Geographies Of Disability Research Articles

Mail art methods and the social and cultural geographies of families affected by rare disease

ABSTRACT Building on geographic scholarship around disability and drawing on a programme of arts-based research, we bring attention to the social and cultural geographies of families affected by rare disease. Seeking creative methodological opportunities, we invited families to send us postcards as a means of sharing experiences and reflections. We contextualize the emergence of the postcard as a modality of communication, situating our work within a wider epistolary and artistic tradition, before examining the opportunities postcarding might produce for geographic and broader qualitative research, noting the forms conduciveness to multimodality and recent calls for more engagement with the medium. We detail our own practices of participatory postcarding and the questions, challenges, and hopes such raised. Analysing the postcards received, we discuss how such helps understand the shifting social and cultural geographies of rare disease, reflecting on themes of (in)accessibility and exclusion, changing domestic geographies, and the importance of, and challenges associated with, family-based identities and communities in the context of rare disease. Such highlights opportunities for disability geography to engage in cross-cutting conversations and agenda-building with the nascent area of family geographies, along with further geographic inquiry into the spaces and worlds of rare disease.

Assessing disability rights in four Asian countries: The perspectives of disabled people on physical, attitudinal and cultural barriers

Geographers have connected the experiences of disabled persons with specific socio-spatial-political phenomena such as disability policies and laws, economic conditions, disability movements, and welfare systems. However, debates over disability theories and accessibility rights have lacked empirical data representing the perspectives of disabled people in Asia. In this study, the first to explore experiences with accessibility in an inter-Asian context, the daily experiences of disabled people in two Southeast Asian countries (Thailand and Vietnam) and two Northeast Asian countries (Japan and Taiwan) were compared. In each country, 10 wheelchair- or crutch-using residents of a large city were invited to be interviewed, of whom 39 participated. Results showed that disabled people's daily experiences are influenced by the cultural and historical contexts in which the concept of disability has been constructed. Attitudinal and cultural barriers to accessibility should be further examined, and Asian contexts should be included in the political geography of disability.

Troubling narratives about dis/ability and the social encounter through conversations between narrative inquiry, critical disability studies, and geographies of disability

This article explores written narratives produced by two ‘abled’ people about a social encounter, or event, with a ‘disabled’ person in an inland Chinese city. To interpret these, I draw upon principles and approaches associated with narrative inquiry, critical disability studies and geographies of disability. I identify the structural elements, sequentiality, and themes (e.g. fear, pity and especially anxiety, or perplexity) permeating these narratives as well as their lack of resolution, or closure. Later, I situate these narratives within wider discursive contexts albeit while emphasising how perplexity emerges through a lack of identity, or rupture, between words and the world. These troubling and perplexing narratives register the fragility of symbolic systems and the troubled subject positions these enable/disable. Nevertheless, and crucially, these narratives also trouble the taken-for-grantedness of ostensibly stable abled/disabled categories, persons, and objects, in ways which may permit realisation of things outside reductive hierarchical binaries.

Mundane powered wheelchair journeys and embodied rural disability geographies of (not) belonging

This article addresses the gap in the literature on disabled people's experiences of everyday journeys by powered wheelchairs in rural contexts. As a contribution to a rural disability geography, this paper embraces the feminist notion of ‘embodied belongings’ to interpret the relationships between ideas, things, mobility, and advocacy. The paper draws on qualitative data collected through mobility life narratives from 15 disabled people who roll powered mobility devices in rural New South Wales. In a context where each rural municipal authority requires a disability inclusion plan, we argue that everyday powered wheelchair journeys produced contradictory feelings around belonging. We argue that feelings of belonging produced by powered wheelchair journeys in rural contexts are often predicated on notions of disability shame that reinforce normative identities and ideologies aligned with conventional discourses of independence that privilege solitary encounters. At the same time, most participants actively chose to become disability advocates from fleeting feelings of not belonging produced by powered wheelchair journeys that included disability parking, accessible footpaths, Wheelchair Accessible Taxis as well as accommodations and modifications around steps.

