DISABILITY AND DESERVEDNESS: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF WOUNDED, ILL, AND INJURED MEMBERS OF THE U.S. ARMED FORCES AT A MILITARY TREATMENT FACILITY

My work engages links between notions of disability and notions of deservedness; the ways in which they are consequential; and how they are constructed and sustained. For my dissertation research I studied a select group of people at two sites of high visibility and focused practice: I used ethnographic methodology to collect qualitative data among participants interacting in treatment and rehabilitation of wounded, ill, and injured Service members at a Military Treatment Facility-first, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC; and then at Walter Reed National Military Medical Facility in Bethesda, MD. My research participants included Service members themselves, care providers, family members, and non-medical attendants. I observed and field-noted their interactions; participated as an interested party; recruited, screened, and consented subjects to be interviewed; conducted confidential interviews; collected pertinent media content; photocopied or gathered onsite material culture; and transcribed, mapped, and pondered my data. To understand their lived experience and to find whether perceptions about disability affected patients' and family members' recognition and access to resources, I asked respondents to recount their stories about being abruptly changed from an able-bodied to a disabled person; or, their stories about caring for such a person. I also asked them to talk about being recognized and obtaining access to resources. Then, using tools and tenets of Critical Discourse Analysis and insights from Critical Disabilities Studies I examined the ways people refer to and interact with formerly able-bodied Service members who have been disabled; whether they regard different types and contexts of injury and modes of rehabilitation as more or less deserving of recognition; and how perceptions of themselves and others affect patients' and families' access to resources. My research indicates that the ways in which people co-construct notions of disability expressly affect the manner in which they and others constitute, confer, and accept notions of deservedness for recognition and access to resources. These findings show how notions of disability may affect notions of deservedness.