This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.

In recent years, disability studies has been driven by a model of disability which focuses on the social and economic oppression of disabled people. Although an important counterbalance to a pathologising medical model, the social model risks presenting an impoverished and disembodied view of disability, one that ignores the psychological nature of oppression and its effects. This innovative work argues that a psychological framework of disability is an essential part of developing a more cohesive disability movement. Brian Watermeyer introduces a new, integrative approach, using psychoanalysis to tackle the problem of conceptualising psychological aspects of life with disablism. Psychoanalytic ideas are applied to social responses to impairment, making sense of discrimination in its many forms, as well as problems in disability politics and research. The perspective explores individual psychological experience, whilst retaining a rigorous critique of social forces of oppression. The argument shows how it is possible to theorise the psychological processes and impressions of discriminatory society without pathologising disadvantaged individuals. Drawing on sociology, social anthropology, psychology and psychoanalysis - as well as clinical material - Towards a Contextual Psychology of Disablism shapes a view of disabled subjectivity which is embodied, internal, and political. Presenting a range of conceptual ideas which describe psychological dynamics and predicaments confronting disabled people in an exclusionary and prejudiced world, this volume is an important new contribution to the literature. It will interest students and researchers of disability studies, including those working within psychology, education, health and social work.

In recent years, disability studies has been driven by a model of disability which focuses on the social and economic oppression of disabled people. Although an important counterbalance to a pathologising medical model, the social model risks presenting an impoverished and disembodied view of disability, one that ignores the psychological nature of oppression and its effects.

This innovative work argues that a psychological framework of disability is an essential part of developing a more cohesive disability movement. Brian Watermeyer introduces a new, integrative approach, using psychoanalysis to tackle the problem of conceptualising psychological aspects of life with disablism. Psychoanalytic ideas are applied to social responses to impairment, making sense of discrimination in its many forms, as well as problems in disability politics and research. The perspective explores individual psychological experience, whilst retaining a rigorous critique of social forces of oppression. The argument shows how it is possible to theorise the psychological processes and impressions of discriminatory society without pathologising disadvantaged individuals.

Drawing on sociology, social anthropology, psychology and psychoanalysis - as well as clinical material - Towards a Contextual Psychology of Disablism shapes a view of disabled subjectivity which is embodied, internal, and political. Presenting a range of conceptual ideas which describe psychological dynamics and predicaments confronting disabled people in an exclusionary and prejudiced world, this volume is an important new contribution to the literature. It will interest students and researchers of disability studies, including those working within psychology, education, health and social work.

This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.

This powerful volume represents the broadest engagement with disability issues in South Africa yet. Themes include theoretical approaches to and representations of disability, governmental and civil society responses to disability, aspects of education as these pertain to the oppression/liberation of disabled people, social security for disabled people, the complex politics permeating service provision relationships, and consideration of disability in relation to human spaces - physical, economic and philosophical. Noteworthy is the inclusivity of its nearly fifty contributors, many of whom write both as disabled South Africans and as educators, parents, linguists, psychologists, human rights activists, entrepreneurs, mental health practitioners, academics, and NGO and government officials. Equally stimulating is the range of writing styles, including interviews, a provocatively stark contrasting of voices in a chapter on Psychiatric Disability and Social Change, various well crafted articles on theoretical issues and the autobiographical style of many of the contributions.; Firmly located within the social model of disability, this collection will resonate powerfully with contemporary thinking and research in the disability field and will set the benchmark for cutting-edge debates in a transforming South Africa.