Disability studies

Not to be confused with Disability rights.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2012)

Disability
Theory and models Disability theory Ableism / Disablism Medical model Social model
Education Mainstreaming Individualized Education Program (IEP) Special needs Special school Special education Learning disability
Therapy Physical therapy Occupational therapy Speech therapy
Societal implications Disability rights movement Inclusion People-first language Pejorative terms
Personal / physical assistance Personal care assistant Activities of daily living Orthotics and braces Prosthetics Assistive technology Assisted living Mobility aid Physical accessibility Universal design Web accessibility
Socioeconomic assistance Social Security Disability Insurance Supplemental Security Income Ticket to Work Disability Living Allowance Disabled students allowance Disabled Persons Railcard Freedom Pass
Groups and organizations Society for Disability Studies DPI CCD Reach Canada Visitability
Disabled sports Special Olympics Paralympics Deaflympics Extremity Games
Culture Disability in the arts Disability art Disability in the media
Disability portal Category: Disability Category: Disability lists
v t e

1 Definitions
2 Disability studies and medical humanities
3 Criticism
4 List of disability studies theorists
5 Bibliography
6 See also
7 Notes
8 External links

Definitions [edit]

Disability theorists have debated at length how disability should be defined.^{[citation needed]} The theoretical roots for these debates reside in models which reflect the socio cultural beliefs of any given society.^{[citation needed]} For example in the United Kingdom the disabled peoples movement, scholars, activists and practitioners construct debates around two distinctly different models of understanding what disability is.^{[citation needed]} The 'social' and 'medical/individual' models of disability.^{[citation needed]} In America debates focus upon the 'structural and 'minority' models.^{[citation needed]} The medical/individual model is an assumption that disability is located with an individual who has an impairment.^{[citation needed]} The social model challenges the medical/individual model through the idea that disability is constructed through social, structural and environmental barriers not an individual’s impairment.^{[citation needed]} The minority model sees a lack of equal rights as a primary impediment to equality between able and disabled populations; and the structural model looks to environmental factors as the cause of disability.^{[citation needed]}

The field of academic study of disability is growing worldwide; one of its major backers, the transnational Society for Disability Studies (US), took up the task in the mid-1990s to create an official "definition" for what the field involves.^{[citation needed]} It offers the following working guidelines for any program that describes itself as 'Disability Studies':

It should be interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary. Disability sits at the center of many overlapping disciplines in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Programs in Disability Studies should encourage a curriculum that allows students, activists, teachers, artists, practitioners, and researchers to engage the subject matter from various disciplinary perspectives.^{[citation needed]}

It should challenge the view of disability as an individual deficit or defect that can be remedied solely through medical intervention or rehabilitation by "experts" and other service providers.^{[citation needed]} Rather, a program in disability studies should explore models and theories that examine social, political, cultural, and economic factors that define disability and help determine personal and collective responses to difference.^{[citation needed]} At the same time, Disability Studies should work to de-stigmatize disease, illness, and impairment, including those that cannot be measured or explained by biological science.^{[citation needed]} Finally, while acknowledging that medical research and intervention can be useful, Disability Studies should interrogate the connections between medical practice and stigmatizing disability.^{[citation needed]}

It should study national and international perspectives, policies, literature, culture, and history with an aim of placing current ideas of disability within their broadest possible context. Since attitudes toward disability have not been the same across times and places, much can be gained by learning from these other experiences.^{[citation needed]}

It should actively encourage participation by disabled students and faculty, and should ensure physical and intellectual access.^{[citation needed]}

It should make it a priority to have leadership positions held by disabled people; at the same time it is important to create an environment where contributions from anyone who shares the above goals are welcome.^[1]

However, the actual scope of disability studies differs from country to country in spite of its common core.^{[citation needed]} Some, such as the United Kingdom, tend to see the field primarily as belonging only to disabled people and the disability activism they might tend to promote; in the United States, by contrast, a much wider range of professions, such as sociology and social work more generally, which involves both able-bodied and disabled people, may be involved.^{[citation needed]} One of the earliest academic publications in the area was 'Deformity as Device in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel' (1991), a PhD thesis, at the University of Tasmania, by CA. Cranston.

Disability studies and medical humanities [edit]

The social model of disability is expanded to chronic illness and to the broader work of the medical humanities.^[2] Practitioners are working towards improving the healthcare for disabled people through disability studies. This multi-disciplinary field of enquiry draws on the experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities to address discrimination. Inclusion of disability studies in medical curriculum is being reported as a preliminary step towards bringing medical humanities into classrooms.^[3] Infinite Ability has done some preliminary work in India to introduce disability studies to medical students.^[4] ^[5] ^[6]

Criticism [edit]

Disability studies is not without its critics.^[7] It has been suggested that the dominant social model it uses, which developed in the 1970s and served its purpose well through that era, has now been outgrown, and needs major developments. One major area of contention is the frequent exclusion of the personal experience of impairment, cognitive disability, and illness, which is often left out of most discussion in these circles in the name of "focused" academic discourse.^{[citation needed]} Another concern is the ever-present possibility of a drift towards identity politics in the discipline and also within the disability rights movement as a whole. The social model of disability separates physical impairment from social disability, and in its most rigid form does not accept that impairment can cause disability at all. Scholars are increasingly recognizing that the effects of impairment form a central part of many disabled people's experience, and that these effects must be included for the social model to still be a valid reflection of that experience. Slogan "the personal is political" has been particularly influential in these developments.

