Full Description
Disability is often described in a way that suggests that it is a permanent and relatively stable state. Even when it is described as being socially constructed, the implication is that impairment leads to a permanent status of being 'disabled'. This volume argues that the relationship between impairment (physical state) and disability is neither fixed nor permanent but is fluid and not easily predicted. Furthermore, if this is true, we need to rethink how we are measuring disability. This volume attempts to reconceptualize disability not as static but a dynamic phenomenon which is related to social, cultural and historical contexts. It is part of the new social science emphasis on fluidity rather than stasis. The papers in the volume examine disability at all levels. Several look at micro-level interactional processes which shape physical conditions into disabilities or impairments into normality, some look at cultural differences over time in what constitutes disability and some look at how social processes and institutions create or deny the status of disability. The papers support the conceptualization of the fluidity of disability and have implications for its measurement.
Contents
List of Contributors.
Disability as a fluid state: Introduction.
"Feeling normal" and "feeling disabled".
Out of a coma and into a wheelchair: Social and physical accessibility and the construction of disabled identity.
At the interstices of classification: Notes on the category of disability in sub-Saharan Africa.
A relational approach to the development of civil rights for people with intellectual disabilities.
From "Survival of the Fittest" to "Fitness for All" to "Who defines fitness anyway?": 100 years of (US) sociological theory on disability.
Regarding disability: Perceptions of protection under the Americans with disabilities act.
"Sit home and collect the check": race, class, and the social construction of disability identity.
Activism, models, identities, and opportunities: A preliminary test of a typology of disability orientations.
Deaf women's work experiences: Negotiating gender, ability, and theories of resistance.
Why does growth hurt? The dual role of normalization and stigmatization in the experience of growth hormone treatment.
Disproportionality: A sociological perspective of the identification by schools of students with learning disabilities.
About the Authors.
Research in Social Science and Disability.
Research in Social Science and Disability.
Copyright page.
