Four Qualities of Care: Working with Disability for Institutional Reform

In this essay I focus on two documentaries about disability—Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies” (1967) and Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht’s “Crip Camp” (2020)—to explore how institutional approaches to care support disabled people and their articulation of personhood. Rather than abstract discussions of care, attending to care qualitatively reveals the fundamental differences between institutions and institutional effects on disabled people. I identify connectivity, modularity, facilitation, and animation as four qualities of care. Disabled people and their carers provide these four qualities, which enable a grounded approach to theory-building. These qualities help demonstrate the conceptual underpinnings of institutions and their relation to disability as lived experience. By focusing on disparate portrayals of care for disabled people, a clearer language about the aims and processes of care provides the basis for scholarly inquiry and institutional reform.