Transforming Care: The role of institutional violence

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the portrayal of people with learning disabilities in exposés of institutional violence. I argue that such representations present a key opportunity to demonstrate the link between structural violence and material violence. Yet the responses to this high-profile exposure have been the greater individualisation of binary notions of ‘vulnerable/dangerous’. Despite public outrage and change in policy in response to Winterbourne View, real change has yet to be realised. I argue that this is because of the reduced possibility to imagine alternatives, as notions of paternalism and protection remain. I explore how certain impositions are considered mundane when it comes to the containment and representation of this particular group of people who are rendered ‘not quite human’ due to implicit hierarchies not questioned within depictions of violence. Finally, I will use ethnographic and interview research to show how some types of violence are normalised and others rationalised and individualised as natural or provoked responses to ‘challenging behaviour’.