The article examines the multifaceted aspects of the white cane, a device utilized by individuals with visual impairments, and its influence on their daily lives. The author, who is also visually impaired, employs the method of autoethnography to examine the role of the cane in shaping the identity and experiences of individuals with visual impairments. The article elucidates the ambivalence that many individuals with visual impairments experience with regard to the white cane. From one perspective, the white cane is a vital instrument that bestows independence and mobility upon its users. Conversely, it is a conspicuous indicator of their disability, which can result in discriminatory attitudes and social exclusion. The author posits that the white cane is not merely a physical entity; rather, it is a social materiality that influences the interactions between individuals with visual impairments and their surrounding environment. The white cane is a tool that simultaneously enables and disables its users. While it provides independence, it also marks the user as different. Furthermore, the article examines the concept of ableism, which refers to the societal norms and expectations that prioritize able-bodiedness. The author posits that the white cane is a symbol of ableism, as it perpetuates the notion that individuals with visual impairments are inherently less capable or less worthy than their able-bodied counterparts.

Many people with acquired or progressive visual impairments often exhibit reluctance towards using the white cane. This article employs a qualitative ethnographic approach to gain a deeper understanding of why some individuals might opt not to utilize the white cane, a tool widely acknowledged for its assistance in enhancing mobility and promoting independence. Based on fieldwork conducted at a Low Vison and Resource Centre in Sweden, which involved interviews with both new and experienced white cane users, as well as low vision teachers and therapists at the center, the study is aiming at more profound knowledge of the exposed position in society of visually impaired people. Additionally, it is argued that by recognizing the cane as a physical object within the human environment, we can gain further insight into the conflicting emotions experienced by individuals with acquired or progressive visual impairments. The article’s overall conclusion suggests that the resistance towards this iconic aid is quite reasonable. The white cane inevitably prevents any attempt to pass as a fully sighted person, as it identifies the user as someone who differs from normative and ableist expectations regarding bodily function.

There are plenty of objects that are conspicuous in the way they signal to the surroundings that the user has some kind of physical impairment. Most obvious are perhaps wheelchairs, motorized wheelchairs, hearing aids and crutches. These objects can be described as aids in the sense that the purpose is either to mitigate the effects of reduced physical abilities or to compensate for the loss of a sensory faculty. The focus of this article concerns an object that both increases mobility and replaces such a faltering capacity. It might even be the most iconic of all aids: the mobility cane, also known as the white cane, long cane or white stick. Based on the work at a Swedish Low Vision and Resource Centre, this article discusses the use of the white cane among people with severe and progressive visual impairment. The fact is that this aid, which for an outsider would easily seem to be a rather natural choice, can arouse completely different feelings in somebody who has a severe visual impairment. It is a well-known circumstance amongst low visions teachers and therapists that persons with acquired or progressive sight impairment are often not quite happy about using the aid. Therefore, the aim of the article is to utilize notions of everyday experiences to gain further insights into why the white cane for many of its potential users are associated with strong feelings of both personal ambiguity and social stress. In order to highlight these emotional, and still cultural and political, tensions, the discussion is grounded in critical disability studies and informed by ableism, stigma, and passing as theoretical concepts. 

The focus of this article is the work of photographer Gunnar Lundh, specifically the works collectively known as the statare photographs, images of rural contract labourers (or statare) that form part of a collection donated to the Nordic Museum in 1961. An overview of how these photographs have circulated in the Swedish public sphere indicates that three areas are particularly suitable for a targeted study of their use and reuse: i) social reportage, aimed at the miserable conditions facing these agricultural labourers in the emerging welfare state; ii) a biographical theme, in which the contract-labour photographs are part of a historical layer that repeatedly connects the author and opinion former Ivar Lo-Johansson with the ‘contract-labour photographer’ Lundh; and iii) how the older images remain a relevant element of a contemporary material cultural-heritage creation. In all of these examples, Lundh’s contract-labour photographs function as visual models through which it becomes possible to represent the contract labourers’ historical reality in books, buildings and interiors. However, they also constitute important components in the creation and perpetuation of what this article highlights as a distinctive set of intra-referential memory.