This paper discusses possibilities of designing ethical research practice in relation to people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). We will argue that in the case of this group of people, research ethics is about ethically justifiable research aims, design, methods, and practices that are based on the recognition of their equal worth as humans. We argue that the turn to emancipatory methods in disability studies has effectively excluded persons with PIMD as they implicitly assume that research participants have the kind of cognitive and communicative capacities that persons with PIMD lack. Their exclusion from disability studies is further reinforced by the theoretical tradition of the field that has emphasised the material arrangements of society, as well as the ableist cultural ideologies as key factors contributing to disabled people's social exclusion. It is problematic to apply these approaches to individuals whose lives are marked by insurmountable impairment effects. Research ethics should take into account potential disparities of cognitive ability and power between researchers and research participants. Using an ongoing ethnographic study about the lives of persons with PIMD as an example, we describe in detail what positioning research participants as moral subjects could mean in practice.

Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpretive accounts which then dominated medical sociology, so too has CDS challenged the materialist line of disability studies. In this paper we review the ideas behind this development and analyse and critique some of its key ideas. The paper starts with a brief overview of the main theorists and approaches contained within CDS and then moves on to normative issues; namely, to the ethical and political applicability of CDS.

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This study analyzes the discursive construction of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and self in relation to a socioculturally shared understanding of moral norms. Thirteen Finnish youth aged 11 to 16 diagnosed with ADHD were interviewed during this discourse analysis study. The youth accounted for their culturally undesirable behavior, performance and traits through three different types of accounts: (1) externalizing personal responsibility due to a compelling medical condition, (2) internalizing personal responsibility through moral self-condemnation, and (3) distancing oneself from the socially imposed stereotypes and stigmas related to ADHD. This study challenges dominant understanding of young people with a diagnosis of ADHD and contributes to our understanding of how ADHD is constructed in their lives.

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