The Global Politics of Impairment and Disability

Book excerpt: 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 the theorists, or 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.