Pushing the boundaries of our understanding of disability and violence: voices from the Global South (Guyana)

Abstract

Our knowledge about disabled people’s lives is largely based on research in the Global North. This article considers disability and violence in the Global South, specifically in Guyana. It aims to push conceptual and empirical boundaries of our understanding of violence and disability. Conceptually, it argues for a social model materialist theory of disability attuned to how material barriers to disabled people’s inclusion in society and space are reproduced through processes of exclusion unfolding across geographic scales ranging from the global, to the inter-personal and intra-personal. It argues that Lacanian psycho-analytic theory provides a complimentary lens for understanding why people engage in acts that construct disabled people as ‘deserving’ of violence. Empirically, the article broadens our understanding of disability and violence by focusing on poverty, violence as a cause of impairment and disability, and disabled women’s and men’s experiences of violence in a majority world context.

Keywords:

• disability
• poverty
• violence
• Global South
• Guyana

Notes

1. As of 22 August 2011, US$1 cost Guyanese $200.70 (XE Currency Converter n.d.).