From “Survival of the Fittest” to “Fitness for All” to “Who defines fitness anyway?”: 100 years of (US) sociological theory on disability

Abstract

A forward thrust drives the theoretical narrative of disability-in-society, as told by scholars of recent decades. Consider these titles (with emphases added): From Stigma to Identity Politics: Political Activism among the Physically Disabled and Former Mental Patients by Anspach (1979); From Good Will to Civil Rights by Scotch (1984); Moving Disability Beyond Stigma a collection edited by Asch and Fine (1988); The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation by Fleischer and Zames (2001). Each title is like a revved-up engine. Together, they convey a message of forward movement in the status of people with disabilities. The road they all travel starts from a negative starting point and ends at a clear and a more desirable, if not yet perfect, destination. The starting point is the subordinated and powerless status of persons with disabilities – a status based on stigma wrapped in pity. The destination: empowerment. These analyses focus on the United States; their authors, while not all sociologists, are close enough for our purpose. The road they all cover starts (chronologically speaking) around the 1940s, and extends – in the case of the earliest – up to the late 1970s; two others cover up to the mid- and late 1980s; and the last one, to the current century.

Citation

Kirchner, C. (2010), "From “Survival of the Fittest” to “Fitness for All” to “Who defines fitness anyway?”: 100 years of (US) sociological theory on disability", Barnartt, S.N. (Ed.) Disability as a Fluid State (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 131-157. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3547(2010)0000005008