ABSTRACT
The term disability can be used in two different senses. It can refer to a social status and a cultural category or one's bio-medical status. In disability theory, a second usage of disability emerges, a restriction on activity generated by an impairment transformed by a particular socio-cultural context into a disability. Despite the argument that one cannot, in fact, make sharp the distinctions between an impairment or a difference and a disability, nevertheless, the distinction is analytically useful for understanding how culture and, most significantly, socio-material environments influence functioning. Social material conditions not only influence the body itself, but how one experiences one’s body. Ageing may bring about impairments. These changes make previously ‘friendly’ spaces and temporal rhythms ‘unfriendly’, potentially dangerous and uncomfortable. Once people shift focus from their bodies and their capacities, and see such capacities linked to the organisation of the spaces they utilise, their attendant mode of being in space and how they relate to it changes.
