What is Disability Studies?

English: A collection of pictograms. Three of them used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing those three and all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From what the Critical Model Packet says,  disability studies is nothing like what I thought it was when I saw the words on the assignment page.  According to the packet, disability studies uses what's called "the social model,  which looks at how a culture constructs the identity of persons with disabilities."  What I'm getting from this is that I'm supposed to be looking at my film (Avatar) to see how Jake is affected by other people's ideas -- and his own, too, I guess -- about people with disabilities.  For example, when he gets to Pandora, the people on the ship seem to be ignoring him completely and he has some problems getting his stuff together before he can exit, but when he leaves the ship, the guys in the landing area pick on him just as they pick on everyone else.  So, it seems to me that the people on the ship, the ones who made the ship, and the people in charge are basically discriminating against him, while the soldiers outside are not.  

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