New challenges for sociology: reinterpreting the complexity of the social, between disability studies and sociological classics. An interpretative proposal to reinterpret a complex phenomenon

This proposal is set within the theoretical framework of disability studies (Oliver and Barnes, 2010). The aim is to restore the interpretation of disability, understood as a complex social phenomenon, through a critical rereading of the great classics. According to Émile Durkheim (1895), the phenomenon can be interpreted by following the dualism normality-abnormality: by "normal" we mean the facts that present the most general forms, while the others are considered pathological (abnormal), thus determining a well-defined boundary line; in his thought it is possible to note how the author shows a particular interest in this distinction, intended as a light to illuminate the practice of things, in this way disability takes on a value as an object of study, becoming a social fact. Even Karl Marx (1875), exponent of the conflictualist approach, proposes the overlap between the condition of disability and normality, rereading it in the following terms: dualism between the bourgeoisie (dominant class)/proletariat (dominated class). The class of the disabled would not respond to any of the above, however it would be close to what the author defines as the sub- proletariat (Marx, 1875). In this view, illness and disabling factors for the individual are configured as insurmountable barriers, as a result of which the individual, understood as non-labour force, risks experiencing exclusion from the productive system; disability is thus configured as an obstacle to social inclusion. Continuing the analysis, in order to avoid this, according to Claudio Imprudente (Canevaro and Ianes, 2003), the person with a disability should make the painful journey of accepting his or her own limitations, embracing the difference inherent in the normality of the other, in order to concretely realise what Weber (1922) defines as social action. In this perspective, it is society's task to rethink strategies that do not make the person disabled, but a welcoming community for individual differences, re-appropriating a dimension that is its own, reistituting itself.