Disability Studies
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 June 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0132
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 June 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0132
Introduction
According to the Second National Sample Survey of Disabilities (Di er ci quanguo canjiren chouyang diaocha 第二次全国残疾人抽样调查) of 2006, China had an estimated 82.96 million disabled people, although it has been widely suggested that this is an underestimation of the true scale of disability at the time. Despite this, the amount of academic attention paid to disability has been limited. This perhaps should come as no surprise; even in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, interest was initially similarly narrow. The early focus on the fields of rehabilitation, welfare, and education in the United Kingdom and United States reflected the prevailing “medical model,” which saw disability as an individual problem that needed to be cured or rehabilitated. The gradual move toward the “social model,” where disability is understood to be created by societal barriers, and the more recent appearance of the “rights model,” which places disability within the realm of human rights discourses, have provided fertile ground for academic enquiry. The result of all this is the emergence of a new multidisciplinary field: disability studies. Such a pattern is also reflected in the development of academic interest in China but with substantially compressed timelines. We now have a growing body of work undertaken by scholars outside and inside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mainland on a wide range of issues from public policy to literary representation and everything in between. Much of the work produced in China has been directly sponsored by (or at the very least strongly informed by) the China Disabled Person’s Federation (Zhongguo canjiren lianhehui 中国残疾人联合会, CDPF), the state organization responsible since 1988 for overseeing all aspects of disability-related work. For this reason, there are often different approaches employed by Chinese and non-Chinese academics, the latter of whom are more likely to draw upon the understandings developed within disability studies mentioned earlier, although this divergence is narrowing. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the field, this bibliography for the most part adopts a thematic approach rather than having entries organized along individual impairment lines, and only work relating to the PRC mainland is considered here (although it is acknowledged that there is a growing body of work on Taiwan and Hong Kong that deserves inclusion in future).
Overviews
With the recent advent of academic interest, there are just a handful of studies offering sufficient overview of the subject. Those highlighted here provide solid starting points for most research. Lu and Inamori 1996 offers the most comprehensive historical overview, but its nonchronological organization and lack of theoretical engagement leaves its analysis wanting. Stone 1998, by contrast, draws on disability studies theories to examine Chinese discourses of disability over time. Kohrman 2005 is the most focused chronologically and offers invaluable contextualization for contemporary understandings of disability. For a succinct analysis of the changing language of disability, see Stone 1999.
Kohrman, Matthew. Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520226449.001.0001
Uses anthropological approach to provide in-depth examination of how and why the CDPF came into being in the 1980s and the way in which its emergence and development has contributed to the instantiation of disability as a category of “otherness.” Analysis intersects with broader issues such as health, welfare, advocacy, gender, marriage, and employment.
Lu Deyang 陆德阳, and Inamori Nobuaki稻森信照. Zhongguo canjiren shi (中国残疾人史). Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1996.
Exhaustive archival work here has produced almost 450 pages of historical sources that can be drawn upon for further research. Material is organized semithematically, which enables the authors to identify, for example, different historical “types” or “models” of disabled people, as well as marriage patterns and educational opportunities.
Stone, Emma Victoria. “Reforming Disability in China.” PhD diss., University of Leeds, 1998.
Most comprehensive English-language analysis to date. Looks at the development of disability discourse in China from earlier times onward. Chapters on imperial cosmologies and ideologies, domestic debates and Western influences at the turn of the 20th century, development under Mao, reform-era changes, plus more recent political and welfare initiatives.
Stone, Emma. “Modern Slogan, Ancient Script: Impairment and Disability in the Chinese Language.” In Disability Discourse. Edited by Mairian Corker and Sally French, 136–147. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1999.
Useful overview of the terms and phrases used to describe disability in China and how these have changed over time. A good starting point for any study.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- 1989 People's Movement
- Aesthetics
- Agricultural Technologies and Soil Sciences
- Agriculture, Origins of
- Ancestor Worship
- Anti-Japanese War
- Architecture, Chinese
- Assertive Nationalism and China's Core Interests
- Astronomy under Mongol Rule
- Book Publishing and Printing Technologies in Premodern Chi...
