Shaping the Moral Imagination of Caregivers: Disability, Difference & Inequality in L'Arche

Abstract

<p>The ethnography explores moral dimensions of the motives and experiences of L'Arche caregivers in Canada. L'Arche is an intentional faith community, whose mission is to be a sign of hope and love to the world through creating homes and relationships with people with intellectual disability. I historicize the evolution of L'Arche by identifying the confluence of socio-political, economic, and religious factors through which it emerged. Related to this is how the founders reframed the negative overtones of difference and disability, and developed a radical ethic and model of caregiving. To illuminate how radical that model was, and still is, I situate it in relation to mainstream histories of care based on a deficit model of disability. I also illustrate the cultural construction of disability historically.</p> <p>The narratives of L'Arche caregivers point to what it means for them to live and work in L'Arche. These narratives reveal a blend of self-interest and altruism, tied to identity, morality, spirituality, and community. While some of their motives reflect their desire to contribute to broader socio-political change, I show that in the end these aspirations are not finding sufficient outlets in today's inward-focused communities.</p> <p>The caregivers learn this radical approach through a process of enculturation into the local moral world of L'Arche. This transforms their moral perspective on difference, disability, and care, and makes them suitable reproductive agents. I deconstruct this process into key strategies and illustrate with ethnographic data. The constructive and negative potential of each aspect of the cultural system is dealt with from assistants' perspectives. I analyse the key fruits of L'Arche; the mutual relationships between caregivers and people with intellectual disabilities. I discuss traditional barriers against such relationships and present fieldwork examples of negotiating relations in practice, across the capacity and power imbalances inherent in them.</p>