Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Geographers have long recognised that geographies of exclusion are about more than physical exclusion; it is necessary also to consider the role of social, cultural and political discourses in creating and contributing to that (often) unquestioned exclusion (Imrie and Edwards, 2007). In a review of the development of the academic sub-discipline of ‘geographies of disability’ Imrie and Edwards draw attention to the importance of the relationship between identity and space:

These types of geographical research point to the recursive relationship between identity and space, by documenting the different ways in which place is influential in how disabled people feel (about themselves).

(Imrie and Edwards, 2007: 626, my emphasis)