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Disability
- Authors:
- BARNES Colin, MERCER Geof
- Publisher:
- Polity
- Publication year:
- 2003
- Pagination:
- 186p.,bibliog.
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
This book provides an introduction to current social science debates on disability. It chronicles how disabled people and their organizations have challenged the conventional, individualistic and medical explanations for disabled people's individual and collective disadvantage. This is an approach that is, as yet, not fully explored by mainstream sociology and social policy. The authors draw on a burgeoning ‘disability studies' literature from around the world, and from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, highlighting disabled peoples' exclusion and marginalization in key areas of social activity and participation across different historical and cultural contexts. These include family life and reproduction, education, employment, leisure, cultural imagery and politics. The analysis concentrates on disability as a distinctive form of social oppression similar to that experienced by women, minority ethnic and ‘racial' groups, and lesbians and gay men. Issues addressed include: theorising disability; historical and comparative perspectives; experiencing impairment and disability; professional and policy intervention in the lives of disabled people; disability politics, social policy and citizenship; and disability culture.The authors offer a wide-ranging critique of established academic, policy and professional orthodoxies. The continuing theme is how the new ways of approaching disability can inform and be informed by sociological and policy analysis and research.