Recolonising debates or perpetuated coloniality? Decentring the spaces of disability, development and community in the global South

Abstract

The World Health Organisation estimates that around 600 million people or 10% of the world's population is disabled, with more than 80% concentrated in the global South. In spite of this, majority world disability remains stranded on the peripheries of development policy, research and programmes, and virtually excluded from the Western‐centric disability studies. Notwithstanding this disengagement, the views and tenets of the Western disability studies are exported to the majority world backed by a discourse of inferences, generalisations and myths. Critical issues related to society, politics, economics, cultures and the histories of the contexts in which Western concepts and theories are deployed, and the implications for disabled people remain confined to epistemological silence. Communities in the majority world are often bypassed or repositioned to accommodate the neoliberal development project, the history and practices of which remain largely unquestioned. This paper seeks to elucidate and engage with some of these complex issues surrounding disability, development and community in the majority world; critique development, its historical foundations and implications for disabled people; and challenge the exportation of epistemologies and strategies from North to South in an effort to push for a grounded and global disability studies.

Keywords:

• disability and development
• majority world
• poverty
• global disability