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Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Ableness, by Fiona Kumari Campbell. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 231pp. $90.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780230579286.
Disability studies has solidified itself as a vibrant interdisciplinary field with the potential to transform and challenge not just how we think about disability but also to reframe the basic assumptions we make about what it means to be human beings. Rather than viewing disability as something inherently bad or problematic, disability studies aims to recast disability as a difference that should be valued. Despite its overwhelming potential, in the social sciences at least, disability studies still has not gained the attention it is rightly due. However, developments in the field of sociology, such as the recent formation of the Disability and Society section for the American Sociological Association suggest that this is changing.
Fiona Campbell's recent book titled Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Ableness offers a welcome addition to social scientific literature on disability. In particular, Contours of Ableism may be viewed as part of a growing literature in disability studies that emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between disability and ability or ableism, as Campbell refers to it. This literature positions disability in a broader discursive and normative framework where all bodies are subjected to normalizing scrutiny and regulation. Campbell's contribution to this literature is a sophisticated, nuanced elaboration of the specific characteristics of what she dubs the "ableist project." This book will be of interest to sociologists of disability as well...