ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore issues in disability research, looking in particular at the relationship between individual approaches and social or collective approaches. It examines how disability studies has sought to unpack the meaning of disability and the social relations that govern, condition and circumscribe the disability experience, and how they can be transformed. Participatory research has been criticised by those within disability studies for reinforcing the researcher/researched divide and for failing to challenge, confront or change oppressive structures and practices. The chapter shows how research can produce change and the relative roles of structure and agency. With its focus on barrier removal and the emancipation and empowerment of disabled people, emancipatory research has to aim to be transformative. A critical realist agenda enables to move beyond debates about what is disability and how is it best defined, what is, or is not, an impairment and what is the relationship between impairment and chronic illness and disablement.
