The Sociological Imaginary and Disability Enquiry in Late Modernity

Introduction

The sociological imagination as conceived by C Wright Mills (1959) is a powerful idea that has captured many generations of sociologists and scholars and researchers in other human sciences who are interested in the problematic social issues that people grapple with in their lives. Mills argued that those sociologists who are imaginatively aware ask three questions of their work. Firstly, what is the structure of society and what are its essential components? Secondly, where does society stand in human history? And thirdly, what varieties of men and women exist in this society? Mills especially saw the sociological imagination in terms of making connections between ‘personal troubles’ and ‘public issues’, which feminism took one step further in arguing that the personal is the political, and over time this argument has become commonplace in sociology.

At the turn of the millennium, Colin Barnes, Geof Mercer and Tom Shakespeare called for a new sociology of disability that took into account the complexity of disabled people’s lives and the moral dilemmas of the disablement process. They argued that differentiation and the blurring of social divisions in the 21st century made such a task formidable but imperative (1999: 226). While the personal troubles of disabled people are evident in the many biographies and research accounts of their lives and struggles, sociology has traditionally had a poor record of linking them effectively to public issues. This article investigates the historical marginalization of the concept of disability within sociology. We argue that despite attempts within medical sociology, the sociology of health and illness, and the sociology of the body to make the concept relevant to the larger discipline, disability remains marginal to the sociological imaginary and thus its agenda. One of the key questions we ask is why is this so?

Many disability studies scholars have a sociological background or employ sociological ideas in their work. However, within sociology generally, disability has been marginalized, if not excluded, and scholars still struggle for recognition in the discipline. While Mills’s notion has inspired many sociologists, it is sobering to realize in retrospect that the sociological imaginary has often reflected biases within western society generally and none more so than the public exclusion of disabled people. Yet, we must also acknowledge that disability studies has for the most part failed to effectively engage sociology in dialogue about what it can bring to sociological understanding. There are, however, a range of binaries that create conceptual dilemmas in sociology, such as normality/abnormality, sameness/difference, public/private, recognition/redistribution, agency/structure and individualism/collectivism, that can be better illuminated by focusing on disability. Critical disability studies (CDS), with its reimagining of disability within the dynamic changes societies are currently undergoing – most notably the differentiation and blurring of social divisions Barnes et al. referred to – may be in a better position to more effectively make the case for disability’s significance to the sociological imaginary. But facilitating dialogue on the concept of disability between CDS and sociology may require attention to developing explicit strategies of engagement.

The Marginalization of Disability within the Sociological Imaginary

Despite sociological concepts, theories and methods being employed in disability studies, there is still little acknowledgment in sociology of scholarly work on disability that engages fundamental issues and processes of social categorization, embodiment, identification and exclusion. We searched 22 mainstream sociology journals by keyword and title for articles on disability since 2000. Of these, 13 did not contain any articles. The Canadian Journal of Sociology and the Canadian Review of Sociology had four and three respectively, of which four were by the same author, Tanya Titchkosky, a well known Canadian disability studies scholar. Sociology had published seven articles and, not surprisingly, these were by well known disability scholars, while the International Journal of Sociology had six articles, with five published in 2011. New Zealand Sociology had published two articles and Journal of Sociology (Australia) had one. Reporting these numbers starkly reveals the marginalization of the topic in the larger discipline. As we will argue, sociology has not significantly challenged and, in fact, has tended to tacitly accept the dominant hegemony that views disability in medical terms (Oliver, 1996; Thomas, 2007). Three subgroups within sociology – the sociology of health and illness, medical sociology and the sociology of the body – have attempted to incorporate disability into their agendas but with limited success. These subgroups or branches of sociology will be examined later.

In one sense, investigating disability’s marginalized status in sociology is somewhat misleading in that there are many sociologists who study disability. Yet, for the majority of sociologists, disability tends to be viewed as a determined empirical fact, while what we are referring to is a shifting and dynamic concept of disability. This is not to deny that there is some connection between these two ways of perceiving disability, but our thesis is that sociology has for the most part neglected the theorization of disability. New forms of critical thinking about disability are emerging primarily from the humanities but there is also some work with a sociological edge. The former is particularly true in the USA where ‘(t)he strong US tradition in the humanities, literary studies, history, philosophy and the emerging cultural studies has greatly influenced the development of disability studies’ (Meekosha, 2004: 726–727).

