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THE NORMALITY OF DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY: BODIES, SPACES AND DISABILITY GEOGRAPHY
Author(s) -
HANSEN NANCY,
PHILO CHRIS
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9663.2007.00417.x
Subject(s) - normality , everyday life , materiality (auditing) , disabled people , sociology , gender studies , disability studies , politics , coping (psychology) , ideology , aesthetics , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , political science , life style , art , law , philosophy , demography , psychiatry
This paper reflects upon treatments of the body in both disability studies and disability geography, taking seriously the impaired body in its immediate materiality: in its flesh‐and‐boneness, in how it deals with everyday practices in everyday places, as this embodiment is ‘voiced’ by disabled people themselves. The paper discusses Hansen's in‐depth research with a sample of disabled women living in Scotland and Canada, teasing out their experiences of coping with impaired bodies in non‐disabled spaces. Particular attention is given to their own bodily practices, complete with ‘timings and spacings’ that may depart from what is supposedly normal for non‐disabled people. It is also shown how these women resist ableist accommodations that entail both modifying external spaces and ‘correcting’ bodily differences. The paper concludes by identifying a key but neglected step within the ‘politics’ of better accommodating disabled people: namely, shifting the emphasis from (aiding disabled people in) doing things ‘normally’ to (underlining for all of ‘us’) simply the normality of doing things differently .