Short and Locked Down: The Impact of COVID-19 on a Person With Dwarfism

Living with a visible physical disability—specifically dwarfism—brings situational, psychosocial, and cultural challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its restrictions, amplifies these dwarfism-related complexities, exposing the politics of visibility and exclusion, as well as spatial injustices. This autoethnographic paper deliberates these heightened disabling encounters in their various contextual layers—physical, social, and psychological. Fundamentally, people with dwarfism have become further disabled and disadvantaged because of the pandemic’s psychosocial stresses, contextual traumas, and physical exclusions. The paper intimately addresses the embodied, psychological, cultural, and spatial inequalities short-statured individuals endure because of the pandemic. Drawing on theoretical models of disability, critical disability literature, geographies of disability, as well as the conceptual paradigm of biopolitical power, the paper begins to make sense of these experiences so that shifts may occur in different spaces. Arguably, the experiences of COVID-19 that are shared here are also applicable to people with other disabilities.

Neurodiversity in the city: Exploring the complex geographies of belonging and exclusion in urban space

AbstractIn this paper I develop an urban social geography of neurodiversity that attends to the plurality of neurodiversity and of neurodiverse experiences of the city. Geographers have remained relatively silent on issues of neurodiversity in the city and, as such, the perspectives and experiences of neurodiverse individuals remain vastly unreported. The city is a crucial spatial context of everyday life for those who are neurodiverse as it can present challenges due to its complex, unpredictable and fluid nature. Drawing on recent calls for the development of a relational geography of disability, this paper explores the intricate geographies of neurodiversity in the city, revealing ways urban spaces become spaces of belonging or exclusion for those who are neurodiverse. Urban spaces are experienced in diverse and complex ways, linked to a multitude of neurological differences and their intersections. The paper reveals social, spatial and temporal practices and processes through which urban spaces acquire meaning for those who are neurodiverse. The research offers important insights for urban planning and policy, particularly in terms of thinking complexly about neurodiversity and associated questions of inclusion and exclusion in the city. The paper concludes with a discussion of some future research directions for an urban geography of neurodiversity.

Emancipatory archival methods: Exploring the historical geographies of disability

AbstractThis paper focuses on the use of emancipatory research principles in archival research and contends with the suitability of academic conventions that characterise ethical practice when the research goal is to elevate the voices of marginalised historical groups. Drawing on a case study of Le Court Cheshire Home, England (1948–1975) to address a critical gap in the literature, I highlight some ethical dilemmas I encountered when working at the nexus of historical geography and geographies of disability. This paper demonstrates what an emancipatory research approach means for an archival study of disability, using examples to illustrate how ethical decisions impacted all stages of the research design and the write‐up of findings. I argue that ethics should not be envisaged solely as an approval process completed at the project's outset. Rather, the explorative nature of archival research necessitates that ethics should be an iterative undertaking, with archival sources having the potential to shape both the content and conduct of the research.

"Upoután vozíkový": absence zdvořilé nevšímavosti jako bariéra při pohybu prostorem uživatelů a uživatelek elektrických vozíků

The article is based on disability geography and draws on the social-geographic conception of relational space, which is perceived as being constantly created, never finished, heterogeneous, and embodied, and not a space that is given and everywhere the same. It offers a specific way of linking the discursive and material dimensions of disability, which intersect in the concept of social space, and refers to Lefebvre's trialectics of production - spatial practices, the representation of space, and spaces of representations. To analyse the mutual production of social space and social bodies, we use Goffman's concept of civil inattention. We ask how such social practices as gazing, addressing, asking, or dodging that co-create the social space of electric wheelchair users influence their movement through material space, and through the spatial reactions of wheelchair users responding to unwanted attention we trace the homogenisation and differentiation of space. The text is based on a long-term study (2010-2018) of the temporal/spatial behaviour of five electric wheelchair users (four men and one woman) diagnosed with muscular dystrophy who live in the City of Brno.

Geographies of Disability in the Letters of Rimbaud

While the poetry and tumultuous personal details of Rimbaud’s young adult life in France have received significant attention by literary scholars, his business exploits in Yemen and Ethiopia as a c...