It is important, however, to recognize that disability studies has roots in both the sociological perspective of social interactionism in the USA (e.g. Goffman, 1963; Gussow and Tracy, 1968) and Marxist, critical sociology in the UK (Barnes, 1990; Oliver, 1983, 1986). Both approaches were crucial in framing disability studies in sociological terms and continuities with these perspectives can be seen in many current concepts. The former approach, for example, led to the introduction of the concept of handicapism ‘that allows us to study our own prejudices and to understand the social experiences of those who are known as developmentally disabled, mentally retarded, deformed, deviant, abnormal and handicapped’ (Bogdan et al., 1981: 238), which can be viewed as a forerunner to the variously used contemporary concepts of ableism (Campbell, 2009) and disablism (Miller et al., 2004).

What is it about the sociological imaginary that has made sociologists reticent to engage in critically conceptualizing disability? In order to approach this question, we need to clarify our terms of reference. Mills’s notion of the sociological imagination represents his understanding of what the ideal process and product of sociology should be; as such, his work has served as a beacon for critically and politically engaged sociologists. Indeed, the text from which the concept stems is uniformly taught in undergraduate sociology classes (Agger, 1998). Having undergraduates read Mills’s book, however, appears to simply function as an obligatory nod to the critical and creative possibility of sociology – a possibility that is nevertheless quickly obscured for many students by mainstream sociology’s other more emphatic and scientistic concerns: government agendas, funding priorities and narrowly construed ‘evidence based’ research.

The sociological imagination, as Mills conceived it, thus constitutes only one aspect of and orientation within the larger ‘sociological imaginary’ – that is, the entire complex of sociological interests, values and meanings. Our critique is directed primarily at the ‘sociological imaginary’ in this larger sense. ¹ Yet, while sometimes employing Mills’s work to aid in our critique of the sociological imaginary, we nevertheless also acknowledge the gaps that underlie his historically situated notion of the sociological imagination; and these gaps sometimes converge with limitations within the discipline as a whole.

It is important to raise the issue of the neglect of critical thinking within sociology generally. This neglect has influenced the marginalization of a host of identity categories, such as women, race and sexuality, as well as disability. Mills had already in the late 1950s critiqued the sociological trend of ‘aimless empiricism driven by a methodological agenda’ (Agger, 1998: 23), which he saw as overtaking a more critical sociology focused on investigating social problems. Agger maintains that this trend led to the ascendancy of ‘hypersociology’, which obsessively fixates on methodology, science-like legitimacy and the obtaining of grants. This approach meshes well with the current neoliberal, evidence based funding climate (Frohmader and Meekosha, forthcoming). Governments particularly favor this sort of research. One can see how socially marginalized populations such as disabled people became favorite objects of analysis within this kind of sociology and associated research in social policy, demography and social welfare. Findings from this kind of research are often related to evidence based practice and policy formulations and are often part of a compliant research agenda being pursued by academics anxious to bring corporate dollars home to public, underfunded universities (Kenway and Fahey, 2009).

A critique of the assumptions underlying the empirical ‘fact of disability’ has been slow to develop in sociology, unlike in early disability studies where the ‘fact’ of disability was seen as a social and political construction – hence the spawning of various sociopolitical models (e.g. the social model, the minority group model and the independent living model). It is true that the sociological subspecialties of medical sociology and the sociology of health and illness developed an interest in disability, albeit within an overarching paradigm of health. In the sociology of health and illness, the focus has often been on individual illness narratives that usually neglect political perspectives (Barnes and Mercer, 2003; Thomas, 2007). Within medical sociology the interest has not so much been in investigating ‘the meaning of the concept of “disability” per se, but in exploring the social dimensions and consequences of disability and its causes – at societal and individual levels’ (Thomas, 2007: 12). While exceptions to this state of affairs do exist, in the work of such scholars as Mike Bury (1996), Gareth Williams (1998) and Simon Williams (1999) who have all engaged in debates within disability studies at one time or another, interrogating the conceptual meaning of disability attracts minimal attention in medical sociology and the sociology of health and illness.

