by Michael Ralph

About Michael Ralph

Michael Ralph is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He is the author of Forensics of Capital (forthcoming). He has published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Souls, Social Text, Public Culture, South Atlantic Quarterly, the Journal of the History of Sport, and Transforming Anthropology. He is also the editor of Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists.

Impairment

book Keywords for Disability Studies

“Impairment” is often used as a synonym for “disability,” as when a person is described as “hearing impaired.” In this context, “impairment” is a euphemism, deemed more appropriate than terms like “handicapped” or “deformed,” which are now largely defunct. Yet the status of “impairment” as a substitute for different conceptions of debility is complicated by the fact that, both within disability studies and in medical conceptions of the body, “impairment” is frequently distinguished from “disability.”