Despite its diverse and multiple contributions and objectives, current research in critical disability studies has been described as mainly focusing on disability issues in the Global North and as having universalizing tendencies. In this context, intersubjective perspectives and empirical data offered by ethnographic works in medical and disability anthropology and related disciplines have been either in accord or tension with the broader field of CDS.
On the one hand, this review article illustrates the many ways anthropologists have adopted various research perspectives to explore bodily non-normativity outside settings in the Global North. On the other, it shows the importance of research by anthropologists working on topics related to disability, as well as their recent fruitful collaborations with CDS scholars and approaches.
By exploring these epistemological and empirical entanglements, this paper concludes that deeper engagements between CDS and anthropology, as well as a more thorough focus on the ethnographic analysis of bodily non-normativity, can open new creative routes for the analysis of disability in various world contexts. Writing, analyzing, and examining diverse forms of bodily difference 1 and their sociocultural representations and manifestations worldwide is a challenging endeavor 1.
Critical disability studies CDS , or critical disability theory CDT 2 , includes interdisciplinary approaches to analyze disability as a socio-political, historical, and cultural phenomenon that is shaped by symbolic and sociocultural structures, political ideas, literary representations, narratives and practices in various world settings 2 — 5.
Scholars in this broad field strive to denaturalize disability and question how it is defined in terms of the Global North 6. Further complementary focuses include the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts that produce stigma and marginalization as well as agentic practices of resistance against these attitudes. Therefore, CDS challenges white and mestizaje-based ableist ideas of disability politics in societies, institutions and ideologies 9 , Moreover, previous models and scholarly trends pay little attention to racial and linguistic differences in the analysis of disability issues 1 , Accessibility issues are another significant concern for people with non-normative bodies 3 , scholars and activists in CDS 1.
