Social representations of disability: Between models and persons. Debates and perspectives on the dynamics of social interactions

Abstract

This paper aims to describe and problematize the different models and approaches that attempt to understand disability throughout current history. People elaborate on these through their interactions as social subjects. In this sense, social representations about these models can maintain their validity, with greater or lesser legitimacy. Based on a qualitative review, we analyze the characteristics of the leading models and approaches proposed by various authors in the last two decades, linking them with social representations as discursive production and with the social practices of a given context that is simultaneously constructed. We conclude that this critical review leads to a rethink of social representations, professional practices, and discursive crossings from the different models and approaches to disability. Finally, we reflect on how, when presented as hegemonic and totalizing representations, models can deprive the subject with a disability of agency, preventing him/her/them from critically reflecting, rethinking, and re-presenting him/her/them, as well as from making decisions based on his/her subjectivity expressed in everyday life