Bristol, United Kingdom

Disability Studies

Language: English Studies in English
University website: www.bristol.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Disability
Disability is an impairment that may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, sensory, or some combination of these. It substantially affects a person's life activities and may be present from birth or occur during a person's lifetime.
Disability Studies
Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability as a social construct. Initially the field focused on the division between "impairment" and "disability", where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construction. This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability. In 1999 the social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field. However, in recent years, the division between the social and medical models has been challenged. Additionally there has been an increased focus on interdisciplinary research. For example, recent investigations suggest using "cross-sectional markers of stratification" may help provide new insights on the non-random distribution of risk factors capable of acerbating disablement processes.
Disability
[Bioethics] is "a phony branch of elite philosophy whose principle purpose seems to be to justify allowing badly ill or disabled people to die."
Larry Thornberry, "The Dean of Suspense", The American Spectator (2009-07-08)
Disability
Not only do physically disabled people have experiences which are not available to the able-bodied, they are in a better position to transcend cultural mythologies about the body, because they cannot do things the able-bodied feel they must do in order to be happy, ‘normal,’ and sane….If disabled people were truly heard, an explosion of knowledge of the human body and psyche would take place.
Susan Wendell, in The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability
Disability
Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than I do; nobody calls her disabled.
Aimee Mullins on prosthetics in her TED talk
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