Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Anthropology of Disability

description366 papers
group20,221 followers
lightbulbAbout this topic
The anthropology of disability is the study of how different cultures understand, experience, and respond to disability. It examines the social, political, and economic factors that shape perceptions of disability, as well as the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities within various cultural contexts.
lightbulbAbout this topic
The anthropology of disability is the study of how different cultures understand, experience, and respond to disability. It examines the social, political, and economic factors that shape perceptions of disability, as well as the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities within various cultural contexts.

Key research themes

1. How do anthropological and ethnographic methods contribute to understanding the lived experience and sociocultural constructions of disability?

This research theme explores how qualitative methodologies, particularly ethnography and autoethnography, provide insights into the embodied, social, and political dimensions of disability. It highlights the unique contributions of anthropology in revealing culturally situated meanings, lived experiences, and identity negotiations of disabled people, especially where disability intersects with race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. Such approaches contest reductive medical or social models by centering disabled people's voices and everyday realities.

Key finding: Uses autoethnographic methods leveraging verbatim transcripts from accommodations to analyze the author's experiences with mobility and speech impairments, demonstrating how anthropological reflexivity and participant... Read more
by Yosef Wasihun and 
1 more
Key finding: Employs descriptive phenomenology through in-depth interviews with 15 disabled individuals in Ethiopia to unveil culturally specific lived experiences impacted by stigma, poverty, and social exclusion. The study reveals how... Read more
Key finding: Reviews three ethnographic works that expand disability anthropology by focusing on kinship reconfigurations, material affordances, and technological infrastructures shaping disability experiences in different cultural... Read more
Key finding: Utilizes ethnography to demonstrate how socioeconomic capital, gender, and disability discourses intersect to shape heterogeneous experiences of albinism in Tanzania. By contrasting public success narratives with ethnographic... Read more
Key finding: Synthesizes findings from a Wenner-Gren symposium to argue that disability is a universal social fact shaping conceptions of personhood and humanity. Emphasizes ethnographic methods for understanding cultural specificities of... Read more

2. How can disability be theoretically conceptualized beyond traditional medical and social models to capture the experiential and relational nature of impairment?

This theme investigates novel theoretical frameworks that reconceptualize disability as a lived, relational, and dynamic experience rather than a fixed trait or social category. Moving beyond dominant medical and social models, recent scholarship proposes experiential, phenomenological, and decolonial accounts that foreground subjective impediments, affective dimensions, and socio-cultural relationalities. These theoretical innovations advance more nuanced understandings of disablement and embodiment that challenge Eurocentric and normative assumptions.

Key finding: Develops an adverbial, experiential account of disability emphasizing it as a personally irremediable impediment to daily living rather than as a 'thing' caused or embodied. This relational theory differentiates itself from... Read more
Key finding: Critiques the Eurocentric underpinnings of the 'bodyminds' concept in disability studies, arguing it reproduces limited Cartesian and secular frameworks of personhood. Drawing from ethnographic research in Tanzania and Sylvia... Read more
Key finding: Through hermeneutical analyses, traces continuity and development in Christian theological conceptions of disability from Augustine to Aquinas. Challenges interpretations that undermine medieval openness to disability by... Read more
Key finding: Presents a theological-philosophical analysis of Aquinas’ reflection on bodily vulnerability, resurrection, and the eschatological significance of infirmities. It argues that Aquinas envisions disability and bodily defects as... Read more

3. What are the intersections between disability, identity politics, and emancipatory methodologies within queer, critical, and decolonial disability studies?

This theme addresses the politicized dimensions of disability via critical, queer, and decolonial lenses that challenge normative, ableist frameworks and traditional anthropological methods. It emphasizes the role of intersectionality in exposing how race, gender, colonialism, and capitalism intertwine with disability. It advocates for transformative methodologies such as 'cripping ethnography' and calls for an expanded, inclusive scholarship that centers marginalized disabled voices and rejects dominant academic paradigms.

Key finding: Argues for reconceptualizing anthropological methodology through crip theory to dismantle entrenched ableism and colonial legacies in fieldwork. It challenges white, individualistic research norms by advocating for... Read more
Key finding: Provides a comprehensive review of how critical disability studies (CDS) and anthropology converge and diverge, especially regarding research originating from or about the Global South. Highlights the necessity for CDS to... Read more
Key finding: Calls for greater engagement between mobility and disability studies, articulating disability studies as a critical, activist, and emancipatory field. Emphasizes the intersection of disability with social movements and... Read more

