Genealogies of Disability in Global Governance: A Foucauldian Critique of Disability and Development

In this article, I engage with the ways in which disability is governed within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (United Nations 2000). Using a Foucauldian perspective on the governing of populations in modern states (Foucault 1991), I problematise this politics of disability and development by interrogating the ways in which biopower, through the constructions of modern development frameworks, has shaped our understanding of disability and impairment. I pursue this historical trajectory by tracing the emergence of the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD), a global study developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank in the 1990s (Murray and Lopez 1996). The forms of knowledge emerging in these global frameworks shed light on genealogies of disability in the twenty-first century. By re-visiting a postcolonial critique of Foucault’s conception of power in the context of Third World’s struggles for liberation (Said 1986), I suggest that a Foucauldian critique in disability and development could be deepened through its engagement with postcolonial studies. A critical and genealogical perspective on disability and development, I argue, is useful for understanding the government of disability and impairment in the intersections of global and local histories

Whose Research Is It? Reflection on Participatory Research with Women and Girls with Disabilities in the Global South

Drawing on the Transforming Disability Knowledge, Research, and Activism project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2016-2020), this article critically reflects on the project’s participatory research process that involved young women and girls with disabilities in the Global South. I discuss epistemological and methodological questions related to the deployment of decolonizing research methodologies in the Global South in relation to theoretical and methodological approaches for engaging girls with disabilities. I argue that a critical, reflexive, and decolonizing research approach that embodies knowledge from the Global South is essential for empowering these girls to express themselves through multiple forms of representation

Girls with disabilities in the global south: Rethinking the politics of engagement

In this article I describe how participatory visual methodologies can be used to construct knowledge on inclusion and exclusion with girls with disabilities in Vietnam. I suggest that this approach can shape knowledge on inclusion in relation to disability and girlhood through its engagement with the voices of girls with disabilities. This case study represents a decolonizing approach for understanding the experiences of disabled girls in the Global South in ways that challenge the Western framing of disability and girlhood

Inclusion in Vietnam: An intersectionality perspective on girls with disabilities and education

This article explores the challenges related to the inclusion of girls with disabilities in Vietnamese schools. Building on fieldwork which interrogates the institutional treatment of girls with disabilities in the Vietnamese context, we suggest that there is a need to think more critically about the inclusion and exclusion of girls with disabilities within social and educational policies. The issues that we will discuss are taken from a theoretical and methodological standpoint. First, there is a need for rethinking the intersection between disability and gender in educational policies and practices; second, we emphasize the need for understanding the implications of inclusion and exclusion in global/national/local contexts in relation to girls with disabilities; and finally, we suggest that using innovative methodological approaches is important to foster inclusion and social change

Engaging girls with disabilities in Vietnam: making their voices count

This article addresses a theoretical and methodological intervention in support of inclusion for girls with disabilities in Vietnam. Drawing on an internationally collaborative project, Monitoring Educational Rights for Girls with Disabilities in Vietnamese schools, we critically engage the politics of inclusion and exclusion of girls with disabilities in education. Using a critical methodological framework that foregrounds the lived experiences of 21 girls with disabilities in Vietnam, we ask how we might strengthen participatory knowledge production through the work of monitoring rights in order to inform practices and policies related to disability and education. Through a preliminary analysis of the visual data emerging from our participatory visual methodologies, we demonstrate how these methods can contribute to constructing more inclusive practices and policies for girls with disabilities in both the Vietnamese and the global contexts