- Buddhism
- Buddhist Monasticism
- Buddhist Poetry of China
- Budgets and Government Revenues
- Calligraphy
- Central-Local Relations
- Ceramics
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Children’s Culture and Social Studies
- China and Africa
- China and Peacekeeping
- China and the World, 1900-1949
- China's Agricultural Regions
- China’s Soft Power
- China’s West
- Chinese Alchemy
- Chinese Communist Party Since 1949, The
- Chinese Communist Party to 1949, The
- Chinese Diaspora, The
- Chinese Nationalism
- Chinese Script, The
- Christianity in China
- Civil Society in China
- Classical Confucianism
- Collective Agriculture
- Concepts of Authentication in Premodern China
- Confucius
- Confucius Institutes
- Consumer Society
- Contemporary Chinese Art Since 1976
- Corruption
- Criticism, Traditional
- Cross-Strait Relations
- Cultural Revolution
- Daoism
- Daoist Canon
- Deng Xiaoping
- Dialect Groups of the Chinese Language
- Disability Studies
- Drama (Xiqu 戏曲) Performance Arts, Traditional Chinese
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Early Imperial China
- Economic Reforms, 1978-Present
- Economy, 1895-1949
- Emergence of Modern Banks
- Energy Economics and Climate Change
- Environmental Issues in Contemporary China
- Environmental Issues in Pre-Modern China
- Establishment Intellectuals
- Ethnicity and Minority Nationalities Since 1949
- Ethnicity and the Han
- Examination System, The
- Fall of the Qing, 1840-1912, The
- Falun Gong, The
- Family Relations in Contemporary China
- Fiction and Prose, Modern Chinese
- Film, Chinese Language
- Film in Taiwan
- Financial Sector, The
- Five Classics
- Folk Religion in Contemporary China
- Folklore and Popular Culture
- Foreign Direct Investment in China
- Gardens
- Gender and Work in Contemporary China
- Gender Issues in Traditional China
- Great Leap Forward and the Famine, The
- Guanxi
- Guomindang (1912–1949)
- Han Expansion to the South
- Health Care System, The
- Heritage Management
- Heterodox Sects in Premodern China
- Historical Archaeology (Qin and Han)
- Hukou (Household Registration) System, The
- Human Origins in China
- Human Resource Management in China
- Human Rights in China
- Imperialism and China, c. 1800–1949
- Industrialism and Innovation in Republican China
- Innovation Policy in China
- Intellectual Trends in Late Imperial China
- Islam in China
- Jesuit Missions in China, from Matteo Ricci to the Restora...
- Journalism and the Press
- Judaism in China
- Labor and Labor Relations
- Landscape Painting
- Language, The Ancient Chinese
- Language Variation in China
- Late Imperial Economy, 960–1895
- Late Maoist Economic Policies
- Law in Late Imperial China
- Law, Traditional Chinese
- Legalism
- Li Bai and Du Fu
- Liang Qichao
- Literati Culture
- Literature Post-Mao, Chinese
- Literature, Pre-Ming Narrative
- Liu, Zongzhou
- Local Elites in Ming-Qing China
- Local Elites in Song-Yuan China
- Lu, Xun
- Macroregions
- Management Style in "Chinese Capitalism"
- Manchukuo
- Mao Zedong
- Marketing System in Pre-Modern China, The
- Marxist Thought in China
- Material Culture
- May Fourth Movement
- Media Representation of Contemporary China, International
- Medicine, Traditional Chinese
- Medieval Economic Revolution
- Mencius
- Middle-Period China
- Migration Under Economic Reform
- Ming and Qing Drama
- Ming Dynasty
- Ming Poetry 1368–1521: Era of Archaism
- Ming Poetry 1522–1644: New Literary Traditions
- Ming-Qing Fiction
- Modern Chinese Drama
- Modern Chinese Poetry
- Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature
- Mohism
- Museums
- Music in China
- Needham Question, The
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neolithic Cultures in China
- New Social Classes, 1895–1949
- One Country, Two Systems
- One-Child Policy, The
- Opium Trade
- Orientalism, China and
- Palace Architecture in Premodern China (Ming-Qing)
- Paleography
- People’s Liberation Army (PLA), The
- Philology and Science in Imperial China
- Poetics, Chinese-Western Comparative
- Poetry, Early Medieval
- Poetry, Traditional Chinese
- Political Art and Posters
- Political Dissent
- Political Thought, Modern Chinese
- Polo, Marco
- Popular Music in the Sinophone World
- Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China
- Population Structure and Dynamics since 1949
- Porcelain Production
- Post-Collective Agriculture
- Poverty and Living Standards since 1949
- Printing and Book Culture
- Prose, Traditional
- Qi Baishi
- Qing Dynasty up to 1840
- Regional and Global Security, China and
- Religion, Ancient Chinese
- Renminbi, The
- Republican China, 1911-1949
- Revolutionary Literature under Mao
- Rural Society in Contemporary China
- School of Names
- Shanghai
- Silk Roads, The
- Sino-Hellenic Studies, Comparative Studies of Early China ...
- Sino-Japanese Relations Since 1945
- Sino-Soviet Relations, 1949–1991
- Social Welfare in China
- Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Chinese Language
- Su Shi (Su Dongpo)
- Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution
- Taiping Civil War
- Taiwanese Democracy
- Taiwan's Miracle Development: Its Economy over a Century
- Technology Transfer in China
- Television, Chinese
- Terracotta Warriors, The
- Tertiary Education in Contemporary China
- Texts in Pre-Modern East and South-East Asia, Chinese
- The Economy, 1949–1978
- The Shijing詩經 (Classic of Poetry; Book of Odes)
- Township and Village Enterprises
- Traditional Historiography
- Transnational Chinese Cinemas
- Tribute System, The
- Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports, The
- United States-China Relations, 1949-present
- Urban Change and Modernity
- Uyghurs
- Vernacular Language Movement
- Village Society in the Early Twentieth Century
- Warlords, The
- Water Management
- Women Poets and Authors in Late Imperial China
- Xi, Jinping
- Xunzi
- Yan'an and the Revolutionary Base Areas
- Yuan Dynasty
- Yuan Dynasty Poetry
- Zhu Xi