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American Pragmatism, Sociology and the Development of Disability Studies
a medical sociologist and as a visibly disabled person. He was
trained at Harvard in medical sociology but his work is strongly
flavored by social interactionism and the ethnographic work
characterized by Chicago sociologists. ZOLA’s dissertation explored
differential perceptions of pain and differences in help seeking
behavior for medical care among three diverse cultural groups in
Boston: Irish Americans, Italians and Jews (ZOLA 1966). His later
work highlighted the subjective experience of disability, being an
embodied subject, and the universality of disability (ZOLA 1989;
1991; 1993). He was Chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the
American Sociological Association, founder of Disability Studies
Quarterly which publishes articles, personal statements, book and
film reviews and news of interest to the academic disability
community and a key member of the disability movement
responsible for the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990,
accommodations in the environment and the formation of disability
studies as a field. He was one of the moving forces in establishing
the Society for Disability Studies. Here was a scholar in the
symbolic interactionist mold who incorporated a critical component
of pragmatism into his research by combining academic research
and activism. He was on the one hand, a member of an National
Academy of Sciences Committee organized to identify the critical
research issues in need of funding and on the other an activist who
could be seen demonstrating on the steps of a Courthouse about
accessibility.
Social Movements and Politics
As we have seen from the work of ZOLA, pragmatism and sociology
were formative influences on the disability movement. There is a
myth that since disabled people have a common experience and
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