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American Pragmatism, Sociology and the Development of Disability Studies
similar view of their social worlds, organizing a disability movement
to institute changes in social policy and public attitudes was a
natural and easy process. This myth does not reflect the reality. In
the United States, disability groups originally formed around types
of impairment, age, employment status and military experience.
There were, for example, powerful groups that coalesced around
visual impairment, deafness, polio, spinal cord injury and mental
illness. Some of these groups, like the March of Dimes, concentrated
on the young while others, like the Vocational Rehabilitation
Administration focused on returning disabled people with skills and
experience to the workplace. Again, the Veterans Administration is
a entire government agency devoted to assisting veterans of
military service with medical care and rehabilitation. These groups
often fought among themselves for the scarce resources available
for medical treatment, rehabilitation, social services, independent
living and modification of the environment. Behind the scenes,
competition rather than cooperation was the rule of the day. That
is why the convergence of these groups behind the Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was such news.
Since Harlan HAHN has a chapter later in this book [vgl. Hinweise
zum Ursprung dieses Textes, Anm. d. Herausgeber] on disability
politics and the disability movement where he uses a minority
group model to understand the evolution of the American disability
movement, I will keep my focus on how pragmatism and sociology
helped to shape disability studies and crystallize the disability
movement. From a social interactionist perspective, the self that
people present depends on the role that they are playing. Not all
disabled people have disability as their defining role. For example,
in an examination of identity, roles and disability culture, DEV-
LIEGER and ALBRECHT (2000) discovered that inner city, disabled
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