Disability rites: Constructing American disability culture.
Item
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Title
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Disability rites: Constructing American disability culture.
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Identifier
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AAI3008867
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identifier
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3008867
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Creator
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Rosa, Christopher J.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Barbara Katz-Rothman
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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This analysis explores aspects of the content and structure of American disability culture. Social theorists writing in the functionalist, conflict, and interpretive traditions have concluded that a distinctive shared meaning system among Americans with disabilities does not exist. My study argues that these theorists have failed to analyze the American disability experience at behavioral levels amenable to the recognition and study of culture. This analysis studies the experiences of Americans with disabilities as knowledgeable social actors, belonging to a "community of memory", who actively create and repair shared meaning and order in different social contexts. Thirty Americans, from socially and culturally diverse, cross-disability backgrounds, are interviewed and their accounts analyzed to explore the content of American disability culture and the structures through which this shared meaning system is produced. Four scripts for understanding disability---the medical, rational choice, moral, and community models---emerge as primary explanatory strands of American disability culture. Similarly, structures that enable disability culture construction are laid bare through the analysis of people with disabilities' "linguistic bodies", their joking relations, and their negotiation of situations requiring the help of others. Disability culture production poses significant costs to Americans---with disabilities, including "role strain", compromised integrity of a purely private persona, and an inability to take inspiration from their heroes. However, this culture production offers substantial benefits to Americans with disabilities including the opportunity to construct empowered identities and distinctive ideologies that enable the American disability community to advance its social agenda.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
