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Diagnosis plays a significant role in the shaping of individual identities and the quality of life for people with learning difficulties and their family carers. Diagnostic labels are constitutive of peoples’ lives, in that they bring forth pathology, create problemsaturated stories and construct careers as patients and cases. Disabled identities of people with learning difficulties remain largely ‘embodied’ and within the definitional control of professionals. Whilst the acquisition of a learning difficulty label can open doors to resources, it can also lead to disrespectful and dehumanising treatment, and the severe restriction of opportunities. This paper argues that a social constructionist perspective can offer a way of thinking about diagnosis that challenges the so called ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ that underpin and support it. Working in partnership with people with learning difficulties in relation to diagnosis requires professionals to relinquish power by resisting the ‘temptations of certainty’ associated with diagnostic practices. [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]

This paper considers the agency and identity of parents of children with Down syndrome within early intervention. It draws upon semi-structured, conversational interviews with nine parents and the reflections of one of the authors upon their experiences within early intervention programmes. It considers how representations of the deficit model permeate the participation of the parent in this process. It explores the multiple identities of the parents and links these to notions of parental participation within the current policy context of early intervention in England. The notion of parental agency is an implicit driver within the current early intervention programmes, yet it appears to be compromised by the nature of those programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has generally amalgamated minority ethnic (all called 'Asian' or 'black') disabled young people's experiences and failed to acknowledge the multiple aspects of Asian and black disabled identities, for example how the combined attributes of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, culture, class and disability shape their perspectives and experiences. In an attempt to address this issue my doctoral research explored the experiences and perspectives of 13 young Pakistani and Bangladeshi disabled people. By drawing on the substantive and theoretical findings which emerged from my analysis in this paper I shall consider how multiple aspects of identity, such as ethnicity, disability and gender, affect this population's identity and self-image and how this makes their experiences different from white disabled young people and other minority groups' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is drawn from research conducted with gay and bisexual men with learning difficulties, a project that included participants' various struggles to self-identify within these alternative sexualities. Significant parts of this identity work were mitigated by participation in what is referred to here as 'politically radical support groups'. Three facilitators of these groups, professionals in the areas of sex education, were interviewed and a common itinerary was uncovered, namely a subversive and political praxis. At its heart, such praxis argues that educational endeavours for people with learning difficulties must not only account for disabling practices, but more importantly, maximally prioritise the mitigation of such prejudice within educational activities. Furthermore, it is argued that political praxis is not merely theoretical; six practical strategies are offered. In these ways, caregivers are offered concrete approaches to (genuinely) support the choice, power and control for people with learning difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pervasive representations of disability carry associations with the idea of loss. These have been strongly rejected by the social model movement as stereotyping, which may perpetuate views of disabled people as 'incomplete', 'vulnerable' or needing rehabilitation. Discourses of 'loss', 'acceptance' and 'denial' remain a lens through which disabled persons are misknown. It is posited that ascribed notions of 'loss' serve to maintain feelings of control and mastery within the observer, quieting the destablising psychic threat which disability poses. Further, disabled people positioned as having to 'deny' imputed loss may be at risk of suffering self-alienation relating to a mode of being which is (necessarily, understandably) preoccupied with 'not being' the personification of stereotype, at the expense of exploring aspects of identity and self; such an orientation embodies unstable foundations for an entitled, articulate disability movement. Conceptual ideas are based on the author's experience as a disabled group psychotherapist working with severely physically impaired adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through examining the case of people with epilepsy (which, as we demonstrate, has an ambiguous status in relation to both popular and academic conceptions of disability) we explore the fluid, negotiable and contingent nature of identity and, in particular, the identification as 'disabled'. Disability, we argue, cannot be reduced to either biology or social oppression, or even primarily to biological or social factors: it is the outcome of a complex interaction between a multiplicity of factors - biological, environmental, social, psychological, cultural and political - which will interact and be experienced differently by different people, at different times and in different situations. Rather than conceiving of disability in 'all or nothing' terms and of differing explanations as competing and mutually exclusive, it would be more productive to see them as partial and potentially complementary contributions to the better understanding of a complex and multifarious reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]