Basic Concepts
This is the subfield of sociology that examines the social experiences, processes, and outcomes related to disability, similar to the Sociology of Gender or the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
What is the Sociology of Disability?
This is the model that regards disability as an individual deficit or limitation rooted in individual biology.
What is the medical model?
This sociologist's theory includes the concepts of "field," "capital," and "habitus" to explain how social spaces produce and reproduce inequality, including in the context of disability.
Who is Pierre Bourdieu?
This is the term Karl Marx used to describe the class that owns and controls the means of production.
What is the capitalist class or bourgeoisie?
This theory argues views the world from the standpoint of people with disabilities and pursues a world in which people with disabilities are empowered and valued.
crip theory
This is the concept that refers to the ways in which the meaning of disability varies across different times and places.
What is the social construction of disability?
This is the primary difference between the medical model and the social model of disability.
What is the understanding of where disability lies—in the person (medical model) or in the environment (social model)?
This German term introduced by Max Weber means "understanding" and is crucial for sociologists studying disability from the perspective of those experiencing it.
What is verstehen?
This term describes the working class, which, according to Marx, must sell their labor power to survive under capitalism.
What is the proletariat?
A concept that identifies how multiple systems of oppression intersect, often in complex ways
intersectionality
This is the term used to describe the overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage, which sociologists examine in relation to disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, and other bases of inequality.
What is intersectionality?
These are the key barriers faced by people with disabilitiesis according to the social model.
What are low expectations, discrimination, and inaccessibility?
This sociologist's work includes examining how macro cultural discourses shape disability and reinforce power dynamics.
Who is Michel Foucault?
This set of theories argues that disability is created through and affected by unequal access to resources.
materialist theories
Which theory focuses on how people create and define disability through their interactions and cultural meanings?
What is symbolic interactionism?
This is the organization that defines disability as "the inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment(s)."
What is the Social Security Administration?
This model believes that disability is conferred purposefully from god(s/esses) as a punishment, a moral challenge, or a gift.
What is the moral/religious model?
This is the dominant discourse of disability in modern America.
Medical model
This sociologist proposed that the means of production create social relationships characterized by who owns and controls them and who does not.
Who is Karl Marx?
According to this set of theories, each society is composed of groups with differential access (to resources. Disability, often in combination with other axes of inequality, shapes relationships and access to resources.
Stratification, Intersectionality, and Relationality
This is the centerpiece of American legislation that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, defining disability to include physical or mental impairments that substantially limit major life activities.
What is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990?
This model views people with disabilities primarily as dependent, helpless, and in need of financial and moral rescue from “good” people.
What is the charity model?
This set of theories argues that disability is created through social interaction.
Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Theories
This set of theories argues that the state creates disability as an administrative category. More broadly, those who exercise authority in a variety of settings define and enforce disability.
political and state-centered theories
This theory argues that one’s body shapes one’s experiences of the world and mediates one’s disability experience.
embodiment