In terms of medical sociology, this may in part be due to the fact that this subdiscipline is inextricably intertwined with medicine. As Thomas states, ‘Medical sociology and medicine have shared an interest in categorizing and studying the “abnormal” represented by bodily impairment – the former engaging with it socially, the latter biologically’ (2007: 46). Thus, for many researchers, the concept of disability has been informed by the perception of deviance, abnormality and the tragic symbolism that surrounds it in everyday discourse. Medical sociologists also still commonly subscribe to the lay meaning of disability or its reworked version. Thomas notes, ‘In Anglophone cultures, disability refers to “limited activity” – not being able “to do things”, and a “disabled person” is someone who has a medically certifiable “condition” that prevents him or her carrying out the full range of age-related activities considered normal’ (2007: 12).

One might ask, why does sociology interrogate some commonsense assumptions but incorporate other assumptions uncritically within its own modus operandi? Perhaps incorporating a static and normalizing understanding of disability is one way that sociology can manage its potentially threatening and disturbing connotations. That is, by leaving a phenomenon as conceptually uncontested, an empirical fact or simply related to the normal, researchers can move on to less threatening issues. It also conveys the normativity of sociology, as invested in the taken for granted, able-bodied subject. But assuming disability as fact or emphasizing its relation to normative status denies sociology a role in developing a more liberating and anti-oppressive focus on disability.

There are two additional biases and assumptions within the sociological imaginary that have especially prevented the importance of the concept of disability gaining a place on the agenda: an inability to be critical and reflexive about the issues and people worthy of study (Lemert, 1995), and an objectification and implicit protectionism of what are perceived as less agentic, ‘vulnerable subjects’. We discuss these in turn.

While we acknowledge the importance and inspiration of Mills’s work, we nevertheless suggest that the sociological imagination as Mills conceives it is not sufficiently reflexive and unable to radically interrogate its own categories of thought. Charles Lemert observes, referring to both Mills’s and Gouldner’s respective visions for an imaginative and reflexive sociology, that a shortcoming of their ideas is the classic sociological faux pas of believing that ‘the world works in a definite logical way’ and an inability to perceive change in structure (1995: 10). In this sense Mills’s work converged with the sociology of his day and much of the sociology that follows him, which has functioned via an assumed, deterministic logic. Similarly, while Mills briefly discussed human variation and how sociology should study variable biographies within historical contexts, investigating ‘their intersection with social structure’ (1959: 134), he did not seriously consider the implications of studying a diversity of bodies such as those marked by race, gender, sexuality and/or disability. Indeed, his chapter on human variation for the most part is taken up with discussing the departmentalization and boundary crossing of the social sciences at the time.

These gaps have their roots in the ways in which the discipline of sociology developed historically. Lemert refers to the Janus faced nature of the discipline: ‘Sociology from the beginning was both a prophetic voice criticizing modern society and a believing adherent to the promise of modern culture. Sociology thus, in both its professional and popular forms, participated in that culture’s witting and unwitting exclusions’ (1995: xix). While race, gender and sexuality were core issues in early sociology, the discipline for the most part developed ‘among men of the metropolitan liberal bourgeoisie, who could live on their family capital’ (Connell, 2007: 14). From the 1960s on, however, sociology came under increasing scrutiny and critiques from a host of excluded and marginalized groups in the global North. While the scholarship of feminists, queer theorists, postcolonialists, African Americanists, black feminists and other women of color, among other intellectual and social movements, grew more and more incessant, as Lemert observed in 1995, ‘Among the human sciences, few other fields so resist these writings as does sociology’ (1995: 208). Tellingly Lemert’s list of exclusions failed to include disability studies scholars despite the fact that the field had been in existence since the late 1970s and in 1995 was becoming a significant intellectual endeavor with sociological underpinnings. Thus, the marginalization of disability and disability studies has not only occurred within sociology but also within the discourse of marginality itself, as until recently it was routinely omitted from any list of marginalized identity categories.

Moreover, the sociological imaginary has never truly embraced the intellectual imaginations from societies outside the dominant global North, such as the rich imagination coming out of Asian social sciences (Alatas, 2006; Bhambra, 2007). Subaltern studies have succeeded to some extent in giving marginalized populations ‘epistemic privilege’ (Bhambra, 2007: 27). Yet, critical work from the position of subaltern studies has not led to acknowledgment of the subaltern status of disabled people, perhaps because there are many disabled people who ‘cannot speak’ or communicate in conventional ways and the politics of voice demands that even the most marginalized have voice. ² That certain kinds of people and issues can be left out of sociology’s agenda, and also critical discursive communities within sociology, constitutes a failure of the sociological imagination. Paradoxically, critical sociology, as we will discuss later, has been a primary influence both in the initial development of disability studies and also more recently in CDS.

