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The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the work of sociologists who laid the foundation for queer and crip approaches to disability and to address how queer and crip theory has and can help to re-conceptualize our understandings of health, illness, disability, and sexuality.

This paper is an examination of historical moments and prominent literature within medical sociology and sociology of disability. Sociological and popular understandings of disability and sexuality have often mirrored each other historically. Although this literature review focuses primarily on medical sociology and disability studies literature, some works of scholars specializing in gender studies, sexuality, literature, history, and queer studies are also included

In this paper, I argue that the medicalization and pathologization of human differences specifically as it pertains to sexuality and disability within the medical sociological literature have led to constructionist, social model, and feminist critiques. It is these critiques that then laid the foundation for the development of queer and crip theoretical approaches to both disability and sexuality.

Crip and queer approaches to disability provide a clear call for future sociological research. Few social science scholars have applied queer and crip approaches in empirical studies on disability. The majority of work in this area is located in the humanities and concerned with literary criticism. A broader array of empirical work on the intersection of sexuality and disability from queer/crip perspectives is needed both to refine these postmodern theoretical models and to examine their implications for the complex lived experience that lies at the intersection of sexuality and disability. In queering disability and cripping sexuality and gender, we may be able not only to more fully conceptualize disability, sexuality, and gender as individual social categories, but also to more fully understand the complex intersection of these social locations.

This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.

The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

This paper was written to show that what has come to be called the social model of disability appeared as the primary analytical framework in research published by sociologists in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the name and constructs of the model have changed over the years, its roots are clearly present in the earlier sociological literature. The author looked for evidence of these roots.

The paper’s findings are based on a literature review and synthesis. For illustrative purposes, four publications were selected as case examples.

All of the components of the social model – locus of the problem in society, activism as a solution, and consumer control – appeared in the earlier literature. In addition, these studies conducted in the 1970s and earlier distinguished between the individual and social model, although they used different terminology.

Researchers need to go beyond simple electronic literature searches in order to find books and articles written prior to 1980. Otherwise, they may be “reinventing the wheel.”

Most recent literature in disability studies acknowledges a debt to the social model theorists of the 1990s. This paper suggests that their debt extends back much further and that the social model is part of a long tradition of sociological thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the tenuous relationship between medical sociology and disability studies, particularly as it relates to the work of Irving Zola.

Many attribute the division between these disciplines to their starkly different and oft competing approaches to disability; however, I argue that a closer examination reveals a number of commonalities between the two.

I use Irving K. Zola’s extensive body of scholarship to demonstrate the connections between these divergent approaches to disability, and imagine what his legacy has to offer to the advancement of a diverse sociology of disability.

Neither focus is more correct than the other, as considering these bodies of work together presents a number of opportunities to advance a more comprehensive sociological theory – not just of disability – but of ableism and its intersections with other forms of oppression as well.

This paper presents an updated summary of a meta-analysis of qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years. In this summary, we explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training are reflected in research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research. The detailed findings of the original analysis were published in Volume 7 of Research in Social Science and Disability.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 79 peer-reviewed qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities. The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

Since the mid-1990s, the social model of disability has come under scrutiny. Several researchers have examined the role of ontology (philosophical ideas about the nature of what it means to be human) in relation to disability. In this paper, we situate this burgeoning understanding of disability within the set of post-cartesian ontologies, which disrupt the separation of the mind from the body and its attendant dichotomies. Furthermore, we seek to show how such a change can carry through to the research paradigm and therefore affect tangible outcomes of disability research.

A commitment to an embodied ontology requires first and foremost that researchers rethink what is being studied by focusing on the diverse characteristics of being and its actualization within the world. This will involve an emphasis on the lived experience of the body, including issues of affect, identity and movement, as well as broader issues of embodied being.

Using a research program currently underway at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (CIRRIS) as a detailed example, we draw on the ontological framework to help articulate the way research can be re-organized. We show how projects at different scales can be brought to work together, and highlight how a focus on embodiment issues facilitates such multi-disciplinary, inter-project collaboration. We note that adopting such an ontology-based framework will accomplish three major outcomes: (1) increase the relevance and effectiveness of new projects with regard to the overall vision; (2) enhance cross-project synergies and ensure stronger ties between research and practice; and (3) contribute to shifting the underlying ontology from a more cartesian approach to a post-cartesian embodied perspective.

