Disability, Political Activism, and Identity Making: A Critical Feminist Perspective on the Rise of Disability Movements in Australia, the USA, and the UK

Produced by The Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i and The School of Social Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas for The Society for Disability Studies

Decolonising the dynamics of media power and media representation between 1830 and 1930: Australian Indigenous peoples with disability

Indigenous Australians have experienced the horrific consequences of European invasion and colonisation. Some of these consequences include wars, geographic displacement and attempted genocide. Both the high prevalence and experience of disability among Indigenous peoples remain directly linked to the events that followed European invasion. Critical Disability Studies and Media Studies can investigate the process of decolonisation. This chapter is cross disciplinary in so far as we are concerned with the representation of Indigenous people in the mass media and decolonising Indigenous disability. We examine data collected from an analysis of the print media during the colonial period; that is, representation of “disabled” Indigenous people in mainstream newspapers during the first 100 years of the press from 1830. We use Martin Nakata’s Indigenous Standpoint Theory and Decolonising frameworks to deconstruct and analyse the material collected

‘Hard Yakka’: Living With a Disability in the West Kimberley

This report investigates the lived experiences of Aboriginal people with disabilities living in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, covered by the local government shires of Broome and Derby–West Kimberley. The major population centres in the West Kimberley are the towns of Broome, Derby and Fitzroy Crossing. Both local government areas have low populations scattered across vast areas with poor infrastructure and under-developed built environments, which make travel and daily living especially challenging. The town of Broome is located 2,230 kilometres north of Perth; Derby is 2,383 kilometres and Fitzroy Crossing more than 2,500 kilometres to the north-east (Shire of Broome, 2014; Shire of Derby–West Kimberley, 2014). Broome Shire has a resident population of 15,857 people living in an area covering 56,000 square kilometres (Shire of Broome, 2014). Derby–West Kimberley has 8,941 inhabitants living in an area of 118,560 square kilometres (Shire of Derby–West Kimberley, 2014). The region has a large Aboriginal population. Between one-third and one-half of the population is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin (Shire of Broome, 2014; Shire of Derby–West Kimberley, 2014). There are over 100 Aboriginal communities of various population sizes throughout the region and nearly 100 properties servicing the pastoral industry. The West Kimberley has a diverse economy, with mining, tourism, agriculture and pearling, all of which are major contributors to the economic output of the area. Geographically, the region has very diverse terrain and geographical features from arid desert areas, gorges and river valleys to long pristine coastlines, highly developed coastal resorts and beaches, in addition to extensive rainforest areas and cave systems (Shire of Broome, 2014; Shire of Derby–West Kimberley, 2014). Both Shires have significant transportation challenges during the cyclone season, between November and April each year. The ‘great wet’ leads to road closures with the majority of roads being unsealed, gravel or unformed (Shire of Broome, 2014; Shire of Derby–West Kimberley, 2014). This makes travel impossible without access to off-road or four-wheel drive vehicles, further isolating remote communities and restricting access to health, education and other services, including disability support services

[Disability] justice dictated by the surfeit of love:Simone Weil in Nigeria

How is Nigeria’s failure to fulfil its obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to be appreciated or even resolved? Answers to this are sought through a seminal criticism of human rights, namely, Simone Weil’s 1942 essay Human Personality. Weil questioned the ability of human rights concepts to cause the powerful to develop the emotional dispositions of empathy for those who suffer. Weil’s insights provide a convincing explanation that the indifference of Nigerian authorities towards the Convention may be accounted for by the weakness of human rights discourse to foster human capacity for empathy and care for those who suffer. Weil’s criticisms will serve as a point of departure for a particular way to circumvent this inadequacy of human rights discourse to achieve disability justice in Nigeria through other means. I argue that Weil, through her concept of attention, grappled with and offers a consciousness of suffering and vulnerability that is not only uncommon to existing juridical human rights approaches, but is achievable through the active participation in the very forms of suffering and vulnerability in which amelioration is sought. To provide empirical content to this argument, I turn to a short-lived initiative of the Nigerian disability movement, which if ethico-politically refined and widely applied, can supply an action-theoretical grounding for and be combined with Weil’s work to elevate agitations for disability justice above human rights to the realm of human obligations

Ethnic minorities and equity strategies in tertiary education

This report examines the access and equity strategies in tertiary education affecting people of Non English Speaking Background (hereafter described as NESB). Our interest in this question grew out of a number of experiences — both Helen Meekosha and Andrew Jakubowicz had been involved in ethnic issues for a t least ten years. We had carried out consultancy research projects for governments examining access and equity programs [see Jakubowicz and Mitchell 1982, Meekosha et al. 1987] in which we had become increasingly aware th a t the language of equitable access had been perfected by government while the practice was far removed from it

Ethnic minorities and equity strategies in tertiary education

This report examines the access and equity strategies in tertiary education affecting people of Non English Speaking Background (hereafter described as NESB). Our interest in this question grew out of a number of experiences — both Helen Meekosha and Andrew Jakubowicz had been involved in ethnic issues for a t least ten years. We had carried out consultancy research projects for governments examining access and equity programs [see Jakubowicz and Mitchell 1982, Meekosha et al. 1987] in which we had become increasingly aware th a t the language of equitable access had been perfected by government while the practice was far removed from it

Detecting Disability: Moving beyond metaphor in the crime fiction of Jeffrey Deaver

No abstract availabl

Human rights and the global South : the case of disability

This article seeks to examine the politics of human rights and disability in light of the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which has been central to the struggle for recognition of disabled people. Northern discourses of disability rights have strongly influenced the UNCRPD. We argue that many of the everyday experiences of disabled people in the global South lie outside the reach of human rights instruments. So we ask what, if anything, can these instruments contribute to the struggle for disability justice in the South? While Northern discourses promote an examination of disabled bodies in social dynamics, we argue that the politics of impairment in the global South must understand social dynamics in bodies