While the marginalized discourses Lemert lists above still have a tenuous existence within the discipline, disability remains a largely ‘determined’ and unproblematized category. We would argue that despite their historical marginalization, the members of these other social categories have been considered inherently more agentic within sociological thought than the members of what are termed more ‘vulnerable populations’, such as disabled people. We contend that the sociological imaginary as historically constituted has played a part in the more general attribution of constrained agency to those ‘vulnerable’ persons with physical, cognitive, intellectual or behavioral impairments. We further maintain that it is an inability to question such attributions as vulnerable that, in part, has prevented sociology from seriously contending with disability in its thinking.

That the vulnerability of disabled people is in part a social construction has been addressed by some work in CDS (e.g. Hollomotz, 2010; Hughes, 2009). For example, Hollomotz (2010) shows how vulnerability is partially constructed for people with learning disability with the limited support available to them to develop positive sexual relationships. This recent focus on vulnerability in CDS has been fueled by recent work in sociology to reconceptualize human rights discourse within a vulnerability frame (Fineman, 2008; Turner, 2006). Turner, an esteemed sociologist of the body, universalizes vulnerability over the life course in order to argue that resources should be provided for those persons who are currently impaired. However, despite his good intentions, this simply temporally restricts the framing of disabled people as vulnerable to the present. While noting the importance of registering how disability is constructed as vulnerable by late modernity’s obsession with the body beautiful, Turner does not recognize the possibility that a future orientation may not be necessary to reinforce the perception of disabled people as vulnerable by the public and lead to curtailment of their agency. ³

Bill Hughes (2009) is perhaps the subtlest critic of the sociology of the body’s recent incursions into disability and vice versa. He presents a global critique of those perspectives within both sociology and disability studies that tend to emphasize the general fragility of the body. In respect to Turner’s move to a vulnerability frame, Hughes argues, ‘One can appreciate that the emphasis placed on the natural limits of the body is an attempt to ward off the crass relativism of strong forms of social constructionism, but … there is a mistake inherent in the argument that makes disabled people of us all’ (2009: 402). He similarly argues against attempts to universalize impairment by disability theorists such as Zola (1989) and Shakespeare and Watson (2002). Hughes’s primary point is that the appeal to an essential vulnerability and the universalizing of impairment makes the category of disability with its exclusion, discrimination and oppression ‘superfluous’. This trend may work to both deny disabled people’s agency and minimize the oppression they experience. In addition to ‘wounded’ (vulnerability), Hughes is also critical of other, what he refers to as ‘tropes of bodily difference’, which have been theoretically deployed recently, such as ‘monstrous’ and ‘abject’, which he contends, like vulnerability, are generated from a non-disabled subject position that cannot resolve a repulsion for the other. He summarizes his position thus:

Disability has had little impact on sociological theories of the body and when sociology ventures into disability it has tended to conflate it with an ontology of human frailty or gloss it with tropes that may be instructive about the generic or gendered modernist structure of exclusion, but it tells us little about the specific forms of invalidation experienced by disabled people. (2009: 399)

The denial of reproductive rights and forced sterilization of disabled women is a case in point of the denial of their agency and a very specific sexual form of invalidation of disabled people (Frohmader and Meekosha, forthcoming). Their very citizenship is at stake; they are excluded from civil and political rights as a result of lack of access to buildings, written material and so on. Within their daily lives, disabled people also experience oppression and discrimination which has real effects on their sense of who they are and what they can do; and although many disabled people may need reasonable accommodations and assistance to operate in an able-bodied world, they also do have agency, as is demonstrated by the very existence of disability studies and the disabled rights movement.

