Disability Studies

Disability studies is an interdisciplinary area of study, based in the humanities and social sciences, that views disability in cultural, social, and political terms, rather than through the lens of biology or psychology. In these latter disciplines, the primary way of conceptualizing “disability”is typically connected to some form of deficit or measuring distance from the “norm” [Page 466]for purposes of intervention, remediation, and bringing one closer to the established norm. Disability studies challenges this singular view of the construct of disability and aims to present a variety of perspectives on disability, both in contemporary society as well as those from a range of cultures and histories. One goal of disability studies is to challenge the idea of the normal/abnormal binary and to suggest and show that a range of human variation is “normal.”

Like African American studies, women's studies, and Latino/a studies in the universities, which were outgrowths of the civil rights and women's movements, disability studies has roots in the disability rights movement (DRM). In the United States, the DRM helped pass legislation relating to the civil rights of individuals with regard to employment (Rehabilitation Act of 1973;Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990), education (Education for All Handicapped Children Act, PL 94–142, 1975), and accessible transportation. The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) was started in 1982 by a group of academics led by Irving Zola. The original name was Section for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability (SSCIID), part of the Western Social Science Association.

In the United Kingdom, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), formed in 1972, was instrumental in politicizing disability. Mike Oliver, a disabled sociologist, wrote the Politics of Disablement in 1990, in which he analyzed how a social issue such as disability gets cast as an individual medicalized phenomenon.

While the political movements led social scientists to explorations of disability, the arts and humanities have also taken up the study of disability. The interdisciplinarity that characterizes disability studies allows for a variety of methodologies and approaches to be applied to the study of disability. Some of these include narratives of disability;analysis of representations of disability (in literature, the arts, the law, media);challenging the absence of disabled researchers in the academy;writing or rewriting histories of disability;creating visual art, performance, and poetry that highlights the experiences of disabled people in a world built for the nondisabled;analysis of the social organization of space that excludes people with disabilities;philosophies of justice that speak directly to the interests of the disabled;and narratives and analyses of the experience of living with a disability and how this intersects with race, class, and gender status markers.

More recently, in 2000, Disability Studies in Education has been organized as a Special Interest Group (SIG) of The American Educational Research Association (AERA) as a critique of the segregation, low expectations, poor outcomes, disproportionate classification of students of color, and positivist epistemology that characterizes special education in the United States. The goal of disability studies in any arena is to broaden the understanding of disability, to better understand the experience of disability in society, and to contribute to social change for people with disabilities.

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