 Physical disability and social liminality: A study in the rituals of adversityRobert F. Murphy, Jessica Scheer, Yolanda Murphy and Richard Mack Social Science & Medicine, 1988, vol. 26, issue 2, 235-242 Abstract: Sociological research on the disabled has for the past 25 years made extensive use of a social deviance model to characterize the status of the physically impaired. The present article, which is based on a three-year anthropological investigation of the social relations of paraplegics and quadriplegics in the New York metropolitan area, argues that there are shortcomings in the deviance model and offers, instead, a model taken from the anthropological study of ritual. The disabled are viewed as being in a 'liminal' state, as in the liminal phases of rites of passages. They are persons having an undefined status: they are neither ill nor well, neither socially alive and active nor socially expunged and removed. The status of the disabled in American society and the symbolism of disability in American culture are reexamined within this framework. This perspective is extended to other types of deep adversity, such as acute loss of income and status or catastrophic illness. Keywords: deviance; disability; liminality; paraplegia (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:26:y:1988:i:2:p:235-242 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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