Engaging Sociology: Why Disability Scholarship Needs Sociology

We have argued that disability has been a major lacuna in sociology; however, it should also be emphasized that disability studies has not effectively engaged with sociology to make disability a more central concern in the larger discipline. While there have been some attempts by disability studies scholars to get sociology to stand up and take notice, such as developing theme and interest groups in national sociological associations, ⁴ these overtures have so far not been effective. In fact, it was not until the 1980s that a sustained critique of sociology from disability studies emerged in the USA. Irving Zola, a founding member of the Society of Disability Studies and a medical sociologist, followed Mills in a quest for ‘truth, reason and freedom’ (Williams, 1996). While his earlier work concentrated on health care, Zola made an initial move into disability studies via his own autobiographical work (1982). He thus attempted the intellectual journey from studies of health and medicine to understanding disability through his subjective and private experiences – a path that Mills would have approved of. In a presentation on 14 August 1990, when he received an award for distinguished scholarship in medical sociology, Zola reminded his audience of the ongoing struggle within sociology to prevent the discipline becoming ‘so analytic that it becomes too distant from those it is trying to study’ (1991: 2). Arthur Frank, also a sociologist, similarly took his colleagues to task for not seeking to understand that sociology is embodied. ‘What we need is the reframing of the traditional concerns of social theory – order, function, contingency, rationality and conflict could be mentioned – to understand these as categorical projections of embodiment’ (1990: 106). Both Zola and Frank primarily had the study of disability and chronic illness in mind for a critical sociology of embodiment.

Other disability studies scholars have also pointed out the inadequacy of the traditional conceptualization of disability within the larger discipline of sociology. For example, British sociologist Mike Oliver criticized sociology for ‘having done little except reproduce the medical approach to the issue’, but argued that sociology had a part to play in eradicating disability oppression (1990: xi, 131). In his work, Oliver employed a Marxist approach derived from sociology to analyze economic and political factors that led to the marginalization of disabled people. As noted in our introduction, at the turn of the millennium, Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare were also proponents of the idea to bring a sociological imagination to disability (1999). While they paid lip service to the blurring of boundaries and intersectionality, their more basic goal was to make the links between social structure and lived experience more apparent in a ‘new’ sociology of disability. These researchers argued that the way forward was to use the social model of disability as a guide in conjunction with an emancipatory paradigm of research. Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare’s call for a new sociology of disability was thus in large part simply an argument for sociologists to take on a disability studies perspective circa the late 1990s.

Allan has argued, ‘The sociology of disability, as a field, has struggled to maintain both a presence and an authority’ (2010: 604). A recent collection edited by Scambler and Scambler (2010) seems more interested in bridging the divide between medical sociologists/sociologists of health and illness and disability studies scholars working in the sociology of disability than in engaging sociology in a larger debate on the meaning of disability. ⁵ Not that this tack is inherently wrong but such dialogue tends to restrict itself to maintaining and/or combining the epistemological and theoretical perspectives of these different approaches. Certainly, however, the recent ‘boundary crossings’ by some disability studies scholars and medical sociologists that Thomas (2010: 46) refers to will be fruitful for the future of the sociology of disability. For example, Shakespeare and Watson argue for a sociology of disability that ‘will incorporate medical, psychological, and political dimensions of disabled people’s experience’ (2010: 58). The sociology of disability would then incorporate the space for disabled people to discuss their experience of impairment. Similarly, those who do not see themselves as disabled but identify with a diagnostic category would also be able to discuss their different forms of embodiment and their lived experience. The debate between medical sociologists and CDS scholars should not prevent a robust development of the sociology of disability. This is in line with the development of CDS (Meekosha and Shuttleworth, 2009). Yet we would call for more explicit engagement with larger sociological debates and issues.

Disability studies has also been caught up in a major political project of sociopolitical change. The members of the community of scholars were, and still are, closely aligned with the disability social movement. Disabled academics and their allies have spent inestimable time and energy in developing strategic goals in consort with activist groups. Engaging with established disciplines has sometimes of necessity taken second place to developing an interdisciplinary framework that reflects and enables the development of the goals of national and international social movements of disabled people.

We would suggest that disability studies scholars contributing to the sociology of disability have thus never convincingly made the case to sociology as to why the larger discipline should be interested in disability as a concept. We argue that disability complicates sociological research, both methodologically and conceptually. Analyses of disabled people’s lives should open up sociological concepts in the process, showing the strength of disability to illuminate these ideas. We would add that many non-disabled sociologists find it hard to engage with ‘disabled people as sociologists’ and may therefore be more seduced by the traditional subgenres of medical sociology and the sociology of health and illness. Indeed, disabled and ally sociologists often still find themselves marginalized because of their political leanings.