All papers in Anthropology of Disability

has helped establish the anthropology of impairmentdisability and significantly contributed to the role of anthropology in disability studies. In this article, we review the development of and situate Ablon's ethnographic research in the... more
This thematic volume explores how health, well-being, and ability are constructed in the past and in the present. The volume's authors undo and question deeply ingrained assumptions about what constitutes a "normative" body. They do so by... more
Following Foucault’s theory of discourse this article aims at reformulating the established concept of disability. To this end, the author reconstructs ways in which disabling practices of subjectivation occur in and through public media... more
The concept of person-centeredness has become in many instances the standard of health care that humanises services and ensures that the patient/client is at the centre of care delivery. Rejecting a purely biomedical explanation of... more
Over the last decade, disabled veterans of the Turkish Army who were injured while fighting against the Partiya Karkerˆen Kurdistan (PKK; Kurdistan Workers’ Party) have become national icons and leading ultranationalist actors. While... more
This article is based on a qualitative study that set out to analyze the labels and terms attached to 28 people affected by albinism in villages in Kilolo district, Tanzania. Even though national and international attention to killings of... more
This article analyses the discourse surrounding, implementation of, and struggles over the new disability policy in Serbia to show how its founding principles of human rights became partially co-opted by neoliberal welfare restructuring.... more
In this article, I investigate how social enterprises identify the talents of groups of disabled people and match them to a market demand. Through the study of a blind massage enterprise in Nepal, I undo the workings of an ambivalent form... more
Societal ideas and explanations of albinism at the local level in Tanzania are conceived in terms of family history, social relations, economic status, moral-religious positions, global-local flows of information and humanitarian actions... more
In this paper, my aim is to elaborate disability movement praxis so that transnational struggles for justice over the production of impairment emerging from the Global South can be represented within the transnational frame of disability... more
Les transformations récentes du bénévolat ont conduit une équipe de recherche à mener une étude portant sur l’ancrage du bénévolat au sein d’un établissement de réadaptation en déficience physique. L’étude avait pour objectif de mieux... more
According to official statistical data, people with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) occupations and students with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM degree courses. This... more
In Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice. Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt, Eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kimberly Wooten is an historical archaeologist with the California Department of Transportation's Cultural Studies (Caltrans) Office in Sacramento, California. Dr. Dr. Maria Zolezzi Garibaldi is a fictional archaeologist with the... more
There has been relatively little research on the interpersonal experiences of disabled people in their efforts to form sexually intimate relations, and on how sociocultural meanings and processes engage with and shape these experiences.... more
Although almost completely ignored, Aquinas’s account of persons with severe intellectual disabilities is key to his understanding of human persons and their salvation. Aquinas extensively addresses questions of human impairment, and for... more
This paper explores the ramifications of the decades-long Kurdish conflict for masculinity, male embodiment, sexuality, and politics of reproduction in Turkey. More specifically, it examines how the bodies, gendered subjectivities,... more
The purpose of this study was to illustrate the impracticality of using mainstream formalized methods of intellectual assessments to assess Hmong American children, who came from an informal learning environment. One hundred and... more
This article examines Australia's post-conflict reconstruction and development initiatives in Iraq following the intervention of 2003. Overall, it finds that Australia privileged the neo-liberal model of post-conflict state building by... more
A categoria cuidado é central na teoria feminista da deficiência. Ainda assim, enquanto um termo êmico e analítico, o cuidado tem sido objeto de controvérsias entre teóricas e ativistas do campo da deficiência. Pretendemos traçar a... more
The medical model as a trouble approach in disability literature characterizes disabled status to be “amenable to treatment, capable of improvement or illness”. The main viewpoint of the model is to assess people with disabilities who are... more
An imagined community of practice: Online discourse among wheelchair users Leslie E. Cochrane Abstract People with disabilities often live in local communities primarily made up of people without disabilities: in the absence of a... more
Telling disability: Identity construction in personal and vicarious narratives Leslie E. Cochrane Abstract This dissertation examines the construction of disability identities in personal and vicarious narratives. Sociolinguistic... more
What are the physical experiences of fieldwork really like? This article invites anthropologists engaged in teaching to transform the way research methods are currently taught to include frank and thoughtful conversations on how bodies,... more
Misconceptions surrounding the genetic condition of albinism persist in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, including Zimbabwe. Studies on albinism have been carried out in different contexts around the globe, but little is known so far... more
This article reports on a workshop that was held with frontline workers in Canada and discusses the role of anthropological sensibilities as they inform research, community engagement and policy outcomes. The workshop brought together... more
This article is a series of reflections by the authors thematic journal on health, wellness, and disability in historical archaeology written during the Covid-19 global pandemic.
When addressing the issue of disabled people, the image that society has on this topic emerges as an element to analyze. Currently, the perception of an anthropological fact such as this one is not conceived without the assumption of the... more
Utilizing the bioarchaeology of care model, this research formulates a model of care based on ethnohistorical and skeletal markers of pathologic conditions. The index of care is the method used to create models of care, and this requires... more
El vínculo de la sociedad con las Personas con Discapacidad 2 (PCD), fue cambiando a lo largo del tiempo. Se pasó de prescindir de ellas, a colocar el énfasis en las barreras que la sociedad construyó por no tenerlas en cuenta, lo que... more
I argue that the prominent anthropological understanding of rationality is a deficient understanding of the human person and does not seriously take into consideration the existence of those with mental disabilities. Instead, I argue that... more
This article presents a reflection on the “afterlife” of the Zika virus epidemic, drawing on the narratives of mothers of children born with neurological malformations associated with the virus in Bahia. Based on eleven semi-structured... more
From a diachronic and multi-disciplinary perspective, the contributions to the miscellany Alterhabilitas – Perception of Disability among People, explore the social and cultural dynamics that underlie the construction and evolution of the... more
S isi, kama albino, watu wenye ulemavu wa ngozi, hapa nchini Tanzania, tuna matatizo mengi sasa kama muda wote!». «Noi, come albini, persone con albinismo, qui in Tanzania abbiamo molti problemi adesso e sempre!».
This photo essay discusses the interactions between international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental organizations on the one hand, and local populations and people with albinism on the other, in Tanzania.... more
Medical anthropology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (until 1991, the University of Barcelona at Tarragona) has a history going back more than 30 years.
Sociologue Chercheur associé à MODYS Mondes et Dynamiques des Sociétés (UMR 5264 CNRS -univ. Lyon2 -univ Jean Monnet de St Etienne) La survenue brutale de l'accident et le changement corporel soudain qui en découle, initient tous deux... more
Poza zasadą sprawności subwersywne działania teatralne osób o sprawności nienormatywnej/hybrydycznej Jeżeli sprawność jest przede wszystkim czymś, co należy zdobywać, można zaryzykować twierdzenie, iż nikt z nas nie rodzi się sprawny,... more
Recent critiques of ethnographic practice have challenged the ability of traditional fieldwork narratives to adequately represent the fragmented nature of contemporary social settings. In response to such challenges anthropologists have... more
Download research papers for free!