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Rescaling Disability: The Construction of a European Social Group and Policy Arena
Behinderung redimensionieren: die Konstruktion einer sozialen Gruppe und eines politischen Felds in Europa
[journal article]
Abstract Control over the production, the circulation and the use of statistical knowledge is inextricably linked to bureaucratic forms of domination. The historiography of the building of the modern State insists on the tight relationship between the capacity to collect and utilise statistical knowledge and... view more
Control over the production, the circulation and the use of statistical knowledge is inextricably linked to bureaucratic forms of domination. The historiography of the building of the modern State insists on the tight relationship between the capacity to collect and utilise statistical knowledge and the consolidation of bureaucratic domination. The creation of statistical categories symbolically unifies territories, social groups and practices. Similarly, the European Union has invested heavily in harmonising statistical categories, thereby providing institutions and actors with uniform descriptive languages. However, unlike statistical constructs of the Nation States of the 18th and 19th Centuries, European statistical categories are generated in a context of pre-existing statistical categories structuring public policies and social practice and institutions. The article will be empirically based on the emergence of EU disability policy which managed to carve out a new arena for policy discussion and coordination form the 1990s on. Although this policy does not imply a transfer of sovereignty, the statistical unification of this social group at the European level and the structuring of interest groups and expert groups can be interpreted as an exercise of rescaling which has transformed the definition of disability as a policy problem and operated a shift in resources and legitimacies among stakeholders. Despite the successful creation of a unified statistical category, the article will look into some reasons for the limited use of disability statistics in policy making, but then show how alliances put in place by the Commission with interest groups and expert circles institutionalised a new European sector for policy discussion.... view less
Keywords
national politics; social policy; EU policy; policy area; sociology of knowledge; social integration; statistics; disability; institutionalization
Classification
Social Policy
Social History, Historical Social Research
European Politics
Free Keywords
rescaling
Document language
English
Publication Year
2017
Page/Pages
p. 343-366
Journal
Historical Social Research, 42 (2017) 2
Issue topic
Spatial Dimensions of Governance in 20th Century Political Struggles
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.42.2017.2.343-366
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed