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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]

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]

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 is an attempt to develop a sociology of impairment and to theorise embodiment in the lebenswelt. Disability studies has failed to address adequately the fundamental issue of bodily agency. The impaired body is represented as a passive recipient of social forces. Such a conception of the body is losing ground within social theory. This paper attempts to overcome disability studies' disembodied view of disability by utilising a phenomenological concept of embodiment. Phenomenology offers the opportunity to transcend the traditional Cartesian dualisms which posit the body as a passive precultural object. However, such a view, when extended to impairment is empty of political content since phenomenological analyses have relied upon medicalised and individualised understandings of disability. In order to counter the disablism evident in phenomenology on the one side and disability studies' disembodied view of disability on the other, we argue for a radical phenomenological approach to the (impaired) body. To demonstrate the vitality of such an approach, we also attempt to deploy Leders' (1990) concept of dysappearance as a means of analysing the carnal politics of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernity is at the heart of the transformation of impairment into disability. This paper seeks to map out the processes that underpin this claim. Its focus is on the cultures of modernity and post-modernity, and how these complex legacies have constituted and invalidated mental and physical difference. The work of Zygmunt Bauman, particularly his use of the sociology of the (modern) stranger and his redemptive critique of modern and post-modern cultures provides a framework for the discussion. Bauman's work has no explicit connection to Disability Studies, but his sensitivity to modern patterns of exclusion and 'othering' provide not only a useful template to think through the relationship between modernity and disability, but also a useful corrective to the tendency in UK disability studies to ignore the 'cultural turn'. [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]

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]

The article addresses the issues on the study regarding the integration of people with disabilities. A graphical model has the advantage of giving insight in a complex situation by showing core elements on what is going on in a simplified way. Within the research, the focus was on the micro level of individuals with disabilities within their integration process.

In light of recent developments in the field of disability studies, this article is an attempt to update a typology of orientations to disability developed over 20 years ago. The proposed revised typology represents a synthesis of two theoretical strands in sociology: opportunity structure theory and identity theory. The author provides examples from the literature, by and about people with disabilities, to illustrate each proposed type of disability identity. These types include normalisation, crusadership, affirmation, situational identification, resignation, apathy and isolated affirmation. The article suggests that individuals with disabilities may move along a 'career path' from one type to another over time, as they encounter new opportunities and interaction situations. The author proposes a research agenda to refine and establish the validity of the typology, and to determine its applicability to diverse populations of disabled people in the world today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]