1. The Disability Rights Movement: A Sociological Perspective
David Pettinicchio
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology

2. What’s a social movement ?
A social movement “is a set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represents preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society”
social movements are often represented by formal organizations
Targets vary

3. Social movement success
What do social movements do and how do we know they’re good at doing them?
Have to look at the target
They shift public opinion
They influence the media
They affect policy
They become co-opted into the state
They influence court cases
A note on cooption as a negative outcome

4. Ways we think of social movements
I will discuss three major sociological theories which I will apply to disability rights
Resource mobilization
professionalization
Organizational ecology
Density dependence
Political Process
Political opportunity structure

5. Findings How have we empirically tested these theories?
Two major cases: women’s movement and black civil rights movement
We found that women and black civil rights movements have experienced similar mobilization due to political opportunities in the 1960s
We also found that groups became more professionalized over time and less protest oriented in the 1970s and 1980s

6. What is the disability rights movement?
Some sociologists would argue there was no disability rights movement until much later
There was little mobilization as sociologists would define it until the 80s.
Were organizations actually able to mobilize resources for beneficiaries so as to promote social change? (RM)
Doesn’t appear that organizations were organized around advocacy (as strategy) (Ecology)
What political opportunities are they responding to if not those other movements were responding to? (Political Process)
Remember, our theories have been tested using specific movements
Does this make sociological theory unable to explain disability rights? On the contrary, we can use these theories to explain disability rights mobilization
Because the same processes are at work, just that the case and timing is different than women’s movement and black civil rights

7. What makes disability rights an interesting empirical case?
A movement that has had to define its place within a civil rights frame
What does this mean and why is this important?
For much of its history, beneficiaries were not organizational members
Why might this matter to social movements?
Don’t have a “necessary opposition”
A movement that already had an advantage that most other movements didn’t have and this is an advantage that was not a result of the movement: The Rehab Act of 1973
“the movement was in the government”

8. What do I expect to find? Resource Mobilization Organizational ecology
Professionalized groups are able to use resource-expensive tactics like lobbying and legal mobilization but this won’t happen until there are advocacy oriented organizations
Organizational ecology
Prior to the late 1970s, disability groups will be service-provision oriented, and probably single focused.
Later, due to density-dependence, organizations try to adapt and adopt new more advocacy or protest oriented strategies.
Political Opportunity
But organizations will only adopt advocacy or protests if the environment in which they operate calls for it
Why the late 70s and 80s? Rather than responding to an opening in the Political opportunity structure, they were responding to retrenchment.
What am I referring to here?

9. Social Movements and Legal Mobilization
A specific tactic used by movement organizations is initializing the courts on behalf of plaintiffs
But legal mobilization is a resource-expensive strategy because it requires money, staff and expertise
But the payoffs could be great
Monetary, expansion of case law, setting precedent

10. What do studies show?
Extra-legal or policy based models for legal outcomes
Justices’ party affiliation, preferences, won’t hear cases they know the court won’t overturn, etc.
We also know that EEO studies have found that cases with amicus curiae are more likely to get heard, and also more likely to have a favorable outcome
EEO mobilization in the 1970s experienced a favorable tide when courts were sympathetic to African American and women plaintiffs

11. Disability rights and legal mobilization: An empirical question
What laws are disability plaintiffs mobilizing?
Does it matter to ask this question?
Rehabilitation Act: Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship
What has been the problem or what may distinguish disability plaintiffs from others?
Did you know that Nixon vetoed the Rehab Act twice, but never because of the affirmative action section. It was the costs of accommodation that sent out a signal.

12. What is needed then for disability legal mobilization to be successful?
Advocacy organizations
Resource-rich organizations
Legislation under which to file suit (or at least, an impetus to use the courts)
Positive/negative reaction by courts can stimulate further mobilization

13. A victory for one minority is victory for all?
Why do you think scholars would say this?
Do you agree?