New Narratives of Disability Constructions, Clashes, and Controversies

Public understandings of disability tend to follow a medical storyline in which disability is a personal tragedy to be treated through professional intervention - a frame that disempowers and fails to resonate with many disabled people. Scholars in disability studies and the social sciences have proposed an alternative that portrays social structures, forces, and attitudes as the problems to be resolved - a frame that, while empowering, may neglect, or even repress, some kinds of personal disability stories.  

This volume seeks to answer the call for richer, more diverse understandings of disability. We explore how narrative inquiry can broaden perspectives on disability to include pain, suffering, chronic illness, and episodic disability, as well as the perspectives of family members and caregivers, while also serving as a platform for dismantling prejudice and discrimination in order to promote positive social change.

Donileen R. Loseke, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida, USA; Past President of both the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and the Society for the Study of Social Problems; and received the Mead, Cooley and Mentor Awards from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.