The extraordinary development of sport for people with dis/abilities. What does it all mean?

Abstract

Physical and sports practices represent a dimension of the social history of people with impairments that has become progressively visible, yet still little studied. Through the reading of socio-historical and sociological research on these practices, the author defends her contention that the development, recognition and social visibility of these individuals having been obtained by the sphere of “disability sport” are based on the convergence of two “tool boxes” for innovation: the organization of athlete classification and the “technologization” of the impaired body. Both of these innovatory mechanisms are controversial and subject to continuous experimentation in “sport for the disabled”. The social world of “disability sport” having been decoded, it comes across as a practical utopia, a heterotopia.