - 197 pages Blind People approaches disability from a fresh perspective: people with an unusual body are conceived of relativistically as a variant of humanity, much the way anthropology approaches people of different culture. While deeply empathic to its subject matter, Blind People raises questions that anthropologists ask routinely, but which are commonly avoided in everyday life because they touch on sensitive matters. Based on fieldwork in Israel, the book constitutes an ethnography of blind Israelis. It starts by focusing on intimate issues of the management of the sightless body, goes on to discuss the role of the blind person in the domestic setting, and moves to issues of how the blind person strives to attain material requirements. Finally, the book relates the way blind people cope with problems of associating with both blind and sighted people in arenas of leisure activity and public affairs. Deshen's book aims to present a truthful, dignified, fully human depiction, in the tradition of socio-cultural anthropology. |
Contents
The Use of the Senses | 15 |
The Use of Guide Dogs and Long Canes | 25 |
Coming of | 37 |
Raising Sighted Children | 49 |
Seeking Employment | 63 |
The Work Experience | 73 |
The Blindness System | 85 |
Living with the System | 99 |
The Alternative of Ethnicity | 129 |
The Alternative of Citizenship | 141 |
The Dilemma of Integration among the Sighted | 153 |
From Ethnography of Blindness | 167 |
Notes | 175 |
| 187 | |
| 195 | |
The Dilemma of Association among Blind People | 115 |
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Common terms and phrases
able-bodied ABUG accept activities Aharon anthropologists Ashkenazic assistance associations attitude Avraham Baghdad Bar'am behavior blind activists blind clients blind Israelis blind parents blind person blind workers blindness system chapter condition of blindness context culture Dangurs deaf disability rights movement disability studies discredited discussion Druyanov employees encountered entails ethnic ethnographic expressed fact gateball Goffman guide dog Hadad Hannuka hearing sense immigrants impaired incident individuals integration Israel Jerusalem Jewish job-seekers labor ethos latter linked lives long cane managed married Mazal Middle-Eastern mobility aids Nehama niches Nissim occupation olfaction participants particular pedestrians Penina position practice problem Purim recounted rehabilitation officials rejection relationships Reuven Rivqa role segregated sheltered workshop sheltered-workshop Shime'on sighted children sighted volunteers sightless situation social society sociology sometimes stereotypes stigma switchboard operator symbolization tactility telephone switchboard tion traditional usage welfare woman women Yael Hadad Yafa Yehezqel Yoram young