A pertinent question at this point is why does disability scholarship need to be recognized by sociology as a major player? One might argue that the exciting interdisciplinary space that is being carved out by today’s disability scholars renders this recognition moot. Despite disability’s troubled relationship with the sociological imaginary, there are several reasons why we view the strengthening of a relationship with sociology to be important. The most obvious is that sociology has since its inception been the central discipline that studies society! As we have suggested, what has been included and excluded in sociology, and the social sciences more broadly, has mirrored inclusion and exclusion within western societies generally. Indeed, marginalization of disabled people in sociology has gone hand in hand with their everyday marginalization in these societies. Being provided a seat at the sociological table, especially for disabled scholars, would act as a symbolic gesture of inclusion, at least within the discipline. Disability studies scholars employ many fundamental sociological concepts implicitly or explicitly in their work (for example, those related to social structural analysis). Scholars investigating disability issues have for decades been in the demeaning position of employing sociological frameworks but have been ghettoized, as we have seen above, not finding their work mentioned in the larger sociological debates.

Then there is the question of lineage/heritage. The subversive history of imaginative deployment of critical reason for emancipatory purposes that has traditionally fueled critical sociology has also been significant for the critical study of disability. Marx’s theories of the capitalist relations of production and Habermas’s understanding of knowledge constitutive interests are obvious examples that oriented disability studies, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the Frankfurt School’s analysis of the culture industry, capitalism applied to popular culture via various media including radio and film, has also been subjected to a disability discourse. While more recent critical social theorists have not been confined to the ranks of sociology, critical sociology has maintained its enthusiasm for debating critical theoretical perspectives on society. Thus, we recognize our common lineage/heritage with critical sociology and we desire to strengthen our relationship to this debate by continuing to critique sociologically relevant disability issues. We furthermore maintain that those scholars and researchers whose subject matter is disability must redouble their wooing of sociology, make explicit the ways in which disability can inform the discipline, and indeed strengthen their relationship by participating in the ongoing sociological debate over relevant concepts.

Reimagining the Sociological Framing of Disability

The current state of disability discourse is fertile ground for a renewed effort to engage sociology. Theorization of disability is presently a complex mix of perspectives that opens up the concept in new ways, in part trying to account for the hyper and rapid changes that late modern societies are experiencing and that disabled people, like anyone else, must negotiate. In fact, during the past decade a reimagining of the framing of disability has gradually been developing. Still in an embryonic stage, this reframing of disability owes much to the influx of humanities but also sociologically informed scholars. This reimagining of disability and society is indebted to Mills’s musings on the sociological imagination over half a century ago. Once again, disability scholars are attempting to make the private troubles of disabled people a public issue. That these troubles are now conceptualized to extend beyond material needs and accommodation and take up embodiment, the intra-psychic and the symbolic only makes his call more urgent today. The primary area in which this reframing of disability is emerging is CDS, whose development we briefly discuss in the next subsection.

Conclusion: Transforming the Sociological Imaginary for Disability Enquiry in Late Modernity

We have argued in this article that sociology has traditionally marginalized the concept of disability and continues to ignore its relevance to some of the significant conceptual debates in the discipline. In our argument it has been necessary to question the ‘facts’ about disability put forward by mainstream sociology, such as the association between disability, aging and death (Furze et al., 2011) in order to problematize the concept of disability and the lived experience of disabled people. We have further argued that the methods and concepts of sociology located within a predominantly non-reflexive and creatively limited imaginary, manifesting as lacuna in what and whom sociology focuses on, have thus far restricted the sociological imagination in its engagement with disability studies. Sociology in its current Eurocentric/Northern and able-bodied form has excluded those on the margins, both in a geopolitical sense and in an embodied sense. We have sought to deconstruct sociology’s normalizing and universalizing tendencies and argue that they are part and parcel of the same assumptions in which some voices are privileged and others are silenced.

But the answer is not simply to add examples of disabled people’s lives in our texts or notions stemming from postcolonial discourse. We need to question the hierarchies of knowledge within the larger discipline, which relegate those who have undergone a process of colonization or those deemed less agentic to marginalized status. The increasing visibility of disability in the global South along with national and international disability movements means that a reinterpretation of the history of the discipline is called for, as well as new ways of engaging with, critiquing and creatively imagining sociological understanding of disability. We have suggested several strategies that those at the intersection of CDS and sociology might consider in order to challenge the larger discipline, but these strategies are by no means exhaustive. Suffice to say that CDS scholars need to critically engage with sociology until the processes that have ignored the lived histories and experiences of disabled people are made transparent. In this way, Mills’s call for an imaginative sociology that can critically link individual biographies and personal troubles to public issues will finally become relevant for the study of disability in sociology.