Abstract
In what way is social inclusion connected to body conditions including those referred to as impairment? One view suggests that social inclusion is associated with “disregard for the body,” that is, treating people the same irrespective of their body conditions. This disregard for the body, however, does not provide support such as personal assistance for people with “impairments,” and actually limits their opportunities for inclusion. Rather, social inclusion would be better understood as an approximation of disregard for the body while also incorporating “regard for the body” (treating people in accord with their body conditions). This article examines certain specific approaches to this approximation in the context of the “dumping” problem in Japanese special needs education for disabled children since the 1970s. Opponents of integrated education have insisted that locational integration is a sort of “dumping,” a false inclusion without appropriate support. However, the low compatibility between locational integration and support provision is actually a result of the education system and its distributional basis, which assumes the homogeneity of pupils' bodies in a classroom. A partial modification to this assumption, so as to enable individual support in integrative settings, might improve the compatibility between locational integration and support provision, thus providing disabled children with real freedom from “tracking” (homogenization of each classroom through the division of pupils on certain bases). On the other hand, there is still a disharmony between locational integration and support provision; this disharmony creates the need for further action such as the promotion of mutual understanding between disabled and able-bodied children. In light of these points, social inclusion can be understood as an endless process of approximation of disregard for the body, combining regard and disregard for the body in paradoxical ways.
