Book Review

Title:  Implementing the Social Model of Disability: Theory and Research
Author:   Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Eds.
Publisher:  The Disability Press, 2004
Cost:  $30.00, paperback (20% discount for orders of four or more). 
ISBN:  0952845083
Available from:
Centre for Disability Studies,  
School of Sociology and Social Policy, 
University of Leeds, 
A CD ROM of the book may be requested at the time of book purchase and is supplied free of 
charge.  
Reviewer: Liat Ben-Moshe 

  The title of this book is slightly misleading, if you are thinking of implementation in a policy or 
practice oriented way. The book should be called ÒEverything you ever wanted to know about the 
social model and its critiques.Ó The book contains 13 chapters written mostly by theorists and 
researchers from the UK. Each chapter offers some critique of the social model and calls for 
changes, points out omissions in the theory, or tries to move beyond it while reflecting on its historic 
relevance. 

  The book provides, in a number of chapters, a comprehensive history of the creation of the social 
model (if you ever wanted to know what UPIAS, DIG and BCODP stand for, youÕll have no 
problem finding it here). Some of it helps to explain arguments that underpin its usefulness. For 
instance, the fact that people with physical disabilities drove its inception, and it was later on 
generalized, inadequately, to include the experiences of people with various disabilities. 

  As a whole, there are some recurring critiques of the social model that resurface throughout the 
book: its essentialism (the disabled/non-disabled binary is real); it rejects accounts of personal 
experience; it insufficiently theorizes impairment; its assumed universality; and its exclusion of 
psycho-emotional aspects as well as structural/global aspects of disablement and impairment (best 
theorized by Carol Thomas in chapter 3 here). 

  I found most chapters to be thought-provoking and well written. This book should definitely 
generate interest among Ôsocial modelistsÕ (as Barnes and Mercer refer to them) and people 
interested in current research in Disability Studies (DS) in the UK, since most of the authors engage 
with theories of other authors in the book or other leading DS scholars that are UK-based. This book 
is of particular interest to activists and Disability Studies scholars who want to take the social model 
further and engage with new ways of thinking about the relations between people with disabilities, 
the environment, and their relation with each other as well as with non-disabled people. 
  The cover is very plain and the extra thin and relatively poor quality of paper adds to its low-tech 
feel, but also makes it a more affordable buy. 

Liat Ben-Moshe is a Ph.D. student in Sociology, WomenÕs Studies, and Disability Studies at 
Syracuse University, and a member of Beyond Compliance (BCCC), a student advocacy group at 
Syracuse University aimed at raising awareness around disability, as a form of diversity.  The BCCC 
website is: http://soeweb.syr.edu/thechp/beyond_compliance.html. She can be contacted at:  
lbenmosh@maxwell.syr.edu