The New Disability History: American Perspectives

Historical analyses, as well as more contemporary examples of disability and work, show that the experience of disability is always culturally and historically mediated, but that class—in the sense of economic status—plays a major role in the way impairment is experienced as disabling. Although there is little published on disability history in India, the history of the Indian experience of caste disability demonstrates the centrality of work in the social and economic expression of stigma and marginalization. An Indian perspective supports the challenge to the dominant Western view that modern concepts of disability have their origins in the Industrial Revolution. Linkage between disability, incapacity to work, and low socioeconomic status are evident in India, which did not undergo the workplace changes associated with industrialization in the West.

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Documents, Ethics, and the Disability Historian

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190234959.013.10 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Penny Richards ◽

Susan Burch

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cultural Values ◽

The United States ◽

Rich Source ◽

Disability History ◽

Historical Production ◽

The Invisible

The factors driving research into disability history methodology in its practical dimensions (such as finding and analyzing sources and presenting findings), the cultural values that inform it, and who populates intended audiences all contribute to the invisible infrastructure of historical production. When historians of disability access a rich source of data, they also must ask who created it, who benefited from its preservation, and whose stories are left untold. Sharing knowledge—through preservation and dissemination—equally shapes disability historical work. In all of this, access and accessibility—from built spaces and source types to research aids and scholarly products—remain paramount. Ways to proceed with sensitivity and creativity in the exploration of disabled peoples’ and disability’s pasts are presented from the perspective of the United States.

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Iain Hutchison, Martin Atherton, and Jaipreet Virdi, eds. Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Interventions, Legacies. Disability History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. Pp. 216. $120.00 (cloth).

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1017/jbr.2020.239 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 60 (2) ◽

pp. 494-496

Author(s):

Joyce L. Huff

Keyword(s):

Disability History

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Historical Epistemology as Disability Studies Methodology: From the Models Framework to Foucault’s Archaeology of Cure

Foucault Studies ◽

10.22439/fs.v0i19.4827 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 108-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Aimi Hamraie

Keyword(s):

Disability Studies ◽

Biomedical Knowledge ◽

Historical Epistemology ◽

Critical Disability Studies ◽

Medical Authority ◽

Disability History ◽

Models Of Disability ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Construction Of Disability

In this article, I argue for historical epistemology as a methodology for critical disability studies (DS) by examining Foucault’s archaeology of cure in History of Madness. Although the moral, medical, and social models of disability frame disability history as an advancement upon moral and medical authority and a replacement of it by sociopolitical knowledge, I argue that the more comprehensive frame in which these models circulate—the “models framework”—requires the more nuanced approach that historical epistemology offers. In particular, the models framework requires greater use of epistemology as an analytical tool for understanding the historical construction of disability. Thus, I turn to Foucault’s History of Madness in order to both excavate one particular archaeological strand in the text—the archaeology of cure—and to demonstrate how this narrative disrupts some of the key assumptions of the models framework, challenging DS to consider the epistemological force of non-medical fields of knowledge for framing disability and procedures for its cure and elimination. I conclude by arguing that DS must develop historical epistemological methodologies that are sensitive to the complex overlays of moral, medical, and social knowledge, as well as attend to the social construction of scientific and biomedical knowledge itself.

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