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The Right to be Labelled: From Risk to Rights for Pupils with Dyslexia in ‘Special Needs’ Education

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Constructing Risky Identities in Policy and Practice

Abstract

In Ulrich Beck’s (1992, 2001) analysis of the cultural construction of risk, he asserts that the discourse of ‘rights’ and ‘risk’ emerged from the 1970s because of the transition from ‘industrial modernity’ to the era of ‘reflexive modernity’. According to Beck, the idea of civil rights occurred because of society’s increased access to welfare and education, which resulted in ‘lay’ members of society questioning professional knowledge and power. Therefore, people’s ability to conceptualise their own social position led to an increase in social activism and constructed a new reflexive language of ‘rights’ and ‘risk’ (Beck, 2001; Denney, 2005; Heaphy, 2007). This corresponds with the foundation of the social model of disability, which also developed out of the disability rights movement of the 1970s. The social model of disability has challenged social attitudes since that time by suggesting that people with impairments are disabled by society rather than by their bodies (Oliver, 1997; Barnes and Mercer 2010).

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Authors
  1. Stephen J. Macdonald
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sunderland, UK

    Jeremy Kearney  & Catherine Donovan  & 

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© 2013 Stephen J. Macdonald

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Macdonald, S.J. (2013). The Right to be Labelled: From Risk to Rights for Pupils with Dyslexia in ‘Special Needs’ Education. In: Kearney, J., Donovan, C. (eds) Constructing Risky Identities in Policy and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137276087_4

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