Critical Disability Studies, a Social Theory and Praxis Supporting Changes in Socio-Political Conditions of Social Exclusion of People with Disabilities

Dear Colleagues,

The social struggles that characterized the socio-political movement of people with disabilities in the seventies and eighties helped reveal social inequalities and forms of exclusion, as well as the transformation of social practices towards them in the societies of advanced modernity (Giddens, 1991). In the 1990s, this critical perspective significantly transformed the reading of disability by seeking to consider other forms of oppression that also affect other marginalized groups, based on an openness towards intersectionality (Meekosha & Shuttleworth (2009) by proposing a critical social theory of disability. In this vein, the interdisciplinary readings that characterize disability studies, and even more so in the field of critical disability studies, are nourished by the fragmented and diversified nature of disability, hence the interest in building bridges with the fields of feminist or postcolonial studies. For some theorists, the method is used as “a method to both describe the socio-political construct of disability and track the impacts of these constructions on oppressed persons, including but not limited to those to whom concept disability attaches”.

This call for papers seeks to identify, from these interdisciplinary and intersectionality approaches, certain anchor points of the socio-political conditions associated with the contemporary construction of disability and their transformations. From the same perspective, queer theory and critical disability theory today constitute a key paradigm sustained by an intersectional analysis of the disability mosaic and the forms of oppression and experience of other marginalized groups. This articulation will be explored and discussed in this Special Issue. Therefore, submitted articles could address these issues both theoretically and from an emancipatory perspective, particularly those involving experiential knowledge, to bring to the fore new forms of inequality and the social exclusion of people with disabilities. Authors wishing to contribute to these conceptual, methodological, and empirical developments are welcome to submit papers.

References

Giddens, Anthony (1991). Modernity and Self Identity in the Late Modern Age. California, Standford University Press

Meekosha H and Shuttleworth R (2009) What’s so critical about critical disability studies? Australian Journal of Human Rights 15(1): 47–75.

Hall, Melinda C., "Critical Disability Theory", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/disability-critical/>.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Dr. Normand Boucher
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• critical disability theory
• sociology
• intersectionality
• emancipatory practices
• disability policy