Disability Studies as homosocial?

I remember critical legal studies scholar Prof. Margaret Thorton discussing homosociality, the notion that people were attracted to their own kind. Of course she was refering to ways that women were excluded from significant positions in law.  I was thinking about this recently and how it may apply to different trajectories of disability studies. We often find that in the main, U.S., authors mainly  cite from the pool of other U.S., scholars (and certain ones at that) and may dip outside into U.K. scholars. Similarly, U.K. scholars only seem congnisant of a particular frame. Of course I am making a generalisation, but I think my broad brush on this is fairly accurate. I'm often told that people cannot access materials from 'elsewhere'. 'Elsewhere' is a interesting place! Yes, sometimes obscure journals don't make the internation trail. But I am not convinced. As a global south scholar I am alway always obliged to engage in the perenial task of getting my head around all the literature in a specific area. Isn't that what we encourage our students to do? The reference point/benchmark is the USA/UK. The journal refereeing almost promotes this hegemony by insisting on certain citations. Imagine doing D/S research without mentioning C.B., T.S.,  R.T., D.M - to name a few. 

When I was in Sri Lanka I worked with academics to get their work published in local languages and also in international journals in English. We may ask if we are truly global - are we prepared to search out work from the antipodes, to make that effort?  So here's the challenge. There is really good stuff coming from the global south, in particular NZ and OZ - some work is more known than some. I am not mentioning other countries because I am not as familar with the work. Hence I have asked 'friends' of mine in Japan and other places to be contributors on this blog. Our early career researchers are doing exciting stuff. Most people are working in isolation. Here's my suggestion and I've made it be before. Let's us start a global south D/S research clearinghouse with a thematic database of global south authors.  This will highlight stuff that maybe new to us and promote different perspective and assist in drawing from a greater pool of work. Such a clearhouse may facilitate interesting research partnerships. What do you think? Any takers to get this going? Maybe it could be commenced as a student project?

Becoming Citizens: The Historical Construction of Intellectual Disability

Griffith Abilities Research Program

in partnership withThe Disability Studies Research Concentration,School of Human Services and SocialWork

is pleased to invite you to a public workshop

Becoming Citizens: The Historical Construction of Intellectual Disability 

at 9am to 4.30pm on Thursday14^th May 2009

Venue: TBA (Brisbane area)

 

This public workshop is aimed at people with disabilities, families, professionals and interested others and will provide an accessible history of intellectual disability, tracing key themes in the popular discourse, policy, and services history and their impact on the lives of individuals and families.

Please register your interest in attending by contacting:

Natalie Clements  07 3382 1134      N.Clements@gu.edu.au 

Speakers:

Christopher Goodey is currently Assistant Director of the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education. He has collaborated with the UK Health Commission and representatives of people labelled with intellectual disabilities to desegregate institutions and government services.  Christopher has published on the history of intellectual disability in leading journals across a wide range of disciplines.

Tim Stainton is Professor of Disability Policy, Practice and Theory at the University of British Columbia and currently the Sir Allan Sewell Visiting Professor at the School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith University.  He has published widely on the history of intellectual disability, and is currently completing a manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan on the historical construction of intellectual disability.

Lynn Rose has been at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, since 1995. Dr. Rose's specialties are ancient history and disability studies. Along with several articles, chapters, and encyclopedia entries, she has published one book, The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (2003). She was awarded a Mary E. Switzer Distinguished Fellowship for 2003-2004 to support her research project on intellectual disability in ancient Greece. She spent the year with the Institute for Greek and Latin Language and Literature at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

Patrick McDonagh teaches in the Department of English at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research explores the relationship between cultural representations, philosophical and medical notions of intelligence and its lack, and social policies related to people identified as having intellectual disabilities. Most recently, he is the author of Idiocy: A Cultural History (Liverpool UP, 2008). He is currently working on two major projects: the first is an annotated collection of new translations of historical documents relating to the wild boy of Aveyron, which would include writings by Philippe Pinel, Joseph-Marie de Gérando and Jean Itard; the second is a popular history tracking the growth and permutations of the idea of intelligence.

Lee-Ann Monk is a research associate at the University of Melbourne, working on an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project on the history of psychiatric institutionalisation and community care in Australia 1830s – 1990s.  Her research interests include the history of mental health and intellectual disability and the social and cultural history of work in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia.  In 2005, she was awarded an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry), to research and write the history of Kew Cottages. She is currently completing a history of the Cottages from their establishment in 1887 as Australia’s first specialised institution for people with intellectual disability to their recent closure.  Her history of nineteenth-century ‘lunatic’ asylum attendants Attending Madness: At Work in the Australian Colonial Asylum was published in 2008 as a volume in Clio Medica: The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine.

Chair: Professor Lesley Chenoweth

 

What are the parameters of doing disability studies from a global south perspective?

Mmm. Okay this is a hard one! The question appears to be easy. So I'll have a go and no doubt will continue a blog around the topic in response to YOUR comments. We could ask whether there is such a differentiation - global south - given that much of our knowledge based comes from the First nations (the global north). Yet I don't think some of us uncritically transpose this knowledge to home turf and practices. There is adaptation ... an intermingling with local conditions and nuances, e.g. how the politics and race and diversity operate at the local level. To be honest I think also the climate of intellectual and research development has more space to flow - away from some of the pressures inherent to intellectual communities where there is a critical mass. [translate: the field is not as incestious or cliquey, or dogmatic]. Of course we have our own divisions in Oz and no doubt the same is in NZ ... but there are less of us .. and there is a distance to do our own thing!  My own background brings in issues around empire and postcolonial realities as well. I'll stop here for the moment and work on this some more later.