As someone who has spent a great deal of my recent life working to support students in higher education, practical concerns have been at the forefront of my approach to disability. Consequently, the opportunity to get back to thinking about theory was a welcome one. Since being asked to review this book back in early February, a significant event has been the death of Mike Oliver. Through his work I, like so many others, first encountered and engaged with the crucial relationship between theory and practice within the field. This in turn got me thinking about the issues which the eight essays in this wide-ranging edited collection address and also how the field has changed and matured over the last 30 years. It also invites us to consider Lewin’s maxim that ‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’.
It is worth saying that the collection is centred around themes which have been central to the work of Jerome Bickenbach who has written extensively on disability, social policy, health and ethics. The book has been produced by those he has worked with, supervised and mentored, hence the subtitle (Essays in Honor of Jerome E. Bickenbach). However, it is important to stress that extensive prior engagement with Bickenbach’s work is not a prerequisite for understanding or enjoying this book, nor are these uncritical tributes. From Disability Theory to Practice manages to introduce ideas and concepts that have been at the heart of the development of disability studies for many years and its increasing engagement with more traditional ‘mainstream’ debates about health in recent times. Some chapters, such as Christopher Lowry’s chapter on ‘Universalism, Vulnerability and Egalitarianism’, seek to examine the philosophical and theoretical basis upon which the concept of disability is grounded within, and how it can be integrated with, notions of justice. The editor Christopher Riddle puts forward his views around the concept of entitlement ‘Non Talent’ and impairment in a similar vein
Other chapters, like that offered by Patricia Welch Saleeby, are constructed around more specific concerns; in her case, how the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) can help or hinder our understanding of disability. The ICF is prominent within the collection and its good points, flaws and potential are discussed robustly by Sara Rubinelli, Alarcos Cieza and Gerold Stucki in the concluding chapter entitled ‘Health and Functioning in Context’. I found these pieces informative and I certainly have a better grasp of the ICF than I did prior to reading them
The chapters by Somath Chatterji and Tom Shakespeare both critically explore the relationship between disability and the dominant landscape within the realm of Health. Chatterji challenges us to rethink disability and call for it to be embedded within the wider discourse of public health. Changing ideas certainly make this possible, but what is unclear is the extent to which notions of Public Health would need to be modified for this to happen in the radical way in which the author proposes. Tom Shakespeare asks ‘Can disabled people be healthy?’ in a chapter that deconstructs ideas about impairment, illness disability and health, and ultimately questions how useful or relevant the concept of health and healthiness is to disability studies.
For me, the most thought-provoking piece in this volume was David Wasserman’s attempt to address what is a very well established but unresolved question: ‘Can a Social Model or Disability Encompass “Mental Illness”?’ Whilst it may not provide a definitive answer, this chapter offers the reader a good critical review of this debate and will be helpful to all who are engaged with the wider debate about the shape and boundaries of the social model. The most controversial and provocative chapter is L.W. Sumner’s discussion of ‘Death Disability and Self Determination’, which asks what might be the consequences for disabled people in a society that legalised euthanasia or assisted suicide?
In summary, then, this collection offers not only the opportunity to engage with the themes and body of Bickenbach’s work for those who wish to do so, but also offers a wider window into the theoretical underpinnings of disability studies and explores how they might be questioned, critiqued and developed in order to provide practical advice and a guide to action.
Department of Sociology, Durham University, Durham, UK
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