Sociology Paralympic Special 2010 Anonymised Resubmission 2.pdf (96.39 kB)
Cyborg and supercrip: the paralympics technology and the (dis)empowerment of disabled athletes
journal contribution
posted on 2014-09-26, 11:16 authored by David HoweOver the last two decades the Paralympic Games have gained a high public profile. As a result
there has been an ever increasing commercial marketplace for aerodynamic and feather light
racing (wheel)chairs as well as biomechanically and ergonomically responsive prostheses that
have helped create a legion of cyborg bodies that is manifest in the image of the sporting
supercrip. Mobility devices that enhance performance have also created a divide between different
impairment groups and also amongst ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations. This article highlights
the development of a technocentric ideology within the Paralympic Movement that has led to the
cyborgification of some Paralympic bodies. It questions whether the advances in technology are
actually empowering disabled athletes.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
SOCIOLOGY-THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONVolume
45Issue
5Pages
868 - 882 (15)Citation
HOWE, P.D., 2011. Cyborg and supercrip: the paralympics technology and the (dis)empowerment of disabled athletes. Sociology, 45 (5), pp. 868 - 882.Publisher
SAGE © The AuthorVersion
- SMUR (Submitted Manuscript Under Review)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2011Notes
This article was published in the journal, Sociology [SAGE © The Author] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038511413421ISSN
0038-0385Publisher version
Language
- en