A Reply to Tom Shakespeare and Nicholas Watson

Shakespeare and Watson's paper is well conceived and argued. I particularly enjoyed the way that the debate about the social model was set in a wider context, as this contained some features that I had not previously fully appreciated. In many respects there is more to agree than to disagree with in this critique. SETTING THE SCENE Firstly, for the sake of brevity I will refer to the two papers upon which Shakespeare and Watson's critique concentrates as the SHI paper, (Pinder, 1995, `Bringing back the body without the blame...'), and the B. and M. Collection Winder, 1996, 'Sick-but-fit or fit-but-sick? Ambiguity and Identity in the Workplace'). Secondly, as readers may have less easy access to the more arcane academic journals, let me retrace my steps in more detail. In SHI, I explored the employment stories of two informants disabled with rheumatoid arthritis as they attempted to `make it'-or not-in the workplace. One, whom I called `Elaine', was forced out of her much loved secretarial job