The new ontologies embrace, integrate and extend the earlier social and biomedical perspectives, and offer a critical perspective on technology. The embodied approach recognizes not only the embodiment of research subjects, but also the embodied experience of the researchers themselves. In addition, the approach leads to a more holistic organization of research within a global, interconnected structure of projects rather than simply a collection of separate projects organized into thematic areas, as was done in previous decades. This reorganization of research enhances the ability to engage academic researchers with practitioners not just in the hospital and clinical settings, but also within the wider community.

In this chapter, the author critically examines the relationship between sociology and the identities/experiences of disability and ‘mental illness’ (referred to throughout as distress). The author argues that despite sociology having an ethos of social justice and frequently producing critical accounts of inequalities – such as anti-racism and gender equality – it nonetheless uncritically reiterates the marginalisation of disability and distress. As such, sociology not only reflects the increasing ‘medicalisation of everyday life’ and shores up the essentialist discourses of genetics and neuroscience, but also consigns research and knowledge production about disability and distress to the medical sciences. The author challenges these sociological conventions and highlights the ways in which both disability and distress are socially structured, embodied experiences. The author argues that a sociological account of distress and disability are important not only in and of themselves, but also because they highlight the ways and means to challenge essentialism, inequality and the ever-narrowing definition of what is considered a normal or acceptable part of human experience. Furthermore, vibrant streams of user-led research, activism and practice-interventions – resulting in widespread social, legal and identity transformations – have emerged from the experiences of disability and distress. These user-led perspectives highlight the importance and potential of knowledge produced from the margins, not only for those experiencing disability and/or distress but also for the ways in which we perceive, theorise and research the social world more broadly.

In this chapter, I explore connections between institutional and personal narratives of treating chronic pain with prescription opioids.

I explore how stories told in a Food and Drug Administration public hearing construct moral boundaries around different kinds of pain patients and justify a label change intended to reduce prescribing of opioids to people with chronic pain. I then examine how personal narratives, acquired through interviews with chronic pain patients who rely on opioids, both conform to and challenge the institutional narratives told in the hearing and work as subversive stories. Additionally, I consider how institutional and personal narratives of chronic pain shed light on intersections and conflicts between the medical and social models of disability.

The “invisible disability” experience of chronic pain highlights the complex entanglement between the struggles associated with impairment emphasized by the medical model, and those stemming from cultural and structural barriers emphasized by the social model.

I conclude with a discussion of the methodological value of examining narratives such as those of chronic pain and disability at multiple levels of social life. This study contributes to efforts to broaden disability discourse to include experiences such as chronic pain that are poorly represented in disability scholarship.

In this chapter, the authors examine the challenges presented by supporting higher education students with disabilities in an online learning environment and put forth a discussion and recommendations for delivering literacy supports to geographically disparate students in fully online courses by embracing the social model of disability and universal design principals as opposed to the typical medical model of disability that it pervasive in educational systems. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, educational institutions are required to promote auxiliary aids and services. Broadly defined, these aids are meant to enhance communication, inclusion, and participation of people with disabilities. The discussion of the resources put forth in this chapter begins with an exploration of the evolving consensus on the nature of disability and the standard (medical) model for providing accommodations and supports for students with disabilities, which was developed before the rise of online and blended learning environments. Next, the authors explore the problems inherent in the use of the medical model and highlight how the social model and universal design for learning can be utilized to empower learners and enhance their learning experiences in online and blended learning environments. The discussion returns to the importance of inclusion, participation, and engagement for students with disabilities no matter the modality of learning. This chapter concludes with a comparison of two models of support and recommended changes for implementation of best practices to enhance literacy supports in online learning environments.

The concept that guides the present research is orientation toward disability. This concept is related to, but broader than, the concept of disability identity that has driven some previous research in this area (see, e.g., Gill, 1997; Putnam, 2005). The concept of identity or self suggests a person's definition of him or herself and usually includes both cognitive (“I am a person with a disability”) and evaluative (“I am proud to be a person with a disability”) components.