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>It is still unclear to me why (mostly) academics have difficulty with social >interpretations of disability applied to people with the label of learning >difficulties . It seems a very helpful framework for me. Indeed, some of the >earlier academic attempts at social interpretation came from writers in this >field, For example, see... > > >Mark. > Right on...I have the same question in my field: why do academics (most of them) concur on a social interpretation of gender and race, but not on the label of disability? I have had a hard time at schools of "social" work (who you might detest, and quite understandably so) trying to convince academics of a different viewpoint on disability - way opposite to their perceptions of disability as an individual problem and as a tragedy. Maybe this is a long shot, but I do think academics want to maintain their secure place by buying into the dominant paradigm that promotes certain ways of homogeneity despite the rhetoric of inclusion. Until research funding continues to come from sources that buy into a medical paradigm which presupposes individual as opposed to social interpretations of disability, academics may well choose the path set by the trend. Until research that measures remains the dominant trend and is based within "scientific" capitalism", students, like me, will have to think twice before writing a dissertation proposal with action research. This leads me to ask another long shot question, whether the system of education (excluding the true disability studies programs), that is considered an important part of "civil society", itself perpetuates a hegemony that leads to an individual interpretation of disability and therefore, the exclusion of those given the label "disabled". Vanmala ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.