modernists would define as ‘non-functioning’. The relativist position that postmodernity follows provides greater insight into the impact of media representations on constructing realities, which reinforces that there is no absolute knowledge.

The classification of disability exemplifies the differing approaches to knowledge that modernity and postmodernity offer. The medical model of disability links diagnosis to an individual’s anatomy by recognising disability as a ‘problem’ for the individual and not society. Whereas, the social model identifies that society that ‘disables’ the person (Shakespeare & Watson, 2002). According to Corker and Shakespeare (2006), the medical model epitomises the modernist knowledge systems, meaning that truth claims based on scientific inquiry were considered more valuable than experience (Mease, 2017). While this approach is beneficial for classification, it fails to consider the lived experience by limiting the understanding of disability to a generalised anatomical sense. Conversely, the social model reflects postmodernity by acknowledging that disabilities are experienced differently, and society should make continuous efforts to accommodate the individual needs of the person. Shakespeare and Watson (2002) challenge this by positioning the social model as a modernist concept by arguing that it reduces disability to a totalising meta-narrative. In response, the ambiguity surrounding the discourse defining disability to the social and medical models reinforces the uncertainty of defining modernity and postmodernity into distinctive categories. Nevertheless, the medical and social models reflect the changes in the philosophy of SSR by exhibiting the development of modernist principles into postmodernity as leading to significant progression of thinking about the social world.

While modernity and postmodernity differ in their approach to knowledge