Disability Studies - Criticism

Criticism

Disability studies is not without its critics. It has been suggested that the dominant social model it uses, which developed in the 1970s and served its purpose well through that era, has now been outgrown, and needs major developments. One major area of contention is the frequent exclusion of the personal experience of impairment, cognitive disability, and illness, which is often left out of most discussion in these circles in the name of "focused" academic discourse. Another concern is the ever-present possibility of a drift towards identity politics in the discipline and also within the disability rights movement as a whole. The social model of disability separates physical impairment from social disability, and in its most rigid form does not accept that impairment can cause disability at all. Scholars are increasingly recognizing that the effects of impairment form a central part of many disabled people's experience, and that these effects must be included for the social model to still be a valid reflection of that experience. Slogan "the personal is political" has been particularly influential in these developments.

Disability studies has also been criticised for its failure to engage with other forms of sociopolitical oppression, such as racism, sexism or homophobia, both as they may apply to disabled people in these oppressed groups, and also in disability studies' ability (or lack thereof) to "unite" with these other movements in common struggle. As a relatively new discipline, critics allege disability studies seems to have made very little progress in this area, in spite of new published writings which deal with these very topics.. In 2009 Fiona Kumari Campbell published "Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness", signalling a new direction of research - studies in ableism, moving beyond preoccupations with disability to explore the maintenance of abledness in sexed, raced and modified bodies.