Zola, Irving (1935–1994)

A medical sociologist, Zola was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and an activist in the disability rights and self-help movements in the United States. His Harvard education opened the world for him but he never forgot his working-class roots, reflected in his interests in gambling, juvenile delinquency, and the downtrodden. His early experience with polio and later involvement in a serious automobile accident left him with orthopedic and neurological impairments which resulted in a disability affecting his mobility.

Zola's dissertation explored differential perceptions of pain and differences in behavior when seeking medical help among three diverse cultural groups in Boston: Irish Americans, Italians, and Jews. His later work highlighted the subjective experience of disability, being an embodied subject, and the universality of disability. He was Chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, founder of the Disabilities Studies Quarterly, which publishes articles, personal statements, book and film reviews, and news of interest to the academic disability community, and a key member of the disability movement responsible for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the emergence of disability studies as a field. He was one of the moving forces in establishing the Society for Disability Studies. Zola was a scholar who contributed to symbolic interactionism, incorporating a critical component of pragmatism into his research by combining academic research and activism. He was, on the one hand, a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on disability, organized to identify the critical research issues in need of funding, and, on the other, an activist who could be seen demonstrating on the steps of a court house about accessibility.

His principal works include “Medicine as an Institution of Social Control” (1972, Sociological Review) Missing Pieces (1982), and “Bringing our Bodies and Ourselves back in” (1991, Journal of Health & Social Behavior).