How does sociology view disability?

Abstract

 The theoretical paper focused on highlighting the sociology's view of disability as a social and cultural phenomenon, unlike what is considered before by the medical and psychological studies as a biological and psychological phenomenon only. Sociology of health and disease had a great contribution in the development of theoretical and conceptual implications about disability in the last three decades. To highlight this view, the paper aimed to evoke issues related to the early sociological interest about the topics of disability and the disabled, the accompanying conceptual controversies, building the social model, and finally monitoring the sociological theories that focused on this topic from multi-dimensional perspectives, rather than being satisfied with a one-sided perspective. There is no doubt that sociology has a resonance in the study of such social and health phenomena, it covet greedily for introducing new variables related to the external environment, institutional barriers, health disparities, stigma and discrimination, negative stereotypes, identities of the disabled, and their personal experiences, instead of focusing on disability as an internal previously stated And a product of a purely biological factor, as what be indicated by the medical model that dominated such theses before. Sociology of disability advocates to look at people, not their health, and to empower them rather than restricting them, focusing on the environmental barriers that they faced, and reducing inequalities between them and other healthy people.