Disability/Anthropology: Rethinking the Parameters of the Human

Ginsburg, Faye; Rapp, Rayna

doi:10.1086/705503

Cited by 51 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…As Klinken suggests, the benefit of seeing power and personhood in a post-secular way is that it challenges the reification of colonial distinctions between modern and non-modern, Western and non-Western, metaphysical and pre-modern worldviews. With disability, this would allow for cross-cultural examples involving exemplary persons who come to the fore as connected to unique disability worlds (see Devlieger et al 2016;Ginsburg and Rapp 2020).…”

Section: Relating To Exemplary Persons and Comparative Disabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Critical and Comparative Anthropology of Disability

et al. 2021

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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.

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Section: Relating To Exemplary Persons and Comparative Disabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Critical and Comparative Anthropology of Disability

et al. 2021

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“… 12. Anthropologists focusing their research on disability make similar criticisms of their discipline (Ginsburg & Rapp, 2020). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dis-mantling stigma: Parenting disabled children in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’

Thomas

2020

The Sociological Review

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The concept of ‘stigma’ is a dominant presence in many disciplines, yet it frequently remains ill-defined, individualist, and dislocated from matters of power, inequality and resistance. Extending a budding literature on rethinking the sociology of stigma, I draw upon interviews with parents of children with Down’s syndrome to revisit one of sociology’s most enduring concepts. I explore how parents articulate new imaginaries of difference which depart from narratives of disability as tragic and pitiful, and promote notions of dignity and worth. Parents talk of their children as a reason for celebration and pride, discuss their experiences of convivial community relations and public interactions, and praise evolving configurations of disability in popular media. Yet parents simultaneously highlight painful, convoluted and exhausting experiences with institutions (education, healthcare, welfare) as part of what they believe to be a wider (structural) hostility to disability that forces them into a series of ‘fights’ and ‘battles’. Whilst parents resist deficit framings of their children, and their lives more broadly, they lament dwelling in a society whereby disabled people, and their families, navigate enmity and indifference. In this article, then, I dis-mantle common conceptions of stigma by revealing not only its interactional properties, but also its political economy, in which disabled people are devalued, discounted, and cast as disposable in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’ (Goodley 2014).

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“…Yet women of color ideologically and magically morph into appropriate personal and carehome attendants, nannies, domestic servants, and other low-waged gendered/ raced employees. That diabolical shape shifting from evil to angelic caregiver is business as usual, long analyzed and contested in the writings and advocacy of Black and other women of color authors who live inside this "double consciousness" (Collins 2000(Collins , 2019Crenshaw 1989;Glenn 2010;Itzigsohn and Brown 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…First, anthropologists have much to learn from Disability Studies, yet our field has been slow to incorporate its questions, methods, and findings (Durban 2021; Ginsburg and Rapp 2020). This interdisciplinary field has focused on care as both an underfunded, despised mark of inferiority for caregivers and care receivers; and as a collective endeavor and public goal of a social movement.…”

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confidence: 99%

Afterword: Unsettling Care for Anthropologists

Rapp

2020

Anthropology and Humanism

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As Joanna Cook and Catherine Trundle, editors of this special section of Anthropology and Humanism announce in their title, introduction, and individual articles, care entails unsettled relations. Often publicly and domestically entangled in moral imperatives and duties, embodied attention to the needs of others is built into the life of our species: from pregnancy, birth, and early childhood throughout the life span to old age, debility, and death, our interdependencies have long been subject to examination in the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences. Yet too often, methodological individualism in social science analyses designates these gives and takes of caring for/ being cared for the exceptional case rather than always already woven into the fabric of human sociality. Instead, much Euro American theory focused on care has conventionally highlighted tensions of dependency and autonomy. But the majority of human history and sociocultural variation suggests otherwise: when viewed more globally, interdependency constitutes the enduring mesh of social life. Thus, the appearance and disappearance of care is built into its instability in a broadly shared analytic framework. What might anthropology bring to this inescapable conversation? Of the myriad themes these essays engage, I will briefly mention three. First, the articles collected here are all ethnographic. This move from analysis of norms and values in theory to the examination of the messiness of daily practices of care adds powerful instances of the inherent instability that accompanies tending to the needs of others. Anthropology's contemporary turn to practice theory provides our authors with a versatile lens, allowing them to use these ethnographic examples to explore care practices from multiple perspectives and foci. These do not necessarily align with ease. In "Care and Resistance," for example, Parveez Mody demonstrates how understandings of care evolve across the time of generations, as forced marriages arranged by some south Asian Muslim parents for their young adult children in the United Kingdom are not only resisted or accepted but open up space for new understandings of kinship obligations and practices. What is initially experienced as cruel and hateful care may later be reinterpreted in a softer, even positive, light. Hannah Brown uses her fieldwork-based ethnographic knowledge, in "Domestic Labor as Care and Growth in Western Kenya," to highlight care as a joint and broad project of social reproduction, sustaining the lives of people, animals, and crops through perilous conditions. Translated from the Luo, the word for "care" also

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Disability/Anthropology: Rethinking the Parameters of the Human

Cited by 51 publications

References 63 publications

Toward a Critical and Comparative Anthropology of Disability

Toward a Critical and Comparative Anthropology of Disability

Dis-mantling stigma: Parenting disabled children in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’

Afterword: Unsettling Care for Anthropologists

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