I define “normal” as the ability to maintain a self-sufficient and self-sustaining job, career, marriage, home, and family.
Author Archives: Sarah Quinto
A quality life
Normal is a setting on the clothes dryer. It’s also a statisical concept. I’d rather talk about a quality life. A quality life is when someone is fulfilled. — Stephen Theoretical Models Life Cycle Theory: Stephen’s experiences as a young child informed his later development into a leader in the Autistic community.
The typical existing situation
I personally define normal as the typical existing situation in the context of society as a whole and whatever the majority deems to be acceptable. — Dylan Theoretical Models Ecological and Community Based Theory: Idea that society determines the concept of normal.
Not something to aim for
I do deal with anxiety and depression, largely from older failed attempts at being normal, though other people’s reactions to my not trying to be normal are sometimes a contributing factor to my anxiety.
Sociocultural Model of Impairment-Disability
The sociocultural model views human experience as a product of culture and ideas. Disability in this model appears as an interaction between certain impaired bodies and their surrounding cultural environment.
Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the theory of signs and symbols. Cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication. Looks at the degree of and types of integration-exclusion of disabled people, which is played out on several cultural levels: biological, social, medical, ethical, religious, etc.
Disablement Process
Proposes that we “adopt the term disablement process, widespread in European science and policy, into American discourse in place of disability in order to emphasize the social and processural dimensions.”
Liminality Theory
Physical disability functions in modern society as a status betwixt and between everyday assumptions about “normal” physical strength and functioning. This creates a situation of permanent liminality, or a failure to be incorporated, in hypermodern society
Stigma Theory
Social stigma is the extreme disapproval of a person or group who differs from the cultural norms of another group.
Social Complexity Theory
In small scale societies, a physical impairment does not come to define one’s entire social identity because the individual in small scale societies is related and connected to others in many social roles and contexts.
