Phenomenological analysis of the lifeworld of persons with motor disability

The subject of the present paper is the lifeworld of persons with motor disability. The main objective of dissertation is to analyze the social reality, experienced and perceived intersubjectively by persons, moving with a wheelchair, following the theoretical perspective of phenomenological sociology of A. Schütz and the narrations of people with motor disability, going into the main phenomenological topics of lifeworld: relationship with disabled body, lived space and lived time, and significant, the closest and anonymous social environment of non-disabled ones or institutionalized social environment. The first part of dissertation is dedicated for analysis of different concepts of disability in sociological discourse. In the second part the concept of lifeworld is disclosed, according to A. Schütz’s phenomenological sociology. The third part of dissertation is dedicated for discussion of methodological guidelines of empirical research, for presentation of used qualitative methods (unstructured in-depth interviews, content analysis and interpretive analysis of text) and methodology of processing and analysis of research data, using qualitative data analysis software “NVivo”. In the fourth part the lifeworld of people with motor disability is analyzed, following the obtained empirical data (informants’ narrations). The results of research show that the relationship of these people with the world is distinctive and unique because of disabled body and experience of movement with a wheelchair, as well as knowledge, which is not had by non-disabled members of society. The society is not familiar with the social reality, lived by physically disabled persons. Due to this unfamiliarity during social interactions the disabled members of society are imposed with unequal relationships