ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the ways in which special educational needs and disability have been theorised by those with a range of interests. It considers the discourses reflected in a number of key policy documents and the third draws on a number of recent research accounts which provide evidence of the way in which management and market-orientated policies are threatening certain discourses and privileging others. The chapter also considers the type of theory which is likely to be helpful to disabled people in the struggle for political change. The argument that disability is a socially constructed category rather than having some material reality may be appealing to policy makers searching for cheap solutions. The constructs of social status and social worth, in addition to social class, may be helpful in understanding the relationship of disabled people to the state in non-capitalist and in different types of capitalist societies.
