SantESIH
Health and Education, Disability Status (Sant.E.Si.H. – UR_UM211)
Research areas: Sociology, Anthropology
Director: Dr. Eric Perera (Associate Professor – HDR)
UR-UM211 brings together researchers initially working on the general theme of social categorization processes, processes of distinction, domination, or discrimination.
From a scientific organization perspective, this young team has a central research objective for the period 2007-2014, which can be summarized as follows: "Dynamics of the processes of production and reduction of disability situations."
This subject falls within the scope of current international health research, which has been increasingly focused on contextual factors since the 1990s. As such, complex approaches to health issues are valued, and all members of this humanities and social sciences team contribute to the collective research program, bringing complementary skills to the table.
Although health has been defined for almost 50 years as more than just the absence of disease, but as "a state of physical, psychological, and social well-being," it is clear that this broader definition, which goes beyond the medical, has long remained little used in social practices. In 2001, the 54th World Health Assembly (WHO) endorsed the use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to better coordinate research and surveillance activities in the field of health among member states. Despite the many debates surrounding it, this classification reflects a desire to give greater consideration to environmental and personal factors in the functioning and health of populations.
It is within this framework that our team is developing an interdisciplinary research program focused on "the processes of producing and reducing situations of disability." By focusing on the articulation of different levels of analysis (individual behaviors, subjects' experiences, the actions of groups and communities, institutional frameworks, their practices, norms, and laws), it aims to study how situations of disability are constructed in educational, sporting, and professional settings, resulting from a problematic encounter between populations affected by disorders, pathologies, or impairments and social and cultural environments.
The objective is twofold: to study and model the processes of construction and reduction of situations of disability encountered by different populations in different social spaces, and to propose effective procedures for reducing them.
The laboratory is affiliated with Doctoral School 60, "Territories, Time, Societies, and Development," atPaul Valéry Montpellier University.
