This dissertation was a discourse analysis study, drawing upon discursive psychology, poststructural understandings of discourse, conversation analysis, and a social relational model of disability. The purpose of this study was to explore how autism was performed as an interactional event among children with autism labels, the therapists who work with them, and their parents, in the context of a pediatric therapy setting. I interrogated how the participants’ everyday discursive practices were shaped and, at times, constrained by the social and political institutions that often work to define autism and the related, official plans of treatment. A total of 12 families agreed to participate, resulting in the participation of 12 children with autism labels, three to 11 years of age, six fathers, and 11 mothers. The participants included three speech therapists, two occupational therapists, one physical therapist, one teacher/social group facilitator, and one medical secretary/sibling support group facilitator. Data sources included conversational data from the therapy sessions of the participating children and their therapists, 14 parent interviews, eight therapist interviews, documents used within the therapy sessions, demographic surveys/information from the participating therapists and parents, and two interviews with a state advocate and clinical directors focused on qualifying for services. Findings from the interview data highlighted the varied meanings and performances of autism, while pointing to the related political and social conditions that make the naming and treating of autism (im)possible. Findings drawn from the therapy session data pointed to how the participants’ discursive practices worked to reframe “behaviors of concern,” and to transgress normative communication patterns. The following conclusions were drawn from the findings: (a) autism, as a construct, remains open to multiple meanings, while being inextricably linked to institutionalized practices; (b) in therapy talk, therapists and children with autism labels often co-construct alternative accounts of problematic behaviors; and (c) therapy talk can function to reframe non-normative communication and behavioral patterns, expanding what is constructed as “acceptable.” The findings point to the complexities of defining and performing autism labels, and highlight the ways in which therapy talk can function to reframe behaviors and communication patterns presumed to be pathological.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 303-322).

Avsikten med denna studie var att belysa hur funktionshindrade barn uppfattas av andra barn. Jag intervjuade tio barn i år 4, från två olika skolor. I den ena skolan går flera funktionshindrade elever. Jag valde att samtala med barnen utifrån 6 bilder föreställande andra barn - 4 med olika funktionshinder och 2 utan synbara funktionshinder. De slutsatser jag tycker mig kan dra utifrån det material jag har, var att alla tio respondenter hade en relativt enhetlig uppfattning om hur funktionshindrade barn tänker och känner. Skillnaden mellan skolorna var att de barn som var vana att se funktionshindrade i större utsträckning kunde identifiera olika typer av funktionshinder, och att de då i någon mån hade en klarare uppfattning om hur de tycker att funktionshindrade bör behandlas. Alla barnen jag talade med uttryckte sympati för de funktionshindrade barnen. Genomgående var också uppfattningen att funktionshindrade är det synd om, och de bör därför behandlas med extra hänsyn och respekt. Ju mer avvikande de funktionshindrade ser ut, ju mer särskilda från respondenterna upplevs de av dessa. De upplevs tänka på och tycka om att göra andra saker. Exempelvis tros funktionshindrade haft anledning att fundera över existentiella frågor i högre utsträckning, och är således inte lika materialistiska som andra barn. Barn utan synbara funktionshinder upplevs tycka om populär musik och"såpor"i tv - sådant som av respondenterna upplevs som"normalt". Detta var gemensamt för båda grupperna av barn, liksom att de gav uttryck för uppfattningen att ett avvikande yttre också innebär ett avvikande inre.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore socially constructed discursive barriers to physical activity for people with physical disabilities. This research was informed by a critical disability studies framework. Eight interviews were conducted, split between end-users and stakeholders. The end-user article discusses their perspectives with regard to their own PA participation, their use of PA resources, and their views of how disability is constructed. The stakeholder article deals with their views with regard to Canada’s progress in creating inclusive PA guidelines, the research process as it effects people with physical disabilities, and how disability is constructed. The results showed awareness among both groups of the social model of disability, but that the medical model is still firmly rooted. Work is needed to create inclusive promotional materials and disseminate them effectively. An effective advocacy and lobbying effort was suggested as one avenue towards a possible solution to this issue.

