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Learning disability is so prevalent a concept that it has become difficult to imagine a world without it, especially given the centrality of schooling in contemporary society. However, the history of learning disability (LD) clearly shows that it need not have developed as it has. In fact, school systems in many countries know no such category. In America, the development of LD is inseparable from the dramatic expansion of compulsory schooling and intelligence testing since the beginning of the twentieth century. Begun as part of the military's attempts to measure recruits' intelligence during World War I, psychometric testing has since become routine in education, training, and employment. Hotly debated, these statistical and psychological approaches to measuring IQ redefined who was considered "normal" and "abnormal" – based on the normal distribution of intelligence along the Bell or Gauss curve. While "NORMALCY" is a common word, its derivation from mathematical methods of differentiating people by their characteristics (performance on tests, for example) is less well known. Early on, the EUGENICS movement abused IQ tests as arguments for the genetic "inferiority" or "superiority" of particular ability groups, classes or races. Despite repeated criticism of these tests' validity and reliability, they were used to justify policies that limited births and immigration, segregated people in asylums, and led to forcible sterilizations. Revised for widespread use in schools, psychometric tests promoted the development of school "tracking" systems that separate students into ability groups according to their scores.

Which theoretical and methodological approaches of contemporary cultural criticism resonate within the field of disability studies? What can cultural studies gain by incorporating disability more fully into its toolbox for critical analysis? Culture - Theory - Disability features contributions by leading international cultural disability studies scholars which are complemented with a diverse range of responses from across the humanities spectrum. This essential volume encourages the problematization of disability in connection with critical theories of literary and cultural representation, aesthetics, politics, science and technology, sociology, and philosophy

1. Introduction : thinking about anthropology, disability and Japan -- 2. Disability in the Japanese context -- 3. Disability, language and meaning -- 4. Disability policy and law in modern Japan -- 5. Disability and the lifecycle -- 6. Caregiving and the family -- 7. Accessibility and the built environment in Japan -- 8. Conclusion.

Exploring major requisites to establish an Iranian disability studies, the aim of this study is to determine how a local literature of disability can be formed in Iran, as well as how the Iranian and global disability studies might interchange disability knowledge. In an analysis of the responses to a qualitative questionnaire, three themes emerged: rudimentary resources, disability literature, and political prerequisites. Accordingly, human and financial resources, a bank of Farsi and English literature on disability, as well as developing academic relations between Iranian and international disability scholars (as an outcome of improving the Iran-USA political affairs) are essential to form a local disability studies in Iran and to engage it in the global discussions of disability studies.Keywords: disability, global disability studies, Iran

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Series Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- PART I RISE OF DISABILITY RIGHTS -- 1 'Before Disability Civil Rights: Civil War Pensions and the Politics of Disability in America', Alabama Law Review, 52, pp. 1-50 -- 2 'Disability Policy and Politics: Considering Consumer Influences', Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 11, pp. 31-39 -- 3 'Disability Studies: A Historical Materialist View', Disability and Society, 12, pp. 179-202 -- 4 'The Politics of Disability', Critical Social Policy, 11, pp. 21-32 -- 5 'Uncle Tom and Tiny Tim: Some Reflections on the Cripple as Negro', American Scholar, 38, pp. 412-30 -- PART II LAW OF DISABILITY RIGHTS -- 6 'International Disability Law - A New Legal Subject on the Rise: The Interregional Experts' Meeting in Hong Kong, December 13-17, 1999', Berkeley Journal of International Law, 18, pp. 180-95 -- 7 'The Development of the Disability Rights Movement as a Social Problem Solver', electronic version (26 pp) of Disability Studies Quarterly, 23, originally pp. 33-61 -- 8 'Reassessing the Employment of People with Disabilities in Europe: From Quotas to Anti-Discrimination Laws', Comparative Labor Law Journal, 18, pp. 62-101 -- 9 'The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (CTH): A Three-Dimensional Approach to Operationalising Human Rights', Melbourne University Law Review, 26, pp. 254-84 -- 10 'The ADA on the Road: Disability Rights in Germany', Law and Social Inquiry, 27, pp. 723-62 -- 11 'The Disability Rights Movement in Japan: Past, Present, and Future', Disability and Society, 16, pp. 855-69 -- 12 'Disability Rights in Latin America and International Cooperation', Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, 9, pp. 109-30 -- PART III ASSESSMENT OF DISABILITY RIGHTS

Disability is a profoundly relational category, shaped by social conditions that exclude full participation in society. What counts as an impairment in different sociocultural settings is highly variable. Recently, new approaches by disability scholars and activists show that disability is not simply lodged in the body, but created by the social and material conditions that "dis-able" the full participation of those considered atypical. Historically, anthropological studies of disability were often intellectually segregated, considered the province of those in medical and applied anthropology. We show the growing incorporation of disability in the discipline on its own terms by bringing in the social, activist, reflexive, experiential, narrative, and phenomenological dimensions of living with particular impairments. We imagine a broad future for critical anthropological studies of disability and argue that as a universal aspect of human life this topic should be foundational to the field.

This volume of Research in Social Science and Disability brings together interdisciplinary scholarship to examine a wide array of issues related to disability and community, a topic of critical importance academically and politically. The evolving and politically contested notions of community sit at the centre of much of the recent research on disability and, as researchers both create and reflect various ideas of membership when defining 'disability' and aggregating individuals, their methodological decisions have significant implications for how we come to understand disability and community. This volume examines a wide range of social institutions and practices such as education, employment, and cultural venues and the extent to which and how they include people with disabilities in the workings of these institutions. It includes research framed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and research methodologies and offers innovative ways to envision inclusive communities and, therefore, enables us to consider how to move forward to create them.

Persons with disabilities still experience challenges in obtaining employment even though obligations associated with their employment are in place in legislative frameworks that strive to support transformation within the labour market. This paper explores employers' perspectives on the employment of persons with disabilities in South Africa identified in a case study. The influence of social capital on disability inclusive employment was explored from the perspective of two employers who employed trainees who completed an auxiliary training programme for persons with disabilities, which provides opportunities to facilitate pathways to economic inclusion and/or employment. Findings reveal that despite the call for increased labour inclusivity, the development of social capital is not clearly apparent when persons with disabilities are considered for employment. Organisational attitudes and beliefs seem to stem from the obligatory standpoint of the organisations. The paper highlights the need for employers to look beyond impairments so that employment goals are shared and re-enforced by understanding and possibly re-evaluating their views on their organisation's obligations, norms, values and mission, and goals. Insights can guide employers to think more holistically about ways to facilitate the economic inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Persons with disabilities still experience challenges in obtaining employment even though obligations associated with their employment are in place in legislative frameworks that strive to support transformation within the labour market. This paper explores employers' perspectives on the employment of persons with disabilities in South Africa identified in a case study. The influence of social capital on disability inclusive employment was explored from the perspective of two employers who employed trainees who completed an auxiliary training programme for persons with disabilities, which provides opportunities to facilitate pathways to economic inclusion and/or employment. Findings reveal that despite the call for increased labour inclusivity, the development of social capital is not clearly apparent when persons with disabilities are considered for employment. Organisational attitudes and beliefs seem to stem from the obligatory standpoint of the organisations. The paper highlights the need for employers to look beyond impairments so that employment goals are shared and re-enforced by understanding and possibly re-evaluating their views on their organisation's obligations, norms, values and mission, and goals. Insights can guide employers to think more holistically about ways to facilitate the economic inclusion of persons with disabilities.