W kierunku nowej tożsamości – osoby niepełnosprawne w drodze ku emancypacji
Toward a New Identity: Disabled Persons On Their Way to Emancipation

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary society is changing under the influence of new media and informatics technologies. It results in a crisis of legitimization, affecting the meaning and function of institutions which used to be the basis for societal existence. It is accompanied by a disintegration of traditional communities of industrial society. These processes have an effect on the lives of disabled persons. Virtual communities emerging in the Internet, which bring together people struggling with similar problems, who wish to find assistance, council and support, help mitigate the impact of crisis and the atrophy of communities of old. They build a framework for creating new identity of disabled persons, which can take up a form of a challenge to the discriminatory model of thinking about disability and make for a kind of space of resistance against the practices of discrimination and exclusion. It can also evolve in the direction of emancipation. The main purpose of the article is to reconstruct the types of identity of disabled persons construed within the framework of communities and initiatives, based on interviews with 51 disabled persons who are active on the Web on behalf of their community.

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