Disability, Disability Studies and Citizenship: Moving Up or Off the Sociological Agenda?

Barnes, Colin, and Geof Mercer, Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003.

Barnes, Colin, Mike Oliver and Len Barton, eds., Disability Studies Today. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.

Titchkosky, Tanya, Disability, Self, and Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

In his groundbreaking book, The Politics of Disablement, British sociologist Mike Oliver (1990) observed that disability did not occupy a central or even a marginal place on the sociological agenda, notwithstanding cultural studies and medical sociology. In the subsequent years, disability has been taken up seriously and quite actively as an analytical topic and social category for study and political action in Britain, Canada, the United States and other countries. Nonetheless, the place of disability studies within sociology, according to these authors, remains uncertain.

The three books reviewed here are recent additions to the up-and-coming field of disability studies. They admirably illustrate how the exploration of disability is striving to advance up the policy agenda of welfare states as well as the research and theoretical terrains of the humanities and social sciences. All three works make clear how the seemingly particular and individual troubles of chronic illness and physical or mental impairments are properly understood as public issues of social exclusion, discrimination and oppression. "Disability," as Barnes, Oliver and Barton state in their reader (2002: 2), "is both a common personal experience and a global phenomenon, with widespread economic, cultural and political implications for society as a whole." Titchkosky asserts that, "It is impossible to experience disability outside of our relations with others. Whole cultures and whole societies experience disability" (2003: 4-5). A paradox exists, however, in that while the sociological imagination is a prominent feature of the field of disability studies, this newly emerging field has a troubled relationship with mainstream sociology.

As Titchkosky asserts, compared to women's studies or race relations, disability studies is not considered as a hiring, research, or curriculum priority within sociology departments (2003: 138). True, sociology of the body has emerged over the past generation (Turner 1992; Shilling 1993), with recent attention to personal physical experiences, and biological phenomenon as part of social identity and politics. Move over Durkheim; welcome Foucault. Yet, disability is still marginal in contemporary sociological theory and discourse (e.g., Wallace and Wolf 1999; Marshall 1998).¹

Disability is one in a series on key concepts, joining others published by Polity Press on democracy, human rights, and power, among others. Barnes and Mercer are two-well known academics, both at the University of Leeds, in the British field of disability studies (e.g., Barnes and Mercer 1996; Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 1999; Oliver and Barnes 1998). Their task, in this book, is "to demonstrate the merits and potential of social analyses of disability." They approach this by examining issues and themes in the disability studies literature at the level of the individual, social groups, and macro-society. Drawing partly from Iris Marion Young's work on difference and justice (1990), Barnes and Mercer conceptualize disability as a distinctive and dynamic form of social oppression.

Disability Studies Today, the Barnes, Oliver and Barton reader, contains contributions mainly by British academics, joined by two eminent American scholars on disability, Gary Albrecht and Harlan Hahn, and a leading disability specialist from Canada, Marcia Rioux. The contributors are not armchair theorists detached from the real world of disability, but activist academics who are engaged in the politics and policy of disability issues in their own countries and abroad. The editors introduce us to a range of the important theoretical choices, empirical challenges and practical debates in the field of disability studies. Barnes, Oliver and Barton contend that sociological theories have provided much of the foundation for disability studies and will continue to make a fundamental contribution to the development of this new academic field.

Disability, Self, and Society by Tanya Titchkosky, Associate Professor...