About Prof. David Pettinicchio
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, based at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where I currently serve as Interim Chair of the Department of Sociology. I am also affiliated faculty at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. I served two years as the Associate Chair of the University of Toronto Tri-Campus Graduate Program. I completed a two-year term as Executive Co-Editor of the Canadian Review of Sociology, the flagship journal of the Canadian Sociological Association, and I previously served as Chair of the Disability and Society Section of the American Sociological Association.
My research sits at the intersections of public policy, political sociology, and stratification. I study how political constituencies form, how they engage with institutions over time, and how organizational and cultural spaces shape inequality—especially disability-based inequality and its gendered, racialized, and classed dimensions. A recurring focus of my work is how evaluative systems and gatekeeping practices—formal and informal—shape access to opportunities, legitimacy, and resources. A central aim of my work is to explain when institutional arrangements and participation channels reproduce inequality regimes (including in labour markets) and when they enable meaningful challenge and change.
Methodologically, I use mixed methods, including field experiments, surveys, and qualitative interviews. One line of research uses field experiments to examine the barriers people with disabilities encounter in hiring and employment, and how these barriers shift as labour markets change—particularly in the context of digital transformation and the rise of AI. This includes attention to how screening and assessment practices operate as gatekeeping mechanisms and how they distribute risk and opportunity unequally. In related projects, I extend this framework to cultural industries, examining how consumption and production dynamics in sectors such as fashion and beauty both reproduce inequality and respond to pressures for “diversity” and “inclusion,” with particular attention to the role of new media. Across these settings, I examine how standards of “fit,” “quality,” and “brand safety” function as evaluative filters that shape visibility and inclusion.
In recent work, my collaborators and I have conducted a national multi-wave survey of people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, complemented by in-depth qualitative interviews, to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped economic security, mental health, and policy and political attitudes. This work also speaks to how policy categories, eligibility rules, and administrative measures can diverge from lived experience, with implications for equity and accountability. I have published in journals including Gender & Society, Journal of Consumer Culture, Law & Policy, and the Canadian Review of Sociology, among others.
My first book, Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform (Stanford University Press, 2019), explains how disability rights policy can be both a site of innovation and vulnerability over time. My second book, Sixty Years of Visible Protest in the Disability Struggle for Equality, Justice, and Inclusion (Cambridge University Press, 2024), situates visible protest so as to provide a more nuanced picture of cycles of contention as they relate to political and organizational processes, strategies and tactics, and short-and-long-term outcomes. I also co-edited the Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability (Oxford University Press) and have a book under contract with Princeton University Press (with Jordan Foster) examining how “diversity” is produced, contested, and received in cultural markets. Taken together, my work traces how inequality is reproduced and contested through the often-overlooked infrastructures of evaluation, classification, and gatekeeping that shape who is recognized, included, and supported.
Book Reviews:
In American Journal of Sociology by Jeremy Levine
In Social Forces by Didem Turkoglu
In Law and Society Review by Doron Dorfman
In Mobilization by Stephen J. Meyers
My research sits at the intersections of public policy, political sociology, and stratification. I study how political constituencies form, how they engage with institutions over time, and how organizational and cultural spaces shape inequality—especially disability-based inequality and its gendered, racialized, and classed dimensions. A recurring focus of my work is how evaluative systems and gatekeeping practices—formal and informal—shape access to opportunities, legitimacy, and resources. A central aim of my work is to explain when institutional arrangements and participation channels reproduce inequality regimes (including in labour markets) and when they enable meaningful challenge and change.
Methodologically, I use mixed methods, including field experiments, surveys, and qualitative interviews. One line of research uses field experiments to examine the barriers people with disabilities encounter in hiring and employment, and how these barriers shift as labour markets change—particularly in the context of digital transformation and the rise of AI. This includes attention to how screening and assessment practices operate as gatekeeping mechanisms and how they distribute risk and opportunity unequally. In related projects, I extend this framework to cultural industries, examining how consumption and production dynamics in sectors such as fashion and beauty both reproduce inequality and respond to pressures for “diversity” and “inclusion,” with particular attention to the role of new media. Across these settings, I examine how standards of “fit,” “quality,” and “brand safety” function as evaluative filters that shape visibility and inclusion.
In recent work, my collaborators and I have conducted a national multi-wave survey of people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, complemented by in-depth qualitative interviews, to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped economic security, mental health, and policy and political attitudes. This work also speaks to how policy categories, eligibility rules, and administrative measures can diverge from lived experience, with implications for equity and accountability. I have published in journals including Gender & Society, Journal of Consumer Culture, Law & Policy, and the Canadian Review of Sociology, among others.
My first book, Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform (Stanford University Press, 2019), explains how disability rights policy can be both a site of innovation and vulnerability over time. My second book, Sixty Years of Visible Protest in the Disability Struggle for Equality, Justice, and Inclusion (Cambridge University Press, 2024), situates visible protest so as to provide a more nuanced picture of cycles of contention as they relate to political and organizational processes, strategies and tactics, and short-and-long-term outcomes. I also co-edited the Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability (Oxford University Press) and have a book under contract with Princeton University Press (with Jordan Foster) examining how “diversity” is produced, contested, and received in cultural markets. Taken together, my work traces how inequality is reproduced and contested through the often-overlooked infrastructures of evaluation, classification, and gatekeeping that shape who is recognized, included, and supported.