Disability studies has also been criticised for its failure to engage with other forms of sociopolitical oppression, such as racism, sexism or homophobia, both as they may apply to disabled people in these oppressed groups, and also in disability studies' ability (or lack thereof) to "unite" with these other movements in common struggle. As a relatively new discipline, critics allege disability studies seems to have made very little progress in this area, in spite of recently published writings which deal with these very topics. Examples include Christopher Bell’s posthumous^[8] volume on Blackness and Disability;^[9] the work of Robert McRuer which both queers disability and engages with issues of neoliberal economic oppression; and Ellen Samuels’ explorations of gender, queer sexualities, and disability.^[10]^[11] Additionally, postsecondary Disability Studies programs increasingly engage with the intersectionality of oppression by adopting explicitly interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary frameworks,^[12]^[13] and by offering courses focused on the links between disability and other grounds of discrimination.^[14] The 2009 publication of Fiona Kumari Campbell’s "Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness" signalled a new direction of research — studies in ableism, moving beyond preoccupations with disability to explore the maintenance of abledness in sexed, raced and modified bodies.

List of disability studies theorists [edit]

Christopher Bell
Michael Bérubé
James Charlton
Carol J. Gill
Laura Hershey
Robert McRuer
Tom Shakespeare
Tobin Siebers

Bibliography [edit]

Albrecht, Gary L., ed. Encyclopedia of Disability (5 vol. Sage, 2005)
Barnes, C. and G. Mercer. Exploring disability [2nd edition]. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010.
Bell, Christopher, ed. Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions (Forecaast Series). LIT Verlag Münster, 2011.
Burch, Susan, and Paul K. Longmore, eds. Encyclopedia of American Disability History (3 Vol. 2009)
Campbell, Fiona K. "Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness", Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Corker, Mairian and Tom Shakespeare. Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory, Continuum, 2002.
Davis, Lennard J., ed. The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge 1997
DePoy, Elizabeth, and Stephen Gilson, Rethinking Disability: Principles for Professional and Social Change. Pacific Grove, CA: Wadsworth 2004.
Guter, Bob, and John R. Killacky, Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.
Johnstone, David. An Introduction to Disability Studies, David Fulton Publishers Ltd 2001
Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York University Press, 1998.
McRuer, Robert and Michael Bérubé. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (Cultural Front), NYU Press, 2006.
Oliver, M. Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. New York, Basigstoke, 1996
Pothier, Dianne and Richard Devlin, eds. Critical Disability Theory: Essays in Philosophy, Politics, Policy, and Law (Law and Society Series), UBC Press, 2006.
Ronell, A. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Siebers, Tobin Anthony. Disability Theory (Corporealities: Discourses of Disability), University of Michigan Press, 2008.
Snyder, Sharon, Brenda J. Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. Modern Language Association, 2002.
Snyder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability, University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Smith, Bonnie G., and Beth Hutchison, eds. Gendering Disability. Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Thomas, C. Sociologies of Disability and Illness: contested ideas in disability studies and medical sociology, London, Palgrave, 2007.

Notes [edit]

^ "Guidelines for Disability Studies Programs - Society for Disability Studies Society for Disability Studies". Disstudies.org. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
^ Garden, R (2010 Dec). "Disability and narrative: new directions for medicine and the medical humanities.". Medical humanities 36 (2): 70–4. PMID 21393285.
^ "Disability Studies in Medical Education". Retrieved 19 October 2012.
^ Singh, S; Khosla, J; Sridhar, S (2012 Jul). "Exploring medical humanities through theatre of the oppressed.". Indian journal of psychiatry 54 (3): 296–7. PMID 23226869.
^ Khetarpal, A; Singh, S (2012). "Infertility: Why can't we classify this inability as disability?". The Australasian medical journal 5 (6): 334–9. PMID 22848333.
^ Singh, S (2012 May). "Broadening horizons: looking beyond disability.". Medical education 46 (5): 522. PMID 22515781.
^ "The Disability Studies Industry".
^ BA Haller (2009-12-26). "Media dis&dat: Obituary: Chris Bell, disability studies scholar on race, HIV/AIDS, dies". Media-dis-n-dat.blogspot.ca. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions - Google Boeken". Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "Department of Gender and Women's Studies". Womenstudies.wisc.edu. 2013-02-27. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "Women and Disability: Feminist Disability Studies [Disability Studies]". Disabilitystudies.syr.edu. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "University of Manitoba - Graduate Studies - Disability Studies". Umanitoba.ca. 2013-04-11. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "York University: Graduate Program in Critical Disability Studies". Yorku.ca. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ "Disability Studies at Syracuse University: Areas of Study". Retrieved 2013-05-07.

Contents