Disability

Abstract

Geography has a long‐standing engagement with disability studies. Three approaches have been adopted, reflecting broader social science and, to an extent, popular constructions of disability: a medical model, involving studies of the spatial distribution of medically‐defined conditions, such as multiple sclerosis; a social model, focused on the identification of physical, institutional, and attitudinal barriers to society; and an embodied model, attentive to the corporeal and emotional geographies of disabled people. An emerging contextual model places material embodied experiences of impaired bodies within the landscape of social, cultural, and political constructions of disability. Geography has made a significant contribution to the theoretical and methodological development of the study of disability, including the importance of social context and social relations to the construction and experience of disability, the broadening of the disability concept to include other “non‐normal” bodies, and the application of participatory methodologies to work with disabled people to convey their experiences and to devise empowering responses.