Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited

Over the last forty years, the field of disability studies has emerged from the political activism of disabled people. In this challenging review of the field, leading disability academic and activist Tom Shakespeare argues that disability research needs a firmer conceptual and empirical footing.

This new edition is updated throughout, reflecting Shakespeare’s most recent thinking, drawing on current research, and responding to controversies surrounding the first edition and the World Report on Disability, as well as incorporating new chapters on cultural disability studies, personal assistance, sexuality, and violence. Using a critical realist approach, Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited promotes a pluralist, engaged and nuanced approach to disability. Key topics discussed include:

dichotomies – going beyond dangerous polarizations such as medical model versus social model to achieve a complex, multi-factorial account of disability


identity - the drawbacks of the disability movement's emphasis on identity politics


bioethics - choices at the beginning and end of life and in the field of genetic and stem cell therapies


relationships – feminist and virtue ethics approaches to questions of intimacy, assistance and friendship.


This stimulating and accessible book challenges disability studies orthodoxy, promoting a new conceptualization of disability and fresh research agenda. It is an invaluable resource for researchers and students in disability studies and sociology, as well as professionals, policy makers and activists.