On the Complementarity of Cultural Historical Psychology and Contemporary Disability Studies

In this chapter we juxtapose two perspectives on the study of human “disability.” We place this term in quotation marks because the notion that human difference constitutes a disablement of human functioning is a social construction, not a biological necessity. In other words, biological differences don’t necessarily reduce one’s ability to navigate the physical and social worlds; only biological differences that are socially framed as disabilities do so. 1 Both perspectives that we feature in this chapter contest the very idea that there is a “normate,” or idealized human form (Garland-Thomson, 1997).