Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Janice McLaughlinORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Disabled people are said to experience stigma because their embodied presence in the world does not fit with how others interact and use their bodies to be social participants. In response they can turn to medical procedures, such as surgery or physiotherapy, in order to reshape their bodies to more closely approximate norms of social interaction and embodiment. This paper explores how medicine plays a role in attempts to be recognised by others as normal and acceptable by minimising disability. It will do so via a focus on disabled young people, in order to explore how their emerging identities and aspirations for the future influence how they think about their bodies, what normality means and their participation in multiple activities that work upon their bodies. The paper draws from an ESRC project that used a range of qualitative research methods with a group of disabled young people. The project explored ways in which participants actively worked on their bodies to be more normal and examined the disciplinary and agency dynamics involved in this work.
Author(s): McLaughlin J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Medical Humanities
Year: 2017
Volume: 43
Pages: 244-250
Print publication date: 01/12/2017
Online publication date: 06/02/2017
Acceptance date: 24/12/2016
Date deposited: 24/12/2016
ISSN (print): 1468-215X
ISSN (electronic): 1473-4265
Publisher: BMJ Group
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2016-011065
DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2016-011065
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
