Learning to label: Disability narratives in Clear River, United States of America

The percentage of American schoolchildren labeled with a disability has doubled since 1977. This dissertation investigates the meaning of disability within the historical moment of cultural expansion. Clear River County is a rural Appalachian community of about 73 thousand people that, during the period of my fieldwork (2002-04), labeled over 20% of their school children with a disability. This dissertation is a community ethnography that explores the meaning of disability and the dynamics of disability expansion. On the basis of my first-hand observations I concluded that learning to label disability is a process that involves a translation between technical and moral languages. The meaning of disability in Clear River is contextualized by high unemployment in the county and hopes and fears associated with the knowledge economy. The metaphor of disability and the reinvention of self and community are linked. Clear River is best viewed not as a global economic loser but rather a collective moral pioneer on the cutting edge of disability ethics, what I refer to as Countrypolitans . Countrypolitans employ strategies that strike a balance between collective memories of the past and collective visions of the future. They employ social problem frames available in the public arena to bring meaning to the lived experience of deindustrialization and globalization. These practices allow for the reinvention of self and the reinvention of community. Although American school reform has been characterized by a tension between equity and competition for over a century, the contemporary form of this contradiction currently manifests itself as a tension between disability rights and standards-based accountability. No Child Left Behind is currently dominating the education policy realm and threatens to curtail one of the avenues that the Countrypolitans of Clear River have found socially useful for redefining self and community in the wake of deindustrialization and economic globalization, the discourse of disability