Handicap visible  : de la reconnaissance du stigmate et du déni de déviance à la revendication de droits

This article brings new insight into the relationship between disability studies and the sociology of handicap as “deviance” and “stigma”. Disability studies grew up in a tight connection with the disability rights movement, but one of their roots was the new way of conceiving delinquency, addiction, madness, homosexuality, and handicap, which emerged in the 1960s. Eliot Freidson (1966) shifted the attention from the “disabled”, treated as patients to rehabilitate, to “handicap makers”. The relevant question was then: which are the professional jurisdictions of specialists appointed to “cure” disabled people? In which organizational arenas is disability institutionalized as a problem to be solved? Fred Davis (1961), for his part, explored another dimension, closer to Erving Goffman (1963): how are stigma co-produced, reified, or denied in encounter situations between people with and without disabilities? More specifically, how is the “visible handicap” handled in such face-to-face interactions? A third way has been worked by John Kitsuse in 1980 with his concept of “tertiary deviance.” In line with the 1960s sociology of deviance as “secondary deviation”, this concept of “tertiary deviance” recognizes the ability of persons with disabilities to act, to claim rights, to invent collective identities, and to experience and create new life ecologies.
Source: ALTER - European Journal of Disability Research - Category: Disability Source Type: research