Sociological Perspectives on Disability

Abstract

This chapter outlines the roots of disability scholarship in sociology and how the sociology of disability subfield positions disability as an axis of inequality. The first part of the chapter argues that sociology is uniquely positioned to understand how disability as a social category is made through institutional structures, larger patterns of exclusion and inclusion, and emphasis on power and inequality. Yet it is often excluded in measurements and analyses in the discipline. The chapter then turns to the origins of disability scholarship in sociology, its influence on the interdisciplinary field of disability studies, and the emergent subfield of sociology of disability within the discipline. The remaining parts of the chapter survey how disability has been studied across subfields such as sociology of health and illness, sociology of body/embodiment, and feminist sociological scholarship. In discussing disability across these subfields, divergences between mainstream sociology and the sociology of disability are highlighted in an effort to map their departures and pinpoint why disability as a category or axis of inequality is persistently underresearched in sociology. The chapter concludes with thoughts about where new scholarship on disability might be going in sociology.