What are disability studies?

Bearing in mind that my research work originates from disability studies as a relatively young scientific and research discipline and that I write texts on this blog with the purpose to bring closer the disability studies concepts to a wider audience and disabled people, in particular, it seems prudential to start with an explanation of what disability studies are.

Considering that this scientific discipline which emerged in the 1980s in the UK is not systematically studied in Serbia, nor there is a study program at some of the universities, I faced the dilemma of how to translate ‘disability studies’ from English to the Serbian language. Even though a handful of mentions of this discipline in our language predominantly use ‘studies of invalidity’ (if literally translated from Serbian to English) I consider such translation inadequate to convey the substance. I wrote about terminology and my reasons for choosing ‘studije onemogućenosti’ as a translation elsewhere so I won’t go here into a deeper analysis of the terms and will only emphasize that the issue of translating the concepts which are imported from other languages warrants broader debates and deliberation in society. Therefore, I invite all readers of these lines to share their views on the adequacy of this translation and/or to suggest alternatives.

In order to understand properly what disability studies are, it might be beneficial to clarify what they’re not. Although disabled people are in the focus of disability studies, the research subject of this discipline is not disability understood in terms of the biological characteristics of human organisms or differences in functionalities of individuals’ bodies and minds. Unlike the older scientific disciplines such as medicine, defectology, developmental psychology, rehabilitation or special education studies which locate the problem in individuals and their impairments, disability studies locate the problem squarely in society looking at the structural causes of marginalization of disabled people and their exclusion from equal participation in society. Furthermore, unlike the abovementioned disciplines, the research is not performed on disabled people as objects but with disabled people focusing on our life experiences and testimonies of societal barriers creating the opportunities to have our voices heard.

That being said, disability studies are a broad interdisciplinary field of theory, research and practice, diametrically opposed to a personal tragedy view of disability or disability as a deficit which falls upon random unfortunate individuals. On the contrary, disability studies view disability as a social, cultural and political phenomenon and disabled people as oppressed members of society whose needs are ignored or neglected due to the way how society is organised.

Disability studies encompass an array of disciplines such as sociology, social policy, law, philosophy but also linguistics, arts and culture studies, critical psychology and other humanities which use their research methods towards shared objectives. Those objectives are changing the status quo to improve the position of disabled people by revealing the forms of disablement and marginalization and searching for the answers to the question of how to end such marginalization. Hence, disability studies are an important source of evidence and data that should point out a desirable direction for societal reforms. That makes them exceptionally relevant beyond academic circles, particularly for us disabled people and our organizations, families, decision-makers and all those who shape our lived realities.