This is an extremely important book containing a wealth of ideas and insights and raising important questions for discussion and further exploration. In a lucid and cogently argued analysis, the author both challenges dominant ideas and interp- tations and provides some alternative innovatory perspectives. These include, the making and meaning of policy; the varied and complex ways in which inclusion and exclusion can be understood; the nature and function of categorisation, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures and the position and relationship between...

This is an extremely important book containing a wealth of ideas and insights and raising important questions for discussion and further exploration. In a lucid and cogently argued analysis, the author both challenges dominant ideas and interp- tations and provides some alternative innovatory perspectives. These include, the making and meaning of policy; the varied and complex ways in which inclusion and exclusion can be understood; the nature and function of categorisation, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures and the position and relationship between...

One of the qualities of this book is the authors engagement with personal experience. This is part of the contextualising of issues within particular cultural, historical and social contexts. I shall begin the Foreword in the same spirit by recounting an experience that is still a foundation for analysing and developing my own understanding. This h- pened some twenty-five years ago. I was going with Vic Finkelstein, a disabled a- demic and activist, to a seminar, on a hot summer s day, making our way across the Open University campus in Milton Keynes. The seminar was entitled The Problems of...