Disability Worlds

Social Analysis

This article places anthropology in dialogue with critical disability studies (CDS) in order to reassess historical and emerging ethnographic readings of difference. We argue that one unintended consequence of a lack of attention to disability in anthropology, generally, has been an impoverished conception of personhood and power. Building on insights from CDS and the ethnographic literature, we show how non-normative bodies and minds can play a critical role in relationships with non-human others and exemplary persons. Looking beyond hegemonic and secular ideas of disability as a form of misfortune or lack not only offers alternatives for being with disability, in keeping with the aims of CDS, but also shows new directions for comparative discussions of power and difference.

Contributors to this volume are anthropologists conversant with disability studies perspectives and in one case a disability studies scholar conversant with anthropological approaches. We asked them to critically evaluate the methods, models, and theories used by anthropology and disability studies in studying impairment and disability. We encouraged them to view their own ethnographic research and writing as part of the dialogue between anthropology and disability studies. We are quite excited with the papers we received as they demonstrate the fruitfulness that can result from this kind of interdisciplinary engagement.

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 2024

This review focuses on three recent interventions that expand the ethnographic scrutiny of disability and stretch its analytical potentials. Erin Rafferty’s Families We Need addresses the redefinition of kinship grammars through the temporary production of alternative family arrangements. Arseli Dokumacı’s Activist Affordances primarily explores the experiential ecologies of people with non-normative bodies in predominantly ableist worlds, while Michele Friedner’s Sensory Futures examines the role of technological infrastructures in foregrounding new state-driven neoliberal atmospheres of normality.

Current Anthropology, 2020

Disability Studies Quarterly, 2001

vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, 2011

Impairment and disability are fundamental human experiences across cultures, yet disability remains curiously under-studied and under-theorized within anthropology, particularly within physical anthropology and archaeology. Why is this the case and how might this change? This paper critically examines anthropology’s varying detachment from and engagement with disability studies up to the present. It is suggested that a holistic approach which integrates data and insights from archaeology, physical anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology would offer the means for an important and distinctly anthropological contribution to the study of disability in the past and present. Direction is taken from previous anthropological work on women/gender and Indigenous peoples, particularly the use of a political-economic approach. It is argued that a focus on theoretically-situated bodies, increased inclusion of people with disabilities, and a demonstrated relevance to current disability issues will be essential aspects of an integrated anthropology of disability.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (eds) F. Stein, S. Lazar, M. Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez & R. Stasch. http://doi.org/10.29164/18disab 1, 2018

Disability is a form of difference that is created when the social participation of someone with an impairment is ‘dis-abled’ by normative expectations and material conditions. This entry reviews some of the key contributions anthropologists have made to studying disability as a socially constructed category. Disability is at once central and marginal to the anthropological canon. Grounded in fine-grained, long-term ethnographic fieldwork, anthropological studies of disability have drawn attention to the relational nature of disability as a category that is variable despite its quality as a universal human experience. This entry starts by explaining the difference between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ before reviewing the trajectory of anthropological studies of disability – in mostly western industrialized contexts – from a ‘medical’ to a ‘social’ framework of understanding. It then turns to consider some of the theoretical orientations this has produced and examines a more recent shift to studying the lived experience of disability beyond the Euro-American west. It concludes by reviewing some of the developments in studying disability in recent years, in which scholars focus on social organization, technology, and personal, embodied experiences.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1997

Disability Studies, concerned with deciphering the complexities of social construction of disability, examines the legitimacy of the individualistic biomedical considerations of impairment. The social model, challenging the dominant medical paradigm that fixed impairment and reasons for exclusion in the individual, posits society at the centre of disability discourse. Moving beyond the notions of individual and impairment, the Critical Disability Studies argues for contesting the ‘context’ in constructing disability. This paper, besides attempting to explicate the different models of disability and trying to bring out the constraints that disability scholarship in India has to negotiate with, argues for an indigenous framework to understand disability.

Studies. The goal of these Papers is to broaden interest in the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary study and teaching of disability. Among others, future issues will include a survey of disability studies programs, curriculum development ideas and syllabi, and theoretical debates.