Americans with disabilities : exploring implications of the law for individuals and institutions

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Title Americans with disabilities : exploring implications of the law for individuals and institutions
Publication Type Book
Pub Year 2000
Authors Francis, L. P., & Silvers A.
Publisher Routledge
Keywords accommodation, career, self-esteem, stigma, unemployment, vulnerability
Notes self-esteem, unemployment"The key mediating concept here is self-respect. Suppose we agree with Rawls that self-respect is a vital primary good, something of great importance that any rational person is presumed to want. Now, given actual human psychology, self-respect is--to a considerable degree--dependent on other people's affirmation of one's own worth. And in modern advanced societies, employment, earnings, and professional success are, for better or worse, positively correlated with social assessments of an individual's value. Further, beyond the reactions of other people, work and career identifications form significant parts of some people's conceptions of themselves and their own worth; hence these identifications may contribute directly to the creation and sustenance of self-respect, and their absence will frequently have the opposite effect." (p. 179)
stigma"A stigma, then, is not the marker of a discrete and insular minority, but a universal human condition." (p. 150)
vulnerability"The more we stress the importance of independence, the more threatening and fearsome is that reminder of dependency. But we can utilize this reminder to recognize that each of us has periods of dependency in which we need to be cared for and during which we are vulnerable to need, exploitation and abuse. Then we will not allow ourselves to be lured into the fantasy that our lives are at all moments under our own control. We will allow ourselves to recognize that we are at all times dependent to some degree and sometimes, dependent to the full degree. Only then can we begin to build better social structures and protections for those times when we may be vulnerable." (p. 78)
URL http://books.google.com/books?id=U22r225Nj8UC