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Participation is a little discussed or researched concept in the social sciences, despite its importance in understanding activism. This article presents some theoretical and methodological considerations for promoting social participation and agency for disabled people through the work of psychologists associated with Brazilian public policies. This article takes the form of a discursive study, based on the dialogue between: a) Brazilian legislation on disability; b) Bader Sawaia’s Ethical-Political Psychology; and c) Disability Studies. Based on the assumption that psychological practices should promote participation and agency for disabled people, we present the elements that hinder or control participation. We then present theoretical methodological contributions to build practices that promote participation and agency, highlighting: a) critiques of moral and biomedical models of disability; b) understandings of disability from intersectional perspectives that incorporate it as a category of analysis; c) including disabled people in the construction of research and professional practices disabled people and d) the rupture with ableism, which blocks the participation of disabled people. Participation has shown to be a multidimensional concept that covers a spectrum of aspects – from the practice of activism to the constitution of subjectivity in disabled people.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 2

One common denominator of the novels and short stories by Lina Meruane (Chile, b. 1970) is the unconventional representation of illness and disability, and a critique of the connections between illness or disability, medicine and globalization. In this paper, I examine her novel Fruta podrida (2007) (rotten fruit) and the challenge it poses to the globalization of food production and pharmacological research as they affect people living in the Global South. This critique is realized obliquely and disturbingly from three distinct subject positions: a Chilean chemist who works for a fruit company in Chile; her half-sister who has diabetes; and a nurse in a New York City hospital. The linguistic and structural complexity of the narrative discourse demands an engagement with the text that places a further demand on its readers to engage with the inequalities and abuses created under globalization.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

The present article fosters a dialogue among multiple currents of literary research. Disability scholars such as Garland-Thomson, Davis, and Mitchell and Snyder, have famously explored the literary conventions of normativity. Their queries on normates and statistical averages, form a parallel line of thought with Moretti’s (2007) ‘distant reading’ of the novel. These two distinct pathways- distant reading and disability- lead to the same questioning of the accepted aesthetics of rationality, which of course interests scholars of Anthropocene. An environmental thinker of the stature of Ghosh (2016) has already taken up Moretti’s observations, and the present article places that engagement into a still richer context, with decolonial thinkers such as Grech, Maldonado-Torres, and Mignolo. This broad juxtaposition of thinkers, indicates that disability thought already prepares the environmentally conscious imagination to reach for alternatives to ableist and colonial readings. The principles of this wideranging theoretical dialogue are then put to the test with examples drawn from three Mexican writers’ fiction. The novels Formol (2014) by Carla Faesler (b. 1967) and Despúes del invierno (2014) by Guadalupe Nettel (b. 1973), along with the short story ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’ from El esquinista (2014) by Laia Jufresa (1983), review colonial habits using the aesthetic of realism and end up in familiar disenchantment that forestalls the possibility of an alternative. Nevertheless, these texts manage to interrupt their conventional fictions in the realist mode for moments of mindfulness. These pauses from accepted reasoning suggest an alternative style of cogitation, against the assumptions of the ‘normate,’ that may support Felski’s and Latour’s calls for a turn away from disenchantment. The article concludes that literary fiction might begin to listen to its own science and contemplate environmental disaster through a more mindful mode of poetic thought, a perceptive thinking that does not automatically accept the conventions established for the rational as the only ‘realistic’ aesthetic. The breaks or ‘breathers’ from the conventions of rationality included in these three contemporary fictions point the way toward a permissible mode of wellbeing in accordance with decolonial goals. Even if such mindful writing does not ultimately take hold in literary fiction, it may still aid critics in reassessing the tendency of the normate to cast itself as a superior kind of victim.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Globally, Indigenous people, also known as First Peoples, have the poorest health outcomes of all population groups, resulting in significantly higher rates of chronic disease, ill-health, and disability. Recent research strongly suggests that Australian First Peoples and the Sami peoples of the Nordic region are positioned at opposite ends of the disability–health spectrum. Australia’s First Peoples, now experience the highest rates of disability in the nation’s recorded history, despite the significant government investment over recent decades in national Indigenous policy. Yet, Nordic Indigenous populations appear to have similar health outcomes and living conditions as the rest of the population in the region. In this paper, we compare some of the global assumptions of the two leading countries of the United Nations Human Development Index– Norway (ranked first) and Australia (ranked second)– and examine the ways in which such rankings act to hide the disparities of life trajectories and outcomes for Indigenous persons living with disability compared to the rest of the population in each country. The findings of the comparative analysis illustrate core areas for consideration when undertaking in-depth comparative research with First Nation’s peoples. This includes issues surrounding the differentiated political significance of national population data systems for local Indigenous peoples in their struggles for recognition, and the nuanced processes of population data categorisation that are developed as a result of First Nation’s localised struggles for recognition, respect and rights under processes of European colonisation.

