Creative encounters: disability studies meets development studies

Abstract

Despite some promising beginnings, disability studies and development studies have paid little attention to each other, and have much to gain from doing so. We focus on the need for more inter-connected analyses of post-conflict and post-disaster contexts, and the methodological requirements of inclusive research in ‘low resource settings’. Reflecting on cross-cutting themes from this collection, we highlight: the challenge of translating formal commitments into concrete advances for inclusion, in both national and donor policies and practices; the tension between disability-inclusive practices and neoliberal development policies; the dilemmas of ‘inside’ vs. ‘outside’ strategies for disability rights-promotion; the tensions between ‘mainstreaming’ and intersectionality; and the methodological and theoretical importance of reflexivity.

Keywords:

• Disability
• development
• neoliberalism
• mainstreaming
• reflexivity
• Sustainable Development Goals

Notes

1. Vol. 32, No. 8, Special Issue on “Disability in the Global South.” See also Kett et al., “Disability, Development, and the Dawning of a New Convention.”

2. On this point, see Meekosha and Soldatic, “Human Rights and the Global South.”

3. See CBM, “Link between the Sustainable Development Goals.”

4. Baranyi and Louis, “(Dis)ability and Development in Haiti.”

5. Black and de Matos-Ala, “Building a More Inclusive South Africa.”

6. Mazurana et al., “Disability and Recovery from War in Northern Uganda.”

7. Nguyen and Johnson, “Transnational Conversations in the Context of Disability Rights.”

8. Stienstra and Estey, “Canada’s Responses to Disability and Global Development.”

9. Gartrell and Soldatic, “Rural Women with Disabilities in Post-conflict Zones.”

10. Manning et al., “Uneasy Intersections”; for example, Mladenov, “Neoliberalism, Postsocialism, Disability.”

11. McClain-Nhlapo, “Epilogue: A Decade of Implementing the UN Convention.”

12. Johnson and Whitman, “Child Soldiers and Disability.”

13. See Groce et al., “Disability and Poverty,” 1507–9.

14. Acker-Verney, “Embedding Intersectionality and Reflexivity in Research.”