ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Dewey’s theory of inquiry gives useful tools that prioritize the melioration of the experienced problems of inquirers over systematic or dogmatic understandings. While this is a general feature of his philosophy, it has special applicability to disability studies. Many theories of disability attempt to define and then systematically analyze disability. Instead, a Deweyan theory of inquiry suggests a methodological pluralism that upends the traditional process of establishing a philosophical methodology and a philosophically robust definition of disability before inquiring into meliorative possibilities for activity. The practical pay-off is that various ways of conceiving of disability—even if contradictory on their face—become possible tools for meliorating the conditions that contribute to the problems experienced by disabled people. To this end, this chapter will show how a Deweyan theory of inquiry might work when applied to disability and then discuss how various theories of disability (including the medical model, the British Social Model, Barnes’ political minority model, and Tremain’s Foucaultian model can) can contribute, when applied to appropriate problematic situations, toward meliorism and growth.
