The Struggle to Belong

An adjustment to severe disability is accompanied by significant changes in several dimensions—psychological (lowered self-esteem), physical (restricted mobility), and social (changed social identity, the epithet “disabled). Such sudden changes also require short-term (physical) and long-term (psychological and social) adjustments. In other words, the investigation of adjustment to a disability provides a unique opportunity to explore various facets of human adjustment strategies and processes.

This book bridges gaps among disability, culture, and communication and it offers the reader a rare glimpse of a world of people with disabilities in which their identity transformations, communication tactics as the disabled, or adjustment to new bodies, including temporal and spatial senses, emerge. This book is informative for health professionals, or students of communication, sociology, disability studies, cultural studies, or medical anthropology who wish to explore disability from a social science perspective.