The disability community is one of the largest minority groups vulnerable to social exclusion and marginalization, too often forced into poverty, unemployment and social isolation through dependence on the state. This is the result of systemic discrimination, and is being challenged by the social model of disability which frames disability as a political creation: it proposes that barriers, prejudice, and exclusion created by society (purposely or inadvertently) are the ultimate factors defining disability. The social model empowers people with disabilities to dismantle barriers so they have choice, flexibility, and control to gain the dignity, autonomy, equality, and solidarity associated with human rights and citizenship, and calls for research that takes an emancipatory approach and has a political commitment to confront oppression and exclusion. This interdisciplinary Masters thesis looks at the ways co-operatives can be vehicles for inclusion and empowerment for the disability community. It looks particularly at the multi-stakeholder model of co-operative, which is especially promising for the empowerment of the disability community as it brings together different member categories in an appropriate form of interdependence. My research uses case study methodology to explore how socially constructed barriers are the impairment to development in the disability community and to identify successes where informal multi-stakeholder co-operatives have been used to empower people with disabilities through analysis on four dimensions: how consumer-controlled the co-op is, use of multi-stakeholder alliances, promotion of the social model of disability, and ability to promote economic inclusion and social solidarity. The disability community needs new opportunities for empowerment and community development to overcome disadvantage and marginalization, and this thesis explores the potential of multi-stakeholder co-operatives, vis-à-vis the social model of disability, to do this. This research will help shape policies needed to foster social inclusion to empower people with disabilities and build disability solidarity through co-operative development.

Individuals with non-apparent, physical disabilities face unique social challenges from those that are encountered by the more visibly disabled. The absence of visible cues indicating physical impairment causes ambiguity in social situations, leaving the sufferer vulnerable to moral judgments and social sanctions when they are unable to embody and perform to cultural norms. This dynamic generates a closeted status that the individual must learn to navigate. Using Eve Sedgwick's "The Epistemology of the Closet," this paper deploys auto-ethnography, traditional ethnographic techniques, and literature reviews to illuminate a third space of functioning between the outwardly 'healthy' and the visibly disabled.

The disability community is one of the largest minority groups vulnerable to social exclusion and marginalization, too often forced into poverty, unemployment and social isolation through dependence on the state. This is the result of systemic discrimination, and is being challenged by the social model of disability which frames disability as a political creation: it proposes that barriers, prejudice, and exclusion created by society (purposely or inadvertently) are the ultimate factors defining disability. The social model empowers people with disabilities to dismantle barriers so they have choice, flexibility, and control to gain the dignity, autonomy, equality, and solidarity associated with human rights and citizenship, and calls for research that takes an emancipatory approach and has a political commitment to confront oppression and exclusion. This interdisciplinary Masters thesis looks at the ways co-operatives can be vehicles for inclusion and empowerment for the disability community. It looks particularly at the multi-stakeholder model of co-operative, which is especially promising for the empowerment of the disability community as it brings together different member categories in an appropriate form of interdependence. My research uses case study methodology to explore how socially constructed barriers are the impairment to development in the disability community and to identify successes where informal multi-stakeholder co-operatives have been used to empower people with disabilities through analysis on four dimensions: how consumer-controlled the co-op is, use of multi-stakeholder alliances, promotion of the social model of disability, and ability to promote economic inclusion and social solidarity. The disability community needs new opportunities for empowerment and community development to overcome disadvantage and marginalization, and this thesis explores the potential of multi-stakeholder co-operatives, vis-à-vis the social model of disability, to do this. This research will help shape policies needed to foster social inclusion to empower people with disabilities and build disability solidarity through co-operative development.

A biological citizenship can be important to gain human rights. This is evident for the disability movement in Nepal, which recently have gained a lot of ground in their struggle for their rights. The NGO Nepal Hemophilia Society (NHS) is a part of this movement and has also profited from this progress. However hemophilia is disease that mostly transmitted to males, which means that the female members of NHS is not affected medically by the disease but socially to a high degree. This thesis aims to explore how the female members handle this situation and find an agency in their vulnerable position.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed March 1, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 358-373).

This report is an analysis of Salvador Plascencia’s first novel, The People of Paper, with relationships to current understandings of lesbian genres from queer theory, the body from disability theory, and race in relation to the characters’ migrations/transgressions across physical and figurative boundaries from Mexico to the United States. Key thinkers who have influenced my reading of the novel include Gloria Anzaldúa whose text, Borderlands/La Frontera, portrays the intersections of a multiplicity of identities across gender, sexuality, ability, nationhood, race, and ethnicity. The thinking of Chicana lesbian scholar, Catrióna Rueda Esquibel; queer scholar, Alexander Doty; and disability scholars, Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Tobin Siebers, are also integral to the report as I explore the intersections of sexuality, disability, and diaspora of key figures like the “retarded” prophet, Baby Nostradamus, and the women of paper, Merced de Papel and Liz. These figures are explored in relation to each other as well as to the readers, critic, and author as the novel is a metafictional one that lends itself to the blurring of genre boundaries. Further, as I analyze these corporeal intersections, I focus on the lesbian trope of forked tongues as a trope of queer disability as it relates to the markedly “Other” body of Merced de Papel and the lesbian triangle she forms with Little Merced and Merced as well as to the formation of a queer disability community. / text