Disability Studies
The Disability Studies ( mutatis mutandis studies or disability) is an interdisciplinary science that understands disability as a social, historical and cultural construction and is dedicated to the social and cultural scientific study of the phenomenon of disability. To establish the connection to the international discourse and let the distance to the traditional rehabilitation sciences already on a conceptual level significantly, the English name is also used in German-speaking countries.
- 4.1 Critique of rehabilitation
- 5.1 journals
- 8.1 International
- 8.2 German -speaking
Starting point
Basis of the interdisciplinary field of research is the assumption that disability can not be equated with medically diagnosable impairment, but primarily seen from socially constructed barriers. The people affected are prevented by these barriers from participating in social, cultural and economic life. Disabled people are then primarily members of an oppressed minority. Discrimination and ableism are the main problems associated with a disability. From the viewpoint of Disability Studies can be studied disability in the example of ( non-) how social categories emerge historically, such as knowledge stocks arrange themselves around them and demarcations along cultural reviews to the starting point of power relations which inform the daily life and the life chances of people.
History of Disability Studies
The Disability Studies (DS ) have received significant impetus from the policy analysis and findings of the international disability movement.
While disability movements are the goals of emancipation and social participation to find the world today, there is the Disability Studies as an academic discipline only in some countries.
Your starting point they took in the U.S. and in the UK, where they are taught at universities since the early 1980s. Today, there are at Anglo-American universities professors and courses and doctoral programs. In addition, Disability Studies are also taught in Canada, India, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Norway, France, Ireland, etc.. They have their own international infrastructure, which also includes professional associations and networks such as journals, mailing lists, and conference series. The Society of Disability Studies was established in 1982.
As the founder of the research field of disabled sociologist Irving Kenneth Zola ( USA) and the disabled social scientist Michael Oliver ( UK ) apply. Both developed about the same time the theory of the social model of disability, and continued this anti- individual model of disability and the rehabilitation paradigm. According to the social model of disability is primarily a socially constructed category, while it is especially to be avoided by a prophylaxis to be overcome through rehabilitation or insurmountable disorder on the individual model.
In German-speaking countries can be since the late 1970s, always find tests within the disability movement, to develop teaching and research activities that are aligned to a programmatic emancipatory. First there was appropriate courses at various community colleges; during the 1990s, then managed to conquer at colleges and universities rooms. However, one can speak of the German Disability Studies in the strict sense only from 2001. In this year was held in Dresden, organized by the German Hygiene Museum, Action Man and the Humboldt University of Berlin, as part of the exhibition of the same conference on " The perfect ( in ) man " instead, on the first representative / inside the North American Disability Studies with German scientists and scholars met. Under the title " Phantom Pain " came in 2002 in Berlin to a follow-up meeting. The Summer University " Disability Studies in Germany - think new disability ", which was carried out in Bremen in 2003, was an important starting signal. Since April 2002, there is also the nationwide working group " Disability Studies in Germany ". 2004, the International Research Centre Disability Studies ( IDIS ) was founded at the University of Cologne. 2005 was formed at the University of Hamburg, the Centre for Disability Studies ( Zedis ). Research and teaching in Disability Studies is now operated at various universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The first professorship for " Sociology and Politics of Rehabilitation, Disability Studies" in German-speaking countries was created in late 2008 at the Humanities Faculty of the University of Cologne and staffed by Anne Waldschmidt 2009. At the Chair disability is used as an analytical category to investigate the company, also social and disability policy issues are addressed under international comparative perspective, the focus is on the analysis of " dis / ability" of a rehabilitation critical and participation -oriented perspective.
Research fields
The Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field of research. They are dedicated to historical, economic, cultural, political, legal, psychological etc. issues. Historians within the Disability Studies examine, for example, the social position of disabled people in different historical periods; Legal scholars explore the legal construction of disability. In theoretical terms, the economy of critical social science has contributed to the creation of the Disability Studies, especially in Great Britain. Another source is the " cultural turn " to mention the establishment of cultural studies as a paradigm the various humanities and social sciences integrating concept. And last but not least play - especially in the U.S. discourse - inspired by French philosophy, poststructuralist difference and discourse approaches to the discovery of the body, subject and knowledge as a historical and culturally shaped phenomena play a role. The constructivist approach and the political roots connect the DS with the topic related gender studies and with the common in many English-speaking countries, critical race studies. How these different cross-section of disciplines, it is the Disability Studies not only about operating academic research and teaching. Even disabled people as members of a marginalized social group to be " visualized " by the research and be able to participate in the research. The issue of disability is to be got out of the impasse of the special sciences (special, remedial and special education or rehabilitation) and become the focus of general scientific discourse. Thus, the DS also devote the history and culture of the disability movement or individual historical figures such as Frida Kahlo and Theodore W. Roosevelt who were disabled. The development of our own ' disability culture' (movies, theater, poetry, dance, etc. ) is an integral part. In contrast to the traditional special sciences thus the focus of the DS is not on perceiving disability as a defect, but as a constituent factor of normality.
Disability History
The Disability History examines historical processes of perception and production of ' disability ' and ' normality '. The research approach is oriented constructivist and emancipatory; it offers space, both for scientific basic research, but also include special studies. Used approaches and methods of political history, social history and organization history, science and art history, cultural history and art history, etc. The basic perspective is based on social and cultural models of disability; rehabilitation approach is viewed critically. The first introduction to the German -speaking Disability History discusses conceptual foundations and methodological issues; Case studies dealing with science and subjective experiences, institutions and policies, body, art and culture.
Practice
Critique of rehabilitation
Theresia Degener called in January 2010, the previously dominant medical model of disability in rehabilitation must be replaced by a human rights model. This should be actively supported by a " change management " with incentives from the outside, and rehabilitation must be understood in the future as a diversity approach in which human diversity will taken up with individual approaches.