Understanding of deaf otherness from a sociocultural perspective

The following paper seeks to determine how the relationships between deaf people and hearing people who make up the deaf community of the deaf people's Association of Ourense are built. Through the immersion in their dynamics of interaction it is possible to offer an ethnographic description on the ways of being of the -other- deaf as linguistic and cultural minority. The exclusion approaches of their community are articulated around the construction of the access to the -other- hearing people and the forms of inclusion, they need an identity consolidation like a deaf person and the in-corporation of the own language-sign language- and culture.The understanding of duality identity/otherness, based on development cultural capacities, allows to guide social intervention with the collective of deaf people from a sociocultural perspective in opposition to a medical-rehabilitative based on notions of disability or handicap.