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Societal Reaction And The Physically Disabled: Bringing The Impariment Back In *
Author(s) -
Higgins Paul C.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1980.3.1.139
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , psychology , coping (psychology) , disabled people , social psychology , developmental psychology , applied psychology , psychotherapist , computer science , life style , artificial intelligence
According to the societal reaction perspective, the reactions of the nondisabled are the key to understanding the physically disabled. Consequently, stigmatization has been emphasized in explaining the often awkward and inhibited encounters between the disabled and the nondisabled. Stigmatization, though, cannot fully explain interaction between the disabled and the nondisabled. Through a qualitative analysis of encounters between the deaf and the hearing, 1 demonstrate that disabilities are also disruptive when they cause the assumptions and routine practices which usually successfully maintain interaction to become problematic. Coping strategies are attempts to compensate for those assumptions and practices which have failed. The reactions of the nondisabled are important in understanding the physically disabled, but in more complex ways than the societal reaction perspective has so far suggested.