Studying personal experiences of disability ‐ What happened to verstehen when einfühlung disappeared?
Abstract
For some time, disability researchers have shown a growing interest in personal experiences of disability. To some extent this interest can be understood as a response to the growing support for an emancipatory approach in disability research and the awareness that people with disabilities often have been deprived of their opportunities to speak for themselves. A striking characteristic of the studies of personal experiences is a lack of analysis and methodological discussions. It is argued that this, at least to some extent can be understood as a strategy of the researchers not to fall back into reproducing oppressive, outsiders’ perspectives. Furthermore, the absence of analysis seems to be the result of a 19th century paradigm of understanding based on the idea that the best way of understanding, for example, people with disabilities is through experiential closeness and cultural identification. However, according to current interpretative paradigms understanding demands a dialectics between experience‐near and experience‐distant descriptions. It is also argued that a true emancipatory approach in disability research demands the transcendence of personal experiences through in‐depth analyses of the historical and socio‐cultural conditions that influence the personal experiences of individuals with disabilities.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15017410109510774 | Journal eISSN: 1745-3011
Language: English
Page range: 29 - 40
Published on: Jul 2, 2001
Published by: Stockholm University Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
© 2001 Anders Gustavsson, published by Stockholm University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.