indicative of the diversity of research currently
being conducted under what could be termed a
broadly ‘social’ umbrella.^2 Without doubt, this
work has been critical in countering many of the
unconsidered yet highly troubling assumptions
lurking within much previous social geography,
notably its ableism, its heterosexism and its
adult-centredness. Yet – and this is the big point
of contention – such work has very different,
frequently implicit, understandings of ‘the social’
from those which shaped and continue to shape
readings informed by political economic
accounts. These differences are worth spelling
out here, for they are at the heart of understand-
ing what is at stake when claims as to the demise
and/or evacuation of ‘the social’ are made.
Consequently, and by way of illustration, I use
the growing body of work on (dis)ability to begin
to tease out the vision/s of ‘the social’ which are
being presumed here.^3
Research on (dis)ability in geography comprises
a vibrant and burgeoning field, characterized
by a proliferation of perspectives (behavioura-
list, historical materialist, phenomenological,
Foucauldian), strong disagreements over appro-
priate terminologies, and connections which
span the full gamut of knowledge divisions: from
medicine to architecture, planning and design, to
cultural studies and psychology.^4 Empirically, it
encompasses studies as diverse as: mental health
and illness (in itself a disputed presence); dis-
ability in the workplace and employment; the
lived experience of disability; technology;
activism; and city and housing design. Methodo-
logically, it features profound distinctions:
between writing on, for, with or about, to writing
by and autobiographical writing. As such, even
to attempt a (necessarily) condensed overview
such as this seems invidious. Yet, as most
reviews by those working directly in the field
point out, there is a clear trajectory shaping these
studies – a narrative of progress that is used
to relate the growing sophistication of the field.
It is on these that I draw here, because they are
most suggestive of how ‘the social’ has been
reconfigured.
Almost all of these reviews begin by reiterat-
ing the basic distinction between approaches
which centre the disability of the individual (a
view which foregrounds pathology, attention and
care), and those which understand and represent
disability as produced by society: that is, as the
social processes which work to exclude and/or
disadvantage those with disabilities. For some,
and I’m thinking here particularly of the work by
Brendan Gleeson (1996; 1997), the concern has
been specifically to connect disability with politi-
cal economy; to expose how the development ofadvanced capitalism has progressively devalued
the labour power of those with disabilities (see
Hall, 1999). Yet, as is clear from a recent edited
collection (Butler and Parr, 1999) and from
recent papers, there is a growing dissatisfaction
with this position; specifically over its denial of
the significance of impairment, its exclusion of
pain, fatigue and depression; in short, a dissatis-
faction with its exclusion from analysis of the
very materiality of the disabled body (Hall,
2000). Correspondingly, and bolstered by the more
general turn to the bodily within geography,^5 it is
the messy, ‘undisciplined’ matter of disabled
bodies which we can anticipate to providea focal
point for much future research in this area.
What this might mean in terms of understand-
ings of ‘the social’ is less transparent, but there
are nonetheless several pointers within the litera-
ture. In a recent paper, for example, Edward Hall
argues for an ‘embodied’ and ‘biological’
approach to impairment, ‘which sees the body as
social and society as bodily’ (2000: 24), whilst in
the introduction to their recent collection, Ruth
Butler and Hester Parr (1999) centre the notion
of ‘mind and body spaces’. Although different,
both arguments emphasize a corporeality which
is the site of social inscriptions and which
defines and produces particular social relations
and day-to-day lived geographies (clinics, surg-
eries, drop-in centres, parks) as well as identities
and subjectivities. There is a sense here then –
although this is nowhere made explicit – of a
social which is understood in terms of the every-
day; as routine, regulated, resisted even, but
individual-centred. Yet, simultaneously, this is a
social that is located in and defined by the mate-
riality of specific (disabled) bodies. This, in turn,
is suggestive of a social located more in the poli-
tics of difference than in a politics of inequality;
a view confirmed by Butler and Parr’s portrayal
of Gleeson’s work as ‘materialistic’, and from
which they appear to wish to distance themselves.
More generally, looking across this literature
and elsewhere within recent social geographical
work, there are four points that I would pull out
as comprising key components in how ‘the
social’ is increasingly being understood. Two are
presences, in the sense that they are positively
talked up in the literature; and two are significant
absences.
The first of these components is its body-
centredness. This we can see from the way in which
social geography’s subjects are increasingly
defined through their relation to the bodily and
from the frequently asserted claim that the body
is social and that society has to be related to the
bodily.^6 Illustrative of the more widespread
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