Disability Politics and Theory, a historical exploration of the concept of disability, covers the late nineteenth century to the present, introducing the main models of disability theory and politics: eugenics, medicalization, rehabilitation, charity, rights and social and disability justice. A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the currently dominant social model of disability, this book offers an alternative. The radical framework Withers puts forward draws from schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of interlocking oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience, this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. — and a call for social and economic justice. This revised and expanded edition includes a new chapter on the rehabilitation model, expands the discussion of eugenics, and adds the context of the growth of the disability justice movement, Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding the police, decolonial and Indigenous land protection struggles, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

An accessible introduction to disability studies, Disability Politics and Theory provides a concise survey of disability history, exploring the concept of disability as it has been conceived from the late 19th century to the present. Further, A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the model that currently dominates the discipline, the social model of disability, this book offers an alternative: the radical disability model. This model builds on the social model but draws from more recent schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of intersecting oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. – and a radical call for social and economic justice.

Though disability scholarship has been robust in history, philosophy, English, and sociology for decades, political theory and political science more generally have been slow to catch up. This groundbreaking volume presents the first full-length book on political theory approaches to disability issues. Barbara Arneil and Nancy J. Hirschmann bring together some of the leading scholars in political theory to provide a historical analysis of disability through the works of canonical figures, ranging from Hobbes and Locke to Kant, Rawls and Arendt, as well as an analysis of disability in contemporary political theory, examining key concepts, such as freedom, power and justice. Disability and Political Theory introduces a new disciplinary framework to disability studies, and provides a comprehensive introduction to a new topic of political theory.

An up-to-date edition of a foundational collection

This edited collection uses a critical theory perspective and draws on expertise from a range of contemporary policy and practice areas. Contributors include people with disabilities, family members, researchers, academics and practitioners. This book is an ideal text for students of social work, human services, child and youth care and disability studies. Chapters include first-person accounts from persons with disabilities, perspectives of families and historical perspectives, as well as a critical exploration of demographics, human rights issues, disability legislation and policy in Canada, theoretical approaches to disability, intersectionality and disability, Aboriginal people and disability, mental health disability, principles of anti-ableist practice, advocacy and strategies for change. This book offers as a fresh Canadian perspective on disability from a critical lens, challenging and inspiring students and practitioners alike to think outside the box and to examine their own attitudes and values toward disability, ensuring that they do not inadvertently impose ableist and oppressive practices on one of Canada’s most marginalized populations.

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work's violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical. The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.

"The grounding assumption that undergirds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) is that racism and ableism are mutually constitutive and collusive-always circulating across time and context in interconnected ways. Through we originally wrote DisCrit in 2013 and have written a number of projects with it as the foundation, DisCrit rapidly expanded far beyond our own work. In tracing this reverberation, we are struck by the ways DisCrit has been taken up, expanded upon, and used as a jumping off point for further creative articulations. The dynamic landscape of scholarship taking up DisCrit reflects its role in fostering a transgressive space that has generated critical questions looking outward, inward, and across differences and divides. Following an introduction by a, intellectual forerunner to DisCrit, Alfredo Artiles, is a three-part edited book organized around central inquiries that are directed outward, inward, as well as across or margin-to-margin. Through each section, authors answer these central inquiries by applying DisCrit across theoretical, methodological, and analytical spaces to shift praxis, exploring who we are answerable to axiologically, and expanding beyond missing pieces or silences associated with DisCrit. The closing chapter synthesizes ruptures, including issues raised and explored in the present text, and look toward the future of how DisCrit can be useful in developing more complex understandings of inequalities with view to working toward countering them in different, yet interconnected, levels including: the personal, the professional, and the structural"--