Cover image for Politicising Polio Disability, Civil Society and Civic Agency in Sierra Leone
Politicising Polio Disability, Civil Society and Civic Agency in Sierra Leone
Title:
Politicising Polio Disability, Civil Society and Civic Agency in Sierra Leone
ISBN:
9789811361111
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed. 2020.
Publication Information New:
Singapore : Springer Nature Singapore : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Physical Description:
XXV, 313 p. 6 illus. online resource.
Contents:
Part I: Staging a play (A Critical Ethnography of Disability) -- 1. The Set: Parallel Worlds (Sierra Leone on the World Stage) -- 2. The Cast Onstage and Off: Polio and Beggars on Wheels -- 3. Writing the Play: Creating Disability and DPOs -- 4. Scripts about disability. Stories from the polio-houses -- Part II: After the Play? (An Ethnographic Critique of Project Society) -- 5. Discrimination as Structural Violence -- 6. Perceptions, representations and coloniality -- 7. Expulsions: Disability, Power, Land, and Citizen's Rights -- 8. Hope.
Abstract:
This book examines disability in post-war Sierra Leone. Its protagonists are polio-disabled people living in the nation's capital of Freetown, organizing themselves as best as they can in a state without welfare. There is little concrete support for people with disabilities in a country where the government is struggling with the competing requirements of the international community, demanding - in exchange for its support - good standards of democracy and the maintenance of a free market economy. To what extent is the Human Rights framework of the disability movement effective in protecting the polio-disabled and what are the limitations of this framework? Diana Szántó's detailed ethnography reveals, through many real-life examples, the vulnerability of disabled people living in the intersections of poverty, informality and disability activism. At the same time, it also tells about the many ways the polio-disabled community is transforming vulnerability into strength.
Added Corporate Author:
Language:
English