Disablity

Theories and practices of disability from the Global South: a critical anthropological perspective

“…Even before interest in disability widened in the early 1970s, a few pioneers in Social and Cultural Anthropology had explored such topics. Ruth Benedict conducted an analysis of epilepsy in 1934, and Jane and Lucien Hanks focused their attention on the sociocultural entanglements between physical “abnormalities” and social status in 1948 ( 39 ). Despite these early attempts, academic interest in disability began in earnest with civil rights movements around the 1960s, primarily in the US and the UK.…”

“…Edgerton's study on the social reintegration of people with cognitive disabilities in 1967, Geyla Frank's analysis of Diane DeVries, an American woman who had no limbs due to a “congenital anomaly,” in 1982, and Joan Ablon's studies on people with dwarfism in the US are significant ethnographic and anthropological works on normativity, ableism and disability in Global North contexts ( 39 ). Developed in relation to and/or tension with analyses in the then-interdisciplinary arena of Disability Studies, these ethnographic works were the first to delve deeper into the subjective experiences of people with disabilities, examining their formation of networks of solidarity, demonstrating their capacity for agency, and exploring social practices around the social and political (re)affirmation of symbolic alter-states of “normality” beyond shared ideologies of able-bodiedness ( 39 , 48 , 70 ). These works are considered groundbreaking, as such scholars expanded the study of disability beyond the socio-therapeutic focus of the “medical model of disability” and highlighted that illness or suffering do not perfectly clarify its nature ( 26 ).…”

“…Consequently, values such as individuality, equality, and independence, which are often taken for granted in Global North contexts, clash with notions and aspirations of communitarian interdependence in other sociocultural contexts. When such ideas are promoted globally under various power dynamics, there is a risk of elevating them to universal ideas of (human) rights ( 26 , 39 ). Although set in the Global North academic world, Murphy's foundational autoethnography ( 79 ) illustrates the marginalization and stigma faced by individuals with disabilities who cannot adhere to values of independence and individuality.…”

“…Ginsburg and Rapp ( 37 , 38 ) have clarified and critically summarized the global/local dynamics concerning disability rights and politics, the construction of alternative kinship frameworks, feminist and gender perspectives on difference, biopolitics, and the structural violence faced by individuals with non-normative bodies and the significance of material-symbolic infrastructures, technologies, and digital realms. In a similar vein, Devlieger ( 39 ) has directed attention to citizenship and belonging in the context of disability, to the impact of technology, and to the use of autoethnography, embodiment, and reflexivity as modalities through which individuals with disability articulate and scrutinize their own encounters and engagements with norms in society. Building on one of the first analyses of disability in sociocultural anthropology ( 35 , 60 , 82 ), other scholars have delved deeper into the intricate connections between disability and various forms of technology (e.g., social, material/instrumental, technical, etc.)…”

“…In recent years, sociocultural and political analyses of disability in various geographical areas have been enriched by experiential and phenomenological perspectives on living with non-normative bodies in a given society ( 39 ). Several ethnographic works have highlighted how experiences of being-in-the-world with a non-normative body are determined not only by individual will but also shaped by power dynamics and sociocultural categorizations imposed by political changes, postcolonial dynamics, colonial histories, social institutions and individual economic status ( 47 , 56 , 71 , 73 , 74 ).…”