Year: 2011
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Drawing on categories of imposed and intrinsic relevances developed by Alfred Schutz, as well as on affirmative model definitions of impairment and disability, this article develops an argument proposing the usefulness of disability identity. Disability is not just about what people with impairments are prevented from doing and being, but about what they are required to do and be instead. Whether this involves taking on roles as passive recipients of others’ benevolence or involvement in demonstrations of the unimportance of impairment, either way negates the lived experience of impairment and signifies the desirability of normality. It is suggested that embracing rather than attempting to disassociate the impaired self from disability identity – recognising disability as oppression and absurdity and resolving to face this - enables this self to claim impairment as valid and ordinary human experience and to resist the invalidating requirements of the disabled role.
Author: Colin Cameron
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W9204061