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REVIEW article

Front. Sociol.

Sec. Medical Sociology

Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1562498

This article is part of the Research Topic Novel Sociological Methods and Practices of Engagement across Disability Communities View all 4 articles

'[T]he most precise and thorough understanding of the situation we are struggling to change': Re-capturing Emancipatory Disability Research [Author]

Provisionally accepted
  • The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This article seeks to contribute to a refoundation of the analytic, qualitative and quantitative methods associated with Emancipatory Disability Research (EDR) – an episto-political approach to disability research which places lay disabled people in positions of authority over research design, operation, and analysis of projects undertaken by professional academics. The argument of this article is that a significant reason for EDR’s meagre impact on political practice, the burnout and disillusionment of some of its most talented proponents, and its failure to develop beyond limited applications in sociology and disability studies lies in the disjointed and asymmetrical development of its aims and methods. I indicate, particularly, that the core evaluation signifiers for EDR’s success (that disabled people concretely benefit from the research, and control both its future direction and the uses made of it) rested on an initial demand from disabled activists for scientific rigour and a realist ontology in research which were subsequently rejected by EDR’s academic advocates. Without a grounding in the scientific method, a meta-theory of subject-object relations and knowledge, or an evaluative framework for the objective accuracy of input concepts; EDR’s research framework prevented practitioners from producing outputs for which there was a demonstrable demand, while promising forms of research for which there was not.

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    Received: 17 Jan 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Beesley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Luke Beesley, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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