Including Disability in Social and Cultural Anthropology: From disciplinary absence to enabling environments

Literature review
Over the last thirty years the interdisciplinary field of disability studies has intervened
in a host of disciplines and university courses including social work, sociology,
education and medicine (e.g., Morgan and Roulstone, 2012; Slee, 2018; Hunt,
2022).

My research seeks to make social and cultural anthropology inclusive for disabled
anthropologists in pedagogy, curriculum, action research and reflective practice; for
academics, researchers and students. I want to explore the theoretical reasons for
anthropology's lack of engagement with disability and disability studies, to empirically
research and to create more inclusive practices, spaces and communities for
disabled anthropologists and social anthropology students interested in researching
disability. I adopt social and cultural anthropology as a disciplinary case study: to
raise wider issues about disability, access, equity, and challenging academic ableism
(Dolmage, 2017)

The core aims of my project are situated within the recognized need for a reflexive
turn against ableism in anthropology between the reflexive turn of post-colonial
anthropology (which critiques the white anthropologist's gaze on postcolonial spaces
as proposed by Asad, 1979) and feminist anthropology (see Avishai et al., 2012
which aims to bring the perspective of the female researcher into anthropological
research to target the male gaze). Whilst both poles of knowledge bring fruitful
disciplinary reflexivity and new perspectives of doing anthropological research that
differed from the body of a classical white male ethnographer; these poles do not
pay attention to the body of the disabled researcher. Therefore, I will aim to centre
the role of a disabled researcher whose 'bodymind' (Price, 2015) is different to the
classical anthropologist. My approach will pay more attention to an intersectional
lens as disability traverses gender, sex, ethnicity and transnational lines. Moreover,
my approach will illuminate the ableist nature of anthropological research and the
discipline, it will consequently focus on the concept of 'ableist normativity' (Campbell,
2008). Thus, this research project will call for a new reflexive turn within the
discipline that goes beyond the aforementioned traditions and poles of expertise.
The core aims of my project are situated within the recognized need for a reflexive
turn against ableism in anthropology between the reflexive turn of post-colonial
anthropology (which critiques the white anthropologist's gaze on postcolonial spaces
as proposed by Asad, 1979) and feminist anthropology (see Avishai et al., 2012
which aims to bring the perspective of the female researcher into anthropological
research to target the male gaze). Whilst both poles of knowledge bring fruitful
disciplinary reflexivity and new perspectives of doing anthropological research that
differed from the body of a classical white male ethnographer; these poles do not
pay attention to the body of the disabled researcher. Therefore, I will aim to centre
the role of a disabled researcher whose 'bodymind' (Price, 2015) is different to the
classical anthropologist. My approach will pay more attention to an intersectional
lens as disability traverses gender, sex, ethnicity and transnational lines. Moreover,
my approach will illuminate the ableist nature of anthropological research and the
discipline, it will consequently focus on the concept of 'ableist normativity' (Campbell,
2008). Thus, this research project will call for a new reflexive turn within the
discipline that goes beyond the aforementioned traditions and poles of expertise.