Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability

This book explores the concept of "occupation" in disability well beyond traditional clinical formulations of disability: it considers disability not in terms of pathology or impairment, but as a range of unique social identities and experiences that are shaped by visible or invisible diagnoses/impairments, socio-cultural perceptions and environmental barriers and offers innovative ideas on how to apply theoretical training to real world contexts. Inspired by disability justice and “Disability Occupy Wall Street / Decolonize Disability” movements in the US and related movements abroad, this book builds on politically engaged critical approaches to disability that intersect occupational therapy, disability studies and anthropology. "Occupying Disability" will provide a discursive space where the concepts of disability, culture and occupation meet critical theory, activism and the creative arts. The concept of “occupation” is intentionally a moving target in this book. Some chapters discuss occupying spaces as a form of protest or alternatively, protesting against territorial occupations. Others present occupations as framed or problematized within the fields of occupational therapy and occupational science and anthropology as engagement in meaningful activities. The contributing authors come from a variety of professional, academic and activist backgrounds to include perspectives from theory, practice and experiences of disability. Emergent themes include: all the permutations of the concept of "occupy," disability justice/decolonization, marginalization and minoritization, technology, struggle, creativity and change. This book will engage clinicians, social scientists, activists and artists in dialogues about disability as a theoretical construct and lived experience.

Table of Contents:
1) Editors: Introduction.- Section I: Decolonizing Disability.- 2) Mark Hudson and Mami Aoyama: Disability Rights in Japan, Minamata Disease.- 3) Russell Shuttleworth: The Sexuality and Disability Alliance: Strategies of Resistance and Change.- 4) Petra Kuppers: Decolonizing Disability.- 5) Melanie Yergeau: Clinically Significant Disturbance: Stim-ins, In/voluntary Rhetorics and Autistic Ethos.- 6) Margaret Ames:Scenes and Encounters, Bodies and Abilities:  Devising Performance with Cyrff Ystwyth.- 7) Devva Kasnitz et. al: Field Schools, Field Work and Decolonizing International Disability Advocacy: Guatemala.- 8) Marta Peres and José Otávio Pompeu e Silva: Psychiatry, Spectacle and the Colonial Lens.- Section II:Occupying Disability.- 9) Neil Marcus, Pam Block, and Devva Kasnitz: Occupying Disability.- 10) Akemi Nishida, Marjorie McGee, and Nirmala Erevelles: Disability Justice and Academia.- 11) Akemi Nishida et al:Disability Occupy/Decolonize Wall Street.- 12) ManshaMirza, Susan Magasi, Joy Hammel: Disability Justice and Occupational Therapy.- 13) Denise Nepveaux: Older Adult Activism in U.S. Cities: Connections and Contrasts with Occupy and Disability Rights Movements.- 14) David Turnbull and Rick Stoddart: Cerebral Palsy and People with Speech Impairments:  Preserving and Promoting the Oral Tradition.- 15) Michele Friedner: Occupying Seats, Occupying Space, Occupying Time: Deaf Young Adults in Vocational Training Centers in Bangalore, India.- 16) Linda Laurie: Charity Versus Rights.- 17) Stephanie De La Haye: Surviving - from Mental Health Service User to Government Advisor.- 18) Eva Rodriguez: Self Advocacy and Educational Transition.- 19) Kate Seelman: Ethical Issues of Having Robots as Personal Assistants.- Section III: Struggle, Creativity and Change.- 20) Patrick Devlieger: Living the Natural State of Exception: Authoritative Disability Discourses in African Borderlands.- 21) Alejandro Guajardo and Monica Diaz: Human Rights, Political Repression, and Occupational Therapy. Debates and Projections for the Practice of Occupational Therapy.- 22) Daniela Alburquerque, Pedro Chana, and Alejandro Guajardo: Transaberes and the Joint Construction for Health and Welfare in the Context of a Progressive Disease. Experience CETