Cultural Locations of Disability

Synopsis

In Cultural Locations of Disability, Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell trace how disabled people came to be viewed as biologically deviant. The eugenics era pioneered techniques that managed "defectives" through the application of therapies, invasive case histories, and acute surveillance techniques, turning disabled persons into subjects for a readily available research pool. In its pursuit of normalization, eugenics implemented disability regulations that included charity systems, marriage laws, sterilization, institutionalization, and even extermination. Enacted in enclosed disability locations, these practices ultimately resulted in expectations of segregation from the mainstream, leaving today's disability politics to focus on reintegration, visibility, inclusion, and the right of meaningful public participation. Snyder and Mitchell reveal cracks in the social production of human variation as aberrancy. From our modern obsessions with tidiness and cleanliness to our desire to attain perfect bodies, notions of disabilities as examples of human insufficiency proliferate. These disability practices infuse more general modes of social obedience at work today. Consequently, this important study explains how disabled people are instrumental to charting the passage from a disciplinary society to one based upon regulation of the self.

Copyright:

2006

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

224 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780226767307

Related ISBNs:

9780226767321, 9780226767314

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press

Date of Addition:

08/05/22

Copyrighted By:

The University of Chicago

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Disability-Related, Health, Mind and Body, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.