The Disabled State

Health, Society, and Policy

by Deborah A. Stone

A book about the defining assumptions and assumed definition of the welfare state. It argues that 'the concept of disability is fundamentally the result of political conflict about distributive criteria and the appropriate recipients of social aid'.

Genres: Disability

241 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1983

Reviews

[Andrew Sydlik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Although dealing with a somewhat "dry" subject (as legal & economic matters are to me), the writing is fairly simple and accessible, and it is an important book to anyone studying disability (I've seen it cited quite frequently, one of the reasons I read it in the first place). It impressed upon me the way disability has always been tied up with economic power and the concept of work. Ability and inability are not as simple concepts as we usually assume them to be. The concept of work itself is not so simple. It also helped me to understand how welfare and social aid are handled from a governmental point of view, and how these mechanisms actually benefit government to a certain point, as they help to constrain the demands of able-bodied workers, especially during times of economic hardship. So, in a sense, governments of industrialized countries needed the category of disability to make industrial capitalism work.

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone’s book outlines the ways in which the malleable category of disability is renegotiated and validated in welfare states, focusing on the US especially with some comparisons to European countries. While the language feels dated and I don’t agree with all of Stone’s theorizing, Stone’s main contribution is to show how the category of disability functions as a pressure valve for the labour market in market economies, and how it is reformulated by political forces as well as advances in science.