A critical geography of disability hate crime

Many disabled people experience fear, harassment and occasionally violence in an array of public and private spaces, yet the issue remains unexamined by geographers of disability. To address this research gap, the paper develops a critical geography of disability “hate crime.” Extreme, yet rare, violent acts against disabled people constitute the popular and policy imagination of disability hate crime. While clearly important, these cases characterise disability hate crime as individually‐targeted placeless acts of extreme abjection against disabled people. At the same time, they arguably draw attention away from everyday “low‐level” harassment, name‐calling, fear, and neglect experienced by many in mainstream spaces and the impact on senses of social inclusion and belonging. Citing “race”‐related hate crime studies, which have recognised the role of social and physical environments in shaping incidence, the paper seeks to shift research and, in turn, policy on disability hate crime towards the local and micro‐scale spaces and moments within which incidents occur, and the social relations that constitute these acts, in the context of an exclusionary disablist society. The paper is organised in two parts: first, evidence of harassment and violence experienced by disabled people (UK‐focused) is examined and the emergence of disability “hate crime” critiqued; second, a critical geography of disability hate crime is developed, applying insights from hate crime studies and relational geographies of disability. The paper concludes by setting out an agenda for Geography's potential contribution to disability and wider hate crime research.

Negotiating acquired spinal conditions: Recovery with/in bodily materiality and fluids

The paper explores the concept of recovery; the unexpected material changes that occur to, and within bodies following acquired spinal conditions. The phrase ‘acquired spinal conditions’ is used as a collective name for the four accounts of recovery that emerged using Participatory Action Research in the north east of England (2010-11). Using two qualitative methods, Photovoice and participatory diagramming, the empirical material examines the role of physiological changes as a way to enrich understandings of disability and the bodily experience of impairment. Three themes, bodily materiality, material objects and fluids became significant during one-to-one and small group interactions with participants. The paper is situated in wider debates in geographies of disability and impairment, focusing on the interplay between different physiological states of being and the bodily changes experienced through recovery. It argues that recovery is the process of negotiating, adapting and adjusting to changes, from the way bodily materiality shifts and fluctuates following accidents and medical interventions, settling over time as participants become aware of bodily changes, to the role of material objects and the fluids that pass back and forth changing bodily interiors. The paper closes with a call for geographies of affect to explore the individual and collective feelings associated with fluids, and the human-animal relations affecting recovery and bodily interiors.

Major sporting events and geographies of disability

ABSTRACTMajor sporting events for athletes with disabilities have become part of a strategic agenda to create positive social legacies for those typically marginalized in their communities. These events are subject to strict guidelines set forth by the International Paralympic Committee to deliver broad-based accessibility. In some cases, changes to accessibility are temporary, wherein other upgrades remain as permanent fixtures for venues, transportation, and public spaces. However, the temporality at the heart of major event projects can also work against long-term, sustainable improvements to the material conditions persons with disabilities face as they experience the urban realm. In this paper, we draw upon case studies of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games to explore the value of major sporting events in delivering urban accessibility improvements and offer a critical commentary on the limitations of the event project to herald sustainable change.

Towards a relational geography of disability

In this paper we develop linkages between non-representational theory and emerging work by disability scholars in geography. We argue that non-representational thinking has the potential to advance our understanding of the complex and emergent geographies of dis/ability. We first outline key dimensions of non-representational thinking within geography. We then explore how this perspective has begun to, and might further inform, geographical scholarship on disability. Next, we extend our thinking to consider how NRT might provide the basis for a critical geography of the ‘able-body’. We conclude by reflecting on the conceptual, political, methodological and empirical implications of our argument.

The contribution of the geography of disability to the development of ‘accessible tourism’

The article presents an outline of the evolution of the geography of disability (since the 1930s) taking into account significant issues in the creation of theoretical foundations as well as practical action in ‘accessible tourism’. It may be considered a review. Based on an analysis of literature, the first section presents a definition of ‘accessible tourism’ and the development of the geography of disability, the result of which is the geographical model of disability. The second section is a synthetic presentation of the effect of geographical research on the development of theoretical accessible tourism concepts and their implications in practice. The final conclusions highlight the need to identify the level of detail in universal design principles applied to buildings, spaces, services, which are to fulfil the criteria of accessibility for people with various types of disability.