Book Reviews:
In American Journal of Sociology by Jeremy Levine
In Social Forces by Didem Turkoglu
In Law and Society Review by Doron Dorfman
In Mobilization by Stephen J. Meyers
Sixty Years of Visible Protest in the Disability Struggle for Equality, Justice, and Inclusion
Abstract: Visible protests reflect both continuity and change. This Element illustrates how protest around long-standing issues and grievances is punctuated by movement dynamics as well as broader cultural and institutional environments. The disability movement is an example of how activist networks and groups strategically adapt to opportunity and threat, linking protest waves to the development of issue politics. The Element examines sixty years of protest across numerous issue areas that matter for disability including social welfare, discrimination, transportation, healthcare, and media portrayals. Situating visible protest in this way provides a more nuanced picture of cycles of contention as they relate to political and organizational processes, strategies and tactics, and short-and-long-term outcomes. It also provides clues about why protest ebbs and flows, when and how protest matters, who it matters for, and for what.www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/sixty-years-of-visible-protest-in-the-disability-struggle-for-equality-justice-and-inclusion/11CC638860348332B3FD3E6CE723B3B8
Sample chapter: 3 “Spread the Word” about Inclusion chapter3_inclusion.pdf
Abstract: Visible protests reflect both continuity and change. This Element illustrates how protest around long-standing issues and grievances is punctuated by movement dynamics as well as broader cultural and institutional environments. The disability movement is an example of how activist networks and groups strategically adapt to opportunity and threat, linking protest waves to the development of issue politics. The Element examines sixty years of protest across numerous issue areas that matter for disability including social welfare, discrimination, transportation, healthcare, and media portrayals. Situating visible protest in this way provides a more nuanced picture of cycles of contention as they relate to political and organizational processes, strategies and tactics, and short-and-long-term outcomes. It also provides clues about why protest ebbs and flows, when and how protest matters, who it matters for, and for what.www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/sixty-years-of-visible-protest-in-the-disability-struggle-for-equality-justice-and-inclusion/11CC638860348332B3FD3E6CE723B3B8
Sample chapter: 3 “Spread the Word” about Inclusion chapter3_inclusion.pdf
New Edited Volume (2023): The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability provides a timely and comprehensive overview of the wide range and depth of sociological theory and research on disability—brought together for the first time in one volume. Each section of the Handbook incorporates a uniquely sociological perspective, presented by experts on intersecting social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of disability and complementing disability scholarship. The 37 chapters in this Handbook, organized into three major sections, provide an assessment of where we have been, where we are now, and where we must go with research on and in the sociology of disability. The first section, Defining, Measuring, and Understanding Disability, reviews frameworks foundational to the study of disability, pushes for the inclusion of broader global perspectives, and addresses important dimensions of representation. The second section, Experiencing Disability across the Life Course, presents a combination of perspectives that tie together individual biography, societal, and historical contexts, while emphasizing continuity and change in the dynamic processes linking individuals, institutions, and structures over time. In the third section, Disability, Policy, and the Law, chapters investigate the reproduction of inequality through law, policy, and related institutions and systems, while highlighting how social and political participation empowers people with disabilities and helps to mitigate inequalities and social marginalization. The chapters included in this volume offer a multifaceted resource for students and experienced scientists alike on historical developments, main standards, key issues, and current challenges in the sociological study of disability at the global, national, and regional levels. Read my chapter with Maroto on relational inequality and disability here.
Book: Politics of Empowerment (Stanford University Press, 2019)
Despite the progress of decades-old disability rights policy, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, threats continue to undermine the wellbeing of Americans with disabilities. The U.S. is, thus, a policy innovator and laggard in this regard. In Politics of Empowerment, David Pettinicchio offers a historically grounded analysis of the singular case of US disability policy, countering long-held views of progress that privilege public demand as its primary driver. By the 1970s, a group of legislators and bureaucrats came to act as "political entrepreneurs." Motivated by personal and professional commitments, they were seen as experts leading a movement within the government. But as they increasingly faced obstacles to their legislative intentions, nascent disability advocacy and protest groups took the cause to the American people forming the basis of the contemporary disability rights movement. Drawing on extensive archival material, Pettinicchio redefines the relationship between grassroots advocacy and institutional politics, revealing a cycle of progress and backlash embedded in the American political system.
Stanford University Press, forthcoming late-summer 2019. Now available for pre-order on amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.
News & Media
Royal Society of Canada Policy Brief - Women with Disabilities and the Hierarchies of Disadvantage/Les femmes handicapées et la hiérarchie des désavantages
The Conversation - For Canadians with disabilities, multiple types of support were important during COVID-19
Hamilton Spectator - Who will vulnerable Canadians vote for?
The Conversation - Victoria’s Secret joins the ‘inclusive revolution,’ finally realizing diversity sell
The Toronto Star - COVID-19 affects the mental health of those already most vulnerable in society
The Toronto Star - Do Canadians trust where they get their news about the COVID-19 pandemic?
The Conversation - COVID-19: Financial future grim for Canadians with disabilities, health conditions
New Op-ed in the Toronto Star: Canadians with disabilities, chronic health conditions feel left behind by pandemic
The Toronto Star - COVID-19 affects the mental health of those already most vulnerable in society
The Toronto Star - Do Canadians trust where they get their news about the COVID-19 pandemic?
The Conversation - COVID-19: Financial future grim for Canadians with disabilities, health conditions
New Op-ed in the Toronto Star: Canadians with disabilities, chronic health conditions feel left behind by pandemic
