The Global Politics of Impairment and Disability ─ Processes and Embodiments

Disability is of central concern to the developing world but has largely been under-represented in global development debates, discourses and negotiations. Similarly, disability studies has overlooked both the theorists and the social experience of the global South, and there has been a one-way transfer of ideas and knowledge from the North to the South in this field.

This volume seeks to redress the processes of scholarly colonialism by drawing together a diverse set of understandings, theorizing and experiences. The chapters situate disability within the Southern context and support the work of Southern disabled scholars and activists seeking to decolonize Southern experiences, knowledges and absences in the field while simultaneously attempting to make an intervention into able-bodied (mainstream) development discourses, practices and politics.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Helen Meekosha is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Helen has opened up the field in the gendered relations of disability. Her work has broken new ground in setting disability in a context of neoliberalism and globalization, arguing the case for an examination of global North/ South relations that affect the incidence and production of disability.

Karen Soldatic is a Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Karen is an international disability scholar who has extensive experience within the field of international development in conflict zones. Her work brings together this rich field work engagement to theoretically inform conceptual understandings of disability in the Global South.