| dc.description.abstract | Although community and environmental psychologists have examined stigma against mentally and intellectually disabled people for decades, we rarely extend this analysis to wheelchair users. In addition, we tend to overlook the impact of built environments, or human-made spaces, on the degree and nature of stigma against wheelchair users. However, cross-disciplinary work led by disability theorists suggests that built environments both produce and challenge stigma against wheelchair users through the possibilities for action they allow (i.e., afford) and deny (i.e., disafford). This dissertation contributes four papers that consider the relationships between disability stigma, built environments, and wheelchair users’ actions in those environments. In the first paper, I review existing literature on stigma against wheelchair users and argue that built environments support stigma against wheelchair users through environmental affordances. I also present evidence that wheelchair users contest stigmatizing built environments by altering their features in practical and political ways. Papers two and three use quantitative methods to examine relationships between the accessibility of a community’s built environment and stigma against mobility-disabled people seeking rental housing and work, respectively. Findings from these papers indicate that different parts of a community’s built environment may have different and even conflicting effects on disability stigma. My fourth paper shifts attention from stigmatizing built environments to the ways in which wheelchair users resist them. In it, Appalachian wheelchair users share a range of ‘fooling’ practices that allow them to navigate a region designed for non-disabled people. While meeting basic needs, these practices also levy implicit critiques against social and economic systems that stigmatize disabled Appalachians. | |
