Disability And The Life Course

Disability and the Life Course, first published in 2001, explores the global experience of disability using a novel life course approach. The book explores how disabling societies impact on disabled people's life experiences, and highlights the ways in which disabled people have acted to take more control over their own lives. It provides a unique combination of analysis, policy issues and autobiography, offering the reader a rare opportunity to make links between the theoretical, the political and the personal in a single volume. The material is set in a truly international context, with contributions from thirteen different countries bringing together established and emerging writers, both disabled and non-disabled. The book bridges some important gaps in the existing disability literature by including issues relevant to disabled people of all ages and with different kinds of impairments and also by offering a unique analysis of the relationship between disability and generation in a changing world.

The SAGE Reference Series on Disability is a cross-disciplinary and issues-based series incorporating links from varied fields that make up Disability Studies. This volume tackles issues relating to disability through the life course.

Disability: a Life Course Approach provides students and teachers with easy access to many of the most important current disability issues and debates. It provides a clearly focused account, and bridges some important gaps in the existing disability literature by including issues relevant to disabled people of all ages. If offers a unique approach to understanding disabling societies in a systematic way, using a novel life course approach. This book examines how contemporary societies organise and control generational boundaries and progression through the life course for disabled people. There are specific chapters on birthrights and eugenics, childhood, youth transitions, interdependence and adulthood, old age and death and dying. The emphasis is on contemporary policy and politics (located within a broader sociological and cultural context) including the claims and struggles of the disabled people's movement. The discussion is framed within a social model approach and draws extensively on contemporary international debates about the citizenship and human rights of disabled people. The book functions both as a resource guide and as a tool for learning. The various chapters include reviews of existing literature and theoretical debates, alongside specific examples of disabling policies and practices in different countries. There are also case studies illustrating key issues, together with relevant discussion and teaching points, and suggestions for further research and reading. The book addresses an international readership and will be of particular interest to students and teachers of disability studies, sociology, human development, social policy; to professionals and students within rehabilitation and social work; and to disabled people and lay readers with an interest in contemporary disability issues and debates.

This is the first book to address the issue of ageing after a long life with disability. It breaks new ground through its particular life course perspective, examining what it means to age with a physical or mental disability and what the implications are of 'becoming old' for people who have had extensive disabilities for many years. These people may have had to leave the labour market early, and the book looks at available care resources, both formal and informal. Ageing with disability challenges set ideas about successful ageing, as well as some of those about disabilities. The life course approach that is used unfolds important insights about the impact of multiple disabilities over time and on the phases of life. The book highlights the meaning of care in unexplored contexts, such as where ageing parents are caregivers or regarding mutual care in disabled couples. These are areas of knowledge which have, to date, been totally neglected.

This is the first book to explore the interplay of disability, gender and violence over the life course from researcher, practitioner and survivor perspectives. It gives due weight to the accounts of disabled children and adults who have survived institutional or individual violence, evidencing barriers to recognition, disclosure and reporting. Written by disabled and non-disabled women from around the world, Disability, Gender and Violence over the Life Course addresses the dearth of voices and experiences of disabled women and girls in empirical research, policy and practice on issues of violence, victimisation, protection, support and prevention. Divided into three parts – Childhood, Adulthood and Older Life – this collection offers diverse perspectives on the intersectionality of disability, age, ethnicity, sexuality and violence that have hitherto been absent. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of multiple fields of practice and academic studies, including health and social care, nursing, social work, childhood studies, gender studies, disability studies, safeguarding and child protection, equality and human rights, sociology and criminology.

Establishing a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue, this text engages with the typically disparate fields of social gerontology and disability studies. It investigates the subjective experiences of two groups rarely considered together in research - people ageing with long-standing disability and people first experiencing disability with ageing. This book challenges assumptions about impairment in later life and the residual nature of the 'fourth age'. It proposes that the experience of 'disability' in older age reaches beyond the bodily context and can involve not only a challenge to a sense of value and meaning in life, but also ongoing efforts in response.

Featuring a framework rarely applied in the field of disability studies, this book explores not only a range of disabilities and impairments but also a diverse array of life course experiences, deepening knowledge across both fields for the widest possible impact.

Rosalyn Darling offers a sweeping examination of disability identity, tracing its history and parsing the shifting forces that have shaped individual and societal understandings of ability and impairment across time.Darling focuses on the relationship between societal views and the self-conceptions of people with mental and physical impairments. She also illuminates the impact of the disability rights movement, life-course dynamics, and race and gender in creating a diversity of disability identities. Her seminal work reveals the remarkable resilience of individuals in the face of profound social and material barriers, at the same time that it enhances our understanding of the construction and experience of ¿difference¿ in our changing society.