Abstract
Scholarship in disability studies has become increasingly popular in the last two decades. Much of this scholarship has tended toward the humanities and literary critique, but there are some sociologists who have taken an interest in the subject, particularly in the United Kingdom. Although sociology has not been at the center of the scholarship on disability, an increasing number of sociologists are engaging with the topic, especially within studies of health/illness experience. Others have situated their analysis in medical sociology, sociology of knowledge, and sociology of the body/feminist theory. Perhaps most importantly, all of the scholarship in disability studies posits that disability is a social category as worthy of sociological analysis as race, class and gender.
This position of disability as a social category is at the center of Rosalyn Darling’s Disability and Identity. This book contributes to the literature on disability in sociology by framing disability through the lens of Goffman’s classic work on stigma and outlining the evolution of sociological conceptualizations of disability over the last fifty years. The scope of the book is clear: Darling examines disability through a symbolic interactionist perspective and continually comes back to the idea that the meaning of disability is constructed through social interaction. This has an impact on the self-concept of people with disabilities.
The book starts out with an analysis of how conceptualizations of and research on disability have changed over time. The author outlines results of the disability-rights movement that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century: that the association of stigma with disability has lessened from non-disabled people’s perspective, that society is organized differently (particularly because of deinstitutionalization and people with disabilities living in their communities), and that there is now a push in disability-studies literature and in the movement for shifting the discussion from stigma to a minority group framework. She then looks at variations in self-concepts within the disability community but does not provide an in-depth discussion of intersectionality (although this is revisited in Chapter Four), and there are missed opportunities to explore the link between access and socioeconomic status, as well as to introduce the effects that technological changes have had on the experience of disability. She ends this chapter with a look at changing media representations of disability but concludes that stigma persists.
The following two chapters explore the tension between societal views on disability and the identities that people with disabilities have. In Chapter Three, Darling places this squarely in symbolic interactionist theory, with the thesis that if society’s views of disability change, so too do the identities of people with disabilities themselves. In this chapter, she provides an in-depth literature review of empirical studies of disability and self-esteem in sociology. This includes studies from the 1950s up until the present. Chapter Four turns to the intersecting identities of being a woman and disabled and/or African American and disabled. Darling gives an overview of the conflicts in social roles that disabled women experience—meeting the expectations of what it means to be a woman in society and having a disability and experiencing stigma. The author also views how racism and poverty can over-define the African American disability experience and get in the way of cultivating disability pride, which is a central aspect of disability identity post-disability rights movement.
The next four chapters give an overview of the disability-rights movement, the emergence of identity politics in the field of disability studies, and attempts to measure individuals’ identity and orientation toward disability. In Chapter Five, Darling provides a history of the disability rights movement and how its ideology spurred greater identification with disability pride. She then links this back to stigma, its management, and identity transformation. Some of the references in this section are rather outdated, but perhaps this was done to give a historical sense of the field. In Chapter Six, the author presents her typology of disability identities and how they change over time and across different social contexts. Chapter Seven presents an extremely detailed study she conducted using the typology of disability identities previously introduced in Chapter Six. Her methodology in this chapter is extremely detailed and clearly delineated. One of the most interesting results in her study is the difference between those who are born with a disability and those who acquire one later in life. This is an apt way to end this chapter, as she turns to the role of disability over the life course in Chapter Eight. Here, she also presents tables of quantitative study results in measuring disability identity, especially in older adults. In all of this, Darling continually returns to the main theme of the book: the relationship between societal views on disability, how people with disabilities feel about themselves, and what identity they have. While this is very clear and the scope of the book is tight, there could be more discussion of collectivity, the contours of the disability community at large, and larger social processes of capitalism, racism, and ableism working against its interests.
Throughout the book, Darling provides an in-depth literature review showing how early research was based on the assumption that people with disabilities had a negative self-concept. Her use of the phrase “recent research” would be followed by a study from the 1990s or earlier—her use of the term “recent” was rather relative. The book would have benefited from a look at the role of identity in disability studies, especially with the growing popularity of more radical movements within the field that are focused on crip theory, and from drawing on intersections with feminist and queer theory. She acknowledges that the disability-studies field is more interested in a minority-group approach, but maintains her focus on disability identity and self-concept nevertheless. The central theme of this book is identity and it is continually reiterated, clearly argued, and accessibly written. Darling does not do more than she says she will do. The scope of the book is people-with-disabilities’ self-concept and identity, no more, no less. At the beginning and the end of every chapter, she relocates the reader back to this central line of thinking that frames the book, summarizes what she has just outlined, and then prepares the reader for what is to come. This, coupled with her demonstrative writing style, makes this book particularly well suited for undergraduates in sociology, disability studies, and, especially, social psychology.