Disability and the Global South, 2018, Vol.5, No. 2

Given the ambiguity surrounding the extent and experience of neurocognitive disability (NCD) among marginalised Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, evidence regarding the level and nature of NCD is crucial to ensure equitable access and inclusion into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This paper reports the results of the implementation of The Guddi Protocol (a culturally informed and appropriate screening protocol for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples) at two locations in Queensland. Results indicated high levels of NCD, and additional qualitative data revealed a number of factors associated with the complex disablement of study participants, namely: i) intergenerational trauma; ii) a social context of disadvantage, marginalisation and exclusion; and iii) the nonidentification of disability. The results are linked to implications for NDIS inclusion for this population, and recommendations are made. Unless the extent and nature of complex disability and the issues surrounding culturally safe policy, and service design and engagement are addressed with and by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including those who experience complex disablement, marginalised people will continue to be effectively excluded from the NDIS.

Disability and the Global South, 2018, Vol.5, No. 2

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of goals designed to improve the social, economic and well-being of all, while maintaining global and environmental sustainability. Health is one of the 17 goals, and focuses not only on addressing morbidity and mortality, but also on improving access to healthcare services for all through Universal Health Coverage (UHC). While disability is not specifically mentioned in this goal, a focus on people with disabilities is important given the inclusive nature of the SDGs and the fact that people with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the world. This paper aims to critically consider what the health goal could mean for people with disabilities and advocates for inclusive health. It discusses the complex relationship between disability and health, and why people with disabilities are more vulnerable to poor health are discussed, and then considers factors that impact access to quality healthcare for people with disabilities and how these impact on the achievement of the targets in SDG Health Goal and the main principles of UHC. The paper argues that developing an inclusive approach to healthcare will not only improve achieving good health for all, but is also important since experiencing poor health may reduce quality of life and participation (e.g. in education, employment or community activities). Poor quality of life and participation can exacerbate disability, poverty and exclusion in addition to increasing suffering, morbidity and early mortality. The paper concludes that an inclusive UHC will not only fulfil the fundamental rights of people with disabilities to health and rehabilitation, as emphasized within the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but also contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

This article is a presentation of insights gained through critical reflection on the experience of doctoral dissertation research on disability in Western Zambia. The framework guiding this critical reflection is the Principles for Global Health Research released by the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) in 2015. These six interrelated principles were developed in order to inform and foster research that better and more explicitly addresses health inequities. The principles are: humility, responsiveness to the causes of inequities, commitment to the future, inclusion, authentic partnering, and shared benefits. Critical reflection on the dissertation fieldwork raises the challenges of fulfilling each of the principles. Additionally, the structural power from a researcher in a position of relative privilege, as well as institutional power through the doctoral researcher’s academic program, was apparent. The exercise of power enabled certain possibilities for action by the researcher and the participants with disabilities while constraining others. The insights generated inform the next steps for this project in Western Zambia and considerations for current and prospective doctoral student researchers.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 2

There are three key revelations from literature on disability and armed conflict in the Global South. First, though disability is a relative term, models from the Global North are widely used irrespective of indigenous knowledges and contexts. Second, though disability is caused by colonial and post-colonial inequalities such as poverty, disabled people are often forgotten in poverty reduction programmes. Third, while many countries experience armed conflict, little is known about its effects on disabled people living in contexts of armed conflict. This realisation led to the aims of this study which were to: i) investigate how disability is understood in the armed conflict setting of Uganda; ii) to understand the experiences of disabled people in armed conflict settings; and iii) examine ways of improving the experience of disabled people in the Global South. Using a critical, constructivist and grounded research methodology, the study revealed the nature of ‘African disabilities’ and the challenges faced by disabled people living in conflict settings: displacement, dehumanisation, rampant poverty and neo-colonialism. Disabled people experience rejection in their communities and invisibility in the provision of services. Using literature as a dialogue partner, this study concludes that the ways in which disabled people are treated runs counter to many African beliefs on what it means to be human and live in a community. Consequently, it proposes a theory which contains critical knowledge on how the Africanisation of disability could be thought of and brought about in conflict settings.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 1

This paper offers an analysis of the documentary film, Una Vida Sin Palabras [A life without words] (2011). The film follows a short period in the lives of a campesino family living in a rural area of Nicaragua as a teacher of Nicaraguan sign language, working for a local NGO, endeavours to teach three deaf siblings how to sign. Bringing together the critical practices of Disability and Subaltern studies in the specific context of contemporary Nicaragua, the paper argues: (1) that the film ultimately re-inscribes and reinforces the subalternity of the disabled subjects it sets out to portray; and (2) that the hierarchy it produces between its object – the deaf family – and its implied educated, metropolitan audience replays some influential (but, we would argue, politically limited) critiques of the failure of the first Sandinista Government (1979-1990) and other broad based radical political movements to represent the national popular. In so doing, the paper also makes a case for the political and intellectual importance of bringing a Critical Disability Studies perspective to the field of Subaltern Studies, and argues that an engagement with the problems that are presented by this film at the level of both form and content raise some important questions for both fields of enquiry.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 1