Percepciones y mecanismos de control social de la diferencia: cuidado y protección de personas con discapacidad intelectual en el contexto del acogimiento institucional en Santa Isabel, provincia del Azuay

Abstract

This research is based on ethnographic work. It examines how perceptions and mechanisms of the social control of difference operate in the context of institutional care of people with disabilities –protected subjects. It analyses the historic-cultural process through which people with intellectual disabilities can be subjected to confinement in Ecuador. Also, it examines how institutions use the figure of institutional care, and in the name of a comprehensive protection of rights, establish prime conditions for the social control of difference. This thesis contributes to the understanding of intellectual disabilities by describing how individuals experience cognitive differences and how others perceive it; as well as the ways of living and the different configurations of welfare or social suffering that arise from these perspectives. It also addresses the interwoven relationships between institutional care of people with disabilities and the educator/caregiver. In which, the latter is placed as a dominated subject but also as an agent –who can deploy resistance and negotiation tactics in their work and manage their social and disciplining power