Whose identity politics? – Lessons for emerging critical disability geography in Hungary

Abstract. In response to the economic crisis in 2009, the Hungarian government reduced the level of support for the employment of impaired people. The withdrawal of this state support has not only resulted in a massive wave of dismissals, but has also transformed some peripheral settlements into spaces of resistance. The research presented in this paper was conducted to understand the nature of political actions organised in Békés County (one of Hungary's disadvantaged regions) in order to support the social employment of impaired people. By analysing these political actions we have highlighted certain contradictions of applying the concept of identity politics in a post-socialist context, and the advantages of a combined, biosocial model. On the one hand, the outline of the political and economic situation helped us understand that the analysed social protests only resembled identity politics. In reality, they may even have contributed to the reproduction of ableism. On the other hand, by integrating individual experiences into the social model of disability we could also reveal that according to our impaired interviewees, it is not only their impairments and/or disabilities that render daily life difficult. Their firm call for changes in both economic and regional policy suggests that the deliberate and combined use of identity and class politics would be particularly important. Overall, our results suggest that it is essential for scholars in Hungary to engage more strongly in critical disability geography and to thus help the approach take root and develop further.

Spacing access to justice: geographical perspectives on disabled people's interactions with the criminal justice system as victims of crime

Over the past two decades, research emerging from the sub-discipline of ‘geographies of disability’ has highlighted the significant socio-spatial barriers that shape disabled people's everyday lives. Disabled people's battles to obtain equitable access through the justice system when they are victims of crime is one such arena in which these barriers become readily apparent, and yet to date, geographers' engagement with the spaces of the criminal justice system has been noticeably absent. This paper seeks to redress this lacuna by discussing the findings of qualitative research undertaken in Ireland on disabled people's experiences of the criminal justice system as victims of crime. It highlights not just how the justice system presents practical barriers to disabled people such as inaccessible courthouses or Garda stations, but also the fundamental ways in which legislation constitutes certain groups of disabled people as vulnerable or incapable, and therefore ‘out-of-place’ in the justice system. The paper makes a case for building disciplinary connections between geographies of disability, geographies of crime and ‘critical legal geographies’ in rendering these barriers visible.

Lists, Spatial Practice and Assistive Technologies for the Blind

Lists, Spatial Practice and Assistive Technologies for the Blind

Challenges for Hungarian Geography: Perspectives of ‘Disability Studies’ in Hungary

In Hungary people with disabilities are one of the most oppressed and marginalized social groups. During the last two decades they have become more and more ’visible’ for social sciences too, but unfortunately disability is still neglected in human geography. However, it always appears in media, public discourses and political debates and good examples for disability research from ‘Western’ geography are known and available. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that disability, as a research topic could be well adopted into Hungarian geography. Keeping the eyes on this goal, the paper is divided into three major parts. First, it gives a summary on the ‘geographical research’ of the mostly examined marginalized social groups in the Hungarian society and on some important research areas and results reached by scholars of various science areas. Second, it reveals some practicable approaches, research topics and methods of ‘disability geography’, a sub-discipline of Anglo-American geography. Finally, it explores how disability geography could be used in Hungary and gives an example based on own research.

Book Review: Rethinking Geographies of Disability

Book Review: Rethinking Geographies of Disability

The production of disability research in human geography: an introspective examination

The ‘geographies of disability’ is an important and evolving area of scholarship within human geography. Uniting the disparate areas of inquiry in this sub‐discipline are researchers’ shared interests in understanding processes of disablement and socio‐spatial experiences of disability. What drives human geographers to engage with this scholarship? We address this and other introspective questions through presenting an analysis of the findings of an online survey conducted with 30 such disability researchers. The overriding purpose is to understand how and why these researchers do what they do. Our presentation of the survey findings is divided into four organizational categories: (1) the researcher; (2) the inquiry; (3) the research outputs; and (4) the institutions. A key finding is that conducting disability research in human geography is very much about negotiating around or through constraints while identifying and enacting enablers in order to accomplish goals associated with producing disability research.