Denying a Unified Concept of Disability

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that there are reasons to believe that there is no single concept or category which demarcates all individuals who have a disability from those individuals who do not. The paper begins by describing that I call ‘a Unified Concept View of Disability’ and the role that such a view plays in debates about the nature of disability. After considering reasons to think that our concept of disability is not unified in the way that the Unified Concept View assumes, I outline what a non-unified approach to disability might look like. The paper concludes by considering implications of rejecting the Unified Concept View of disability.