Heilpädagogik online - sonderpaedagoge.de!

American Pragmatism, Sociology and the Development of Disability Studies
path breaking books in medical sociology and in qualitative
research methods.
Symbolic interaction is a form of social psychology that examines
the interactions between people in terms of symbols like signs,
gestures, shared rules and written and spoken language. Symbolic
interaction was originally applied to analyses of individuals and
groups but only more recently to organizations and the more
encompassing social structure. The essential point of this perspective
is that people do not respond to the world directly but instead
place social meanings on it, organize it, and respond to it on the
basis of these meanings. Thus, we live in a symbolic as well as a
physical world where social life involves a constant process of
assigning meanings to our own acts and those of others and
interpreting them within this framework. Other people use similar
techniques to understand us and our behavior. Symbolic interaction
highlights subjective experience and the interpretation of social
reality but also allows individuals to take the place of others
symbolically to better understand their behavior.
This perspective has been used by disability scholars to ask
fundamental questions: How does an impairment become a
disability? What does disability mean to people with different
impairments and in diverse cultures? What is the subjective
experience of disability? How do others perceive, define and react
to disabled people? Is disability in the individual, in the environment
or in the interaction between the two (IMRIE 2000)? How do
medical professionals and service providers act towards disabled
people and why? By addressing these questions from a symbolic
interactionist perspective, disability scholars have deepened our
- 36 -
Heilpädagogik online 03/ 03