This path-breaking book analyses the experiences of young sporting women with physical impairments. Taking phenomenology as a point of departure, Elisabet Apelmo explores how the young women handle living with a body which, on the one hand, is viewed as deviant the disabled body and on the other hand is viewed as accomplished the sporting body. A polarization is apparent between the weak, which is manifested through the expression of belonging as "we," and the strong individual. The subject position as strong, positive and capable as a reaction towards the weak, the negative is one of the...

This is the first book of its kind to feature interdisciplinary art history and disability studies scholarship. Art historians have traditionally written about images of figures with impairments and artworks by disabled artists, without integrating disability studies scholarship, while many disability studies scholars discuss works of art, but do not necessarily incorporate art historical research and methodology. The chapters in this volume emphasize a shift away from the medical model of disability that is often scrutinized in art history by considering the social model and...

This is the first book to explore how far disability, as a social identity, challenges dominant understandings of rurality, identity and belonging. Exploring particularly the ways in which bodies are given meaning and value in relation to core ethical rural considerations associated with physical strength, productivity, and social reciprocity. Using lived experience of people with disabilities through the use of life history methodologies, it goes beyond conventional notions of rurality through grounding its analysis in a range of disability spaces and places and including the work of...

This book is a case study which narrates the history of the National Organization of the Spanish Blind (ONCE), established in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to other affluent countries where most blind people live on welfare benefits, the Spanish blind enjoy full employment. Furthermore, the average income of the Spanish blind is higher than that of the sighted. Why is this so? Why the blind, and not the deaf mute, or any other group of disabled people? This book shows that ONCE answers these questions.

The book explains ONCE'S origins, the shifting strategies that the...

In the twenty-first century there is increasing global recognition of pain relief as a basic human right. However, as Susan Honeyman argues in this new take on child pain and invisible disability, such a belief has historically been driven by adult, ideological needs, whereas the needs of children in pain have traditionally been marginalised or overlooked in comparison.

Examining migraines in children and the socially disabling effects that chronic pain can have, this book uses medical, political and cultural discourse to convey a sense of invisible disability in children with...

The provision of assistive technology is an important individual and collective service of the welfare state. The state plays a significant role towards linking users and products and the matching of devices and users is both a science and an art. However, many people feel it is stigmatising to use individually designed assistive technologies as they often, in a subtle way, convey discriminating barriers in society. A major challenge of assistive technology is thus to reduce social exclusion, marginalization and importantly, to reduce individual risks and societal costs related to non-use,...