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The Disability Reader-social science perspectives
TOM SHAKESPEARE
London, Cassell, 1998, 310 pp.
ISBN: 0-304-33976-8
The Disability Studies Reader
LENARD, J. DAvIs (Ed.)
London, Routledge, 1997, 454 pp.
ISBN: 0-415-91471-X
These two readers provide not only a host of articles on disability, but also a clear illustration of the different ways disability studies have developed in British and American universities. The first of these volumes consists, with one exception, of papers from the disability studies scene in Britain, and in particular from writers associated with the perspective of this journal. They are produced from within or in dialogue with a materialist social model of disability, and exhibit a particular concern about the relationship between academics, the Disability movement and the mass of disabled people.
The first section sets the context for the main body of the book by reproducing two important papers, Paul Hunt's 'A Critical Condition' from 1966 and Simon Brisenden's 1986 paper on independent living and the medical model, both of which continue to set standards for insight and clarity in the discussion of disability. Vic Finkelstein then chronicles the role played by the Open University in the development of disability studies in Britain. The significance of this section lies not only in its content; it also serves to remind us that disability studies has a particular context, and intellectual and experiential pedigree which can help us to understand how the discipline developed its particular strengths and weaknesses. The section title `from activism to academia' reinforces this point.
The largest section of the volume, `The developing discipline' contains nine papers, some old friends and some new to me. They are all strong and interesting pieces of work, but I found Helen Meekosha's the most exciting. Moving out from a particular example of the oppression of one disabled woman she develops a detailed and subtle analysis which exemplifies the way in which feminist theory is crucial to the fuller development of an adequate social model of disablement.
Part three `debates and dialogues' contains papers on multiple oppression and the disability movement, the position of people with learning difficulties, the contribution that post-structuralist analyses can make to disability studies and a paper enjoining the use of a materialist phenomenology to bring more 'experience' into the social...