ABSTRACT
This chapter provides two case studies of empirical work to illustrate the value of research in the area in addressing existing challenges and creating new ones. The first case study explores the emergence of ‘empowerment’ as a concept within health care policy and practice and the impact of this on people living with diabetes, positing this as a medicalisation of the oppression approach. In the second case study the debate about the presence and relative importance of impairment, biology and the body is revisited with the aid of work on Batten disease, a long-term, life-limiting condition resulting in multiple disabilities. Long-term disabling conditions are the most common cause of disability in the developed world and the most common disability in the UK is arthritis. Interestingly, and unlike the literature on parent carers and disability more widely, positive aspects of having family members with long-term conditions rarely appear in the literature.
