Disabled people's self-organisation: a new social movement?

This article will examine the ways in which disabled people, world-wide but especially in the USA and Britain, have emerged as a coherent political force in the last 20 years. Furthermore, in looking at disability from the perspective afforded by new social movement arguments, I wish to explore the implications of this development: the fact that disabled people in the 1990s are ‘doing it for themselves’, and to develop comparisons between the disabled people's movement and the movements of black people, women, and gays and lesbians, for autonomy, recognition and resources. I will suggest that new social movement theory, while useful in the analysis of environmentalism, post-materialism, and some varieties of nationalism, cannot fully grasp the essence of liberation politics.