From the Institutionalisation of 'All Disabilities' to Comprehensive Sports Integration: France Joining the Paralympic Movement (1954-2012)

• Published in: International journal of the history of sport Vol. 31; no. 17; pp. 2245 - 2265
• Main Authors: Ruffié, Sébastien, Ferez, Sylvain, Lantz, Elise
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 22.11.2014; Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Subjects: Automobiles; Bargaining; Committees; Disability; Disabled persons; Doctors; England; France; French handisport; History; Humanities and Social Sciences; Ideologies; institutionalisation; Institutionalization; Paralympic Games; Physically Handicapped; Social Integration; sport; Sports; Paralympic Games; French handisport; sport; disability; institutionalisation
• ISSN: 0952-3367; 1743-9035
• DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2014.931842

This article presents the institutional implications and ideologies in the organisation of a Sports Movement for the disabled, whether a physical or sensory handicap, and focusing particular attention on its development in France, linked with international structures. The emergence and development in France of sports organisations for the disabled is based on a different model from that introduced in England by Guttmann through the Stoke Mandeville Games. From the 1960s, both trends, one supported by physicians and the other by individuals concerned with disabilities, structured the International Movement as a contest of negotiations and competition. The objective of rehabilitating paraplegics put in place at Stoke Mandeville gradually gave way to a sport rational and the integration of all types of disability within the Movement. The desire to unite in a single organisation was the driving force of the Movement in its search for dual recognition, on the one hand, as the representative of all physical and sensory deficiencies and, on the other, by the able-bodied sports councils and, in particular, the International Olympic Committee. However, this raised a number of issues inherent to any deficiency when taking into account its specific peculiarities.