Disability

Disability is a form of difference that is created when the social participation of someone with an impairment is ‘dis-abled’ by normative expectations and material conditions. This entry reviews some of the key contributions anthropologists have made to studying disability as a socially constructed category. Disability is at once central and marginal to the anthropological canon. Grounded in fine-grained, long-term ethnographic fieldwork, anthropological studies of disability have drawn attention to the relational nature of disability as a category that is variable despite its quality as a universal human experience. This entry starts by explaining the difference between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ before reviewing the trajectory of anthropological studies of disability – in mostly western industrialized contexts – from a ‘medical’ to a ‘social’ framework of understanding. It then turns to consider some of the theoretical orientations this has produced and examines a more recent shift to studying the lived experience of disability beyond the Euro-American west. It concludes by reviewing some of the developments in studying disability in recent years, in which scholars focus on social organization, technology, and personal, embodied experiences.