The Difference that Disability MakesTemple University Press, 2002 - 194 pages Rod Michalko launches into this book asking why disabled people are still feared, still regarded as useless or unfit to live, not yet welcome in society? Michalko challenges us to come to grips with the social meanings attached to disability and the body that is not "normal." Michalko's analysis draws from his own understanding of blindness and narratives by other disabled people. Connecting lived experience with social theory, he shows the consistent exclusion of disabled people from the common understandings of humanity and what constitutes the good life. He offers new insight into what suffering a disability means to individuals as well as to the polity as a whole. He shows how disability can teach society about itself, about its determination of what is normal and who belongs. Guiding us to a new understanding of how disability, difference, and suffering are related, this book enables us to choose disability as a social identity and a collective political issue. The difference that disability makes can be valuable and worthwhile, but only if we choose to make it so. Author note: Rod Michalko is Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Francis Xavier University. He is the author of The Mystery of the Eye and the Shadow of Blindness (1998) and The Two- in-One: Walking with Smokie, Walking with Blindness (Temple, 1999). |
Contents
Home Is Where the Heart Is | 17 |
The Social Location of Suffering | 41 |
Coming FacetoFace with Suffering | 73 |
The Birth of Disability | 113 |
Image and Imitation | 143 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abberley ability able-bodiedness abled abnormal adapt adjust adolescence adulthood biological biomedical model blind person blindisms body as natural cial collective conceived conception of disability construction contemporary society culture despite difference disability and nondisability Disability Studies disabled person disturbing environment exclusion experience eye condition eyesight fact fully sighted genetic ophthalmologist guide dog homeland human ical ideology image of disability imagine imitate individual interaction interpretation intuitive knowledge Irving Zola knew lack Laura Latimer legally blind Levinas live look mainstream Michalko mimesis misfortune model of disability move multiple sclerosis natural body ness normalcy ordinary paralysis participate personhood political problem of inability question rehabilitation Robert Latimer Robillard says sense sighted world sightedness Smokie social model someone speak stairs Stiker suffering suggests Tanya things Thomson tion Titchkosky Tom Shakespeare Toronto Tracy Tracy Latimer Tracy's understanding useless-difference visually impaired walk wheelchair