Disability and critical sociology: expanding the boundaries of critical social inquiry

Disability in the 21st century constitutes a legitimate and growing area of study in the academy. Interdisciplinary by nature, the origins of disability studies can be traced directly to social movements of disabled people organizing to define disability as a social rather than a medical problem. In the US, disabled sociologists such as Irv Zola, a leader in the American Sociology Association, were key figures in the field’s formative years. In Britain, sociologists such as Mike Oliver (1990) and Colin Barnes, both founding members of the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) used the social model to bridge the divide between disability studies and sociology (Barnes et al., 1999). Disability studies is now a growth area in the social sciences, the humanities and a host of other disciplines operating across the North/South divide.