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This study examines disability terminology to explore how the news media frame cultural representations of the disability community. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on journalist's language choices about disability topics. A content analysis of news stories using disability terms in The Washington Post and The New York Times during the past decade was conducted. The paper illustrates that disability community identity continues to be formed, transformed and maintained through news media presentations of disability terminology. The paper argues that the US Disability Rights Movement had some success during the 1990s in putting forth language that advances its aims, though the study also suggests that some journalists continue to use terms that perpetuate limiting, narrow stereotypes about people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, a growing number of scholars in Disability Studies have begun to critique the social model of disability. This paper documents the movement in these critiques, analyzing several ways paradigms and theories have been used in relation to the social model and the ways in which resistance plays a part in these paradigms. In the second part of the paper, we begin to explore the implications of resistance theory for disability theory, noting that resistance appears to exist throughout all paradigms at play in disability studies while it is rarely explicitly addressed. We conclude by describing the potential use of resistance theory for both theory and praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers sociological understandings of what constitutes disability. Current meanings of disability in both disability studies and medical sociology are examined and compared, using selected articles from leading authors in each discipline as case studies. These disciplines are often represented as offering starkly contrasting approaches to disability, with their differences amounting to a disciplinary 'divide'. It is argued that, on closer inspection, common ground can be found between some writers in disability studies and medical sociology. It is suggested that this situation has arisen because, in disability studies, the social relational understanding of disability developed by Vic Finkelstein and Paul Hunt in the 1970s has been lost over time, overshadowed by the rise to prominence of its offspring: the social model of disability. The paper concludes with some reflections on the need to revive a social relational understanding of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary disability discourse is marked by a struggle between medical and social meanings and models. The latter reflects the aspirations and youthful radicalism of the disability movement, while the former regards itself as the legitimate voice of truth in all matters associated with bodily function and process. This paper argues that the battle lines between these two camps need not be redrawn. Despite hints to the contrary, the proposed extension of the social model to accommodate a sociology of impairment does not involve a rapprochement with the medical model. On the contrary, a sociological account of impairment seeks to augment the armoury of the social model by developing one of its weaknesses, namely the cultural critique of medicine. This paper examines some of the ways in which medicine has been involved in the 'aesthetic invalidation' of disabled people and proposes that 'geneticization' is an important current contributor to this form of disability discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the case for and how would one begin to construct a sociology of impairment? This paper argues that the realignment of the disability/impairment distinction is vital for the identity politics of the disability movement. The body is at the heart of contemporary political and theoretical debate, yet the social model of disability makes it an exile. The transformation of the body from a reactionary to an emancipatory concept implies a sociology of impairment. This paper explores the contribution that post-structuralism and phenomenology might make to this end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary sociology has made sense of bodily difference by mobilising a number of tropes. 'Wounded' (or vulnerable), 'monstrous' and 'abject' stand out by virtue of their ubiquity though they do not exhaust the repertoire. These categories highlight the conceptual tensions between the sociology of the body and Disability Studies. In this paper, I will examine the value of these tropes to Disability Studies and suggest that while they can help to clarify the processes that bring about the misrecognition of disabled people, understanding the nature and scope of the lives of disabled people in modernity requires a more embodied language rather than one that has been generated from a sociological imaginary that is strongly influenced by a non-disabled subject position in which repulsion for the other -- which one must become -- is never fully resolved. Disability has had little impact on sociological theories of the body and when sociology ventures into disability it has tended to conflate it with an ontology of human frailty or gloss it with tropes that may be instructive about the generic or gendered modernist structure of exclusion but it tells us little about the specific forms of invalidation experienced by disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses perceptions and experiences of impairment and disability from the perspectives of learning disabled children, their parents and their social workers. The author reports on findings from her doctoral study that adults often fail to take into account the views and experiences of learning disabled children. As a result, these children developed their own interpretations of impairment and disability based on their experiences and interactions with others. Whilst this indicates that they are active social interpreters, it also suggests that adults should make greater efforts to inform and consult learning disabled children. The author concludes by reflecting on the relevance of these findings to contemporary theories of disability and childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the researcher's experiences as a countryside access advisor in exploring some of the ways that social model ideas can influence the development of organizational policy and practice in mainstream settings. It argues that, in seeking to influence the development of more inclusive policies and practices, disability studies needs to look for new ways of engaging with diverse audiences of practitioners who are used to operating within an individual model of disability, and who may therefore see no immediate organizational advantages to adopting social model principles in their work. This evolutionary process demands in particular that we work constantly towards finding new, more accessible, ways of explaining social model ideas to mainstream audiences. Thus, in a social climate that continues to tolerate disabled people's oppression, disability studies has a key role to play in demonstrating to theorists, policy-makers and practitioners why and how social model ideas can support the move towards inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the social model of disability currently inform the delivery of services for people labelled as having profound and complex learning difficulties? What distinguishes practice which draws on the social model from that which is influenced by an individual model or a medical model of disability? This paper draws on the findings of a small scale interpretive research study and some of the current debates within disability studies to illuminate these questions. It concludes that the social model can and does positively impact on some practice and that it should be taught to all providers of services for this group. It further concludes that to include discussion about individual experience of impairment in such training may have negative consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We welcome Forshaw's reply to our paper because it opens up debate about psychology and its relationship with the development of an emancipatory disability studies. In our paper we aimed to: (1) raise possibilities for disability studies researchers' engagement with psychology (rather than psychology colonizing disability studies); (2) trace some of the epistemological journeys we underwent in carrying out disability research and community psychology research; (3) consider these possibilities and journeys in relation to previous literature on emancipatory disability research. Forshaw's reply appears to ignore aims (2) and (3) and instead focuses on the ways in which we (mis)represent psychology. He suggests that we: present an inaccurate account of qualitative research in contemporary psychology; make a divisive argument for a 'breakaway group' of community psychologists; epistemologically contradict ourselves because of our concern with 'reality' and social constructionism; argue for only adopting participatory action research; not least, adopt 'simplistic' and 'outdated' views of psychology. We will respond to these criticisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]