ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the various theoretical approaches to understanding and defining disability. It focuses on giving a critical outline of four of the major explanatory models for disability: the biomedical model, the social model, the psychosocial model and the biopsychosocial model. The chapter includes some exploration of different cultural and contextual factors that may influence disability and sexual health issues, including some discussion of disability in relation to living conditions and experiences in different contexts. The medical model understands disability as resulting from an impairment, which in turn is caused by an underlying biological disorder, disease or deficit. As with other theorists criticising the social model of disability, Marks argues that the social model of disability excludes people's subjective experience from its analysis of disability. The cultural perspective, extensively covered in the field of cultural disability studies, tends to move away from economic questions while focusing on the cultural representations of disability.
