Geographies of Disability and Impairment

Geographies of disability and impairment examine the interrelationships between bodily and mental impairments and social, cultural, political, and physical environments, and how these shape the experiences of disabled people and, more broadly, the understanding and valuing of “disability” in society. Geographies of disability and impairment have described and mapped the incidence of disability, and studied the exclusions and everyday lives of disabled people, developing a distinctive socio-spatial theoretical understanding of disability within what is now a discernible field in human geography. Geographical study of disability and impairment has reflected wider changes in the social and cultural conceptualization of disability and the social position and valuing of disabled people, from an individual medically defined condition to a socially constructed phenomenon, and more recently a material embodied experience.