Ordering Disability. How Can Modernity Theory Inform Disability History?

Abstract

What are the advantages and disadvantages of applying modernity theory to ‘disability history’? Giving voice to people with disabilities, disability history aims to show how disability is a part of broader, complex power relations in society. The article discusses several possible approaches. The framework of modernity and eugenics developed by Zygmunt Bauman is shown to be too one-sided for disability history. Ulrich Beck’s modernity theory proves to be more useful. Actor Network Theory (ANT), and in particular the theory developed by Annemarie Mol, offers the most sophisticated approach to disability history. ANT enables disability historians not only to give voice to people with disabilities, but also to approach disability as existing in multiple ways. This allows scholars to take into account seriously criticism of the influential, so-called ‘social model’ of disability.