SantESIH
Health and Education, Disability Issues (Sant.E.Si.H. – UR_UM211)
Research Areas: Sociology, Anthropology
Director: Dr. Eric Perera (Assistant Professor – HDR)
The UR-UM211 brings together researchers who initially focused on the general theme of social categorization processes, as well as processes of distinction, domination, and discrimination.
From a scientific organizational standpoint, this young team has a central research focus for the period 2007–2014, which can be summarized as follows: “The dynamics of processes that create and reduce situations of disability.”
This project is part of the current international research on health, which has increasingly taken contextual factors into account since the 1990s. As such, complex approaches to health issues are emphasized, and all members of this team of humanities and social sciences researchers contribute to the collective research program by bringing complementary expertise.
Although health has not been defined simply as the absence of disease for nearly 50 years—but rather as “a state of physical, psychological, and social well-being”—it is clear that this broader definition, which goes beyond the medical realm, has long remained underutilized in social practice. In 2001, the 54th World Health Assembly (WHO) endorsed the use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), intended to better coordinate research and surveillance activities in the field of health among member states. Despite the many debates surrounding it, the ICF embodies the commitment to giving 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 examining the interplay between different levels of analysis (individual behaviors, personal experiences, the actions of groups and communities, institutional frameworks, and their practices, norms, and laws), the team aims to study how situations of disability are constructed in educational, athletic, and professional settings, resulting from a problematic encounter between populations affected by disorders, pathologies, or impairments and their social and cultural environments.
The objective is twofold: to study and model the processes by which disabilities are created and reduced among different populations in various social contexts, and to propose effective strategies for reducing them.
The laboratory is affiliated with Doctoral School 60, “Territories, Time, Societies, and Development,” atPaul Valéry University in Montpellier.
