Book Review: Disability Studies Today

Abstract

DISABILITY STUDIES TODAY Colin Barnes, Mike Oliver and Len Barton (eds) Cambridge: Polity, 2002, 272 pp., $27.95 (paperback). Disability Studies Today emphasizes the continuing development of intellectual endeavour relating to people with impairments in the United Kingdom and in North America. The social materialist perspective grew out of the experiences and theorizing of academic activists in the 1990s. The social view foregrounds the socially disabling capacity of environments for people living with impairments and challenges the medical sociological and predominantly 'outsider' perspectives on disability of the 1980s. This eclectic disability studies collection has a broad range of theoretical orientations and key reference points. Authors write to the following orienting perspectives: sociological, feminist post-structuralist, sociology of the body and (emerging) sociology of impairment, activist, new social movements and identity theory, social historical, social policy and social inclusion, politics and policy, globalization theory and human rights, with one paper on the exigencies of emancipatory research and disability. The collection is primarily British but there are two American authors and one Canadian. No Australian author is included. One Australian legal judgment represents the only significant Australian note. Disability and work is a major theme visited by a number of authors, and usually with some degree of pessimism. However, there is no consensus about the future of work in society generally, or for the future of those with impairments in the labour force, nor is there clear direction for social and employment policy. Fewer authors argue for social inclusion for people with disabilities on other bases, for example by appeals to human rights or by arguing for minimum-income-based inclusion, rather than attachment to the labour market. It is noted though that opening up the labour force must continue to be a priority, even if differing foundations for inclusion are argued. In this book there is minimal gendered analysis of work, disability and labour market participation. Given the persistence and significance of gendered occupational segmentation of labour markets generally in OECD countries this seems to be a notable omission. Research by feminists about labour market issues generally opened spaces for debate about women's disadvantages, and people with disabilities may gain similar leverage through detailed analysis of labour market rigidities and exclusions. There are no papers in Disability Studies Today theorizing 'active' labour market programmes and the 'governing' by the 'professions' that implement such programmes (rehabilitation counsellors, social workers and other human service workers). …