DISABILITY AS SOC CONSTRUCT [Hardcover]

Wounded soldiers, injured workers, handicapped adults, and physically impaired children have all been affected by legislation that reduces their opportunities to live a functional life. InDisability as a Social Construct, Claire Liachowitz contends that disability is not merely a result of a handicap but can be imposed by society through devaluation and segregation of people who deviate from physical norms. She analyzes pertinent American legislation, primarily from 1770 to 1920, to provide a new perspective on the mechanisms that translate physical defects into social and civil inferiority.

Improves our understanding of how legislation that attempts to address the physical problems of handicap may aggravate these problems by reinforcing social attitudes that consider the handicapped as inferior, defective, and deviant. —Contemporary Sociology