Life Cycle Theory

Uses a statistical technique, “Event History Analysis in Life Course Research. This approach identifies and chronologically maps essential ‘events’ in individuals’ lives creating an ‘event history.’ It then examines how these events relate to ‘transformations of status’ and to ‘roles’ in someone’s life.” (1)

The Life Cycle Theory offers a critical, heuristic tool for use by ethnographers and others interested in the analysis of disability oppression.

• Committed to the inherent value of human difference, and of equal access to social, cultural and material goods
• Multi-cultural: Enables us to recognize, map, and analyze disability oppression in diverse cultures
• Incorporates sociopolitical, cultural, ecological, and existential-phenomenological theories of impairment-disability
• Creates a processual, temporal, spatial, and contextual model of impairment-disability

Normal Project Examples

Devva Kasnitz and Russell Shuttleworth

1. Kasnitz, D. (2001). Life Event Histories and the US Independent Living Movement. In M. Priestly, editor, Disability and the LIfe Course. Pages 67-79. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.