Wheelchair users and housing in Dundee: the social construction and spatiality of disability
Abstract
The thesis examines the experiences and perceptions of wheelchair users living
in different types and tenures of housing in the City of Dundee. The
interrelationships between space, society and the body are examined in the
empirical context of housing, ableism and the disabled body. The voices of
wheelchair users, gleaned from in-depth, semi-structured interviews, are used
throughout the thesis to illustrate how the geographies of people with disabilities
are delineated and constrained by socio-cultural representations of disability.
Conceptually the study has been guided by the social model of disability, but
insights from postmodernism and feminist literature are drawn on to add a further
dimension to the interpretation of the data and the study's methodology. The
social construction of difference, social exclusion and definitions of the normal
and aberrant body emerge as key concepts linking analysis of the data at the
spatial scales of the neighbourhood, home and the body. Spatial metaphors of
'out of place', 'marginalised' or 'socio-spatially excluded' capture the essence of
the impressions people with disabilities hold of their interactions with their living
spaces and service providers. The study suggests that greater reciprocal dialogue
is required between service users and service providers to broaden the knowledge
base from which disability related housing decisions are made.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Collections
Except where otherwise noted within the work, this item's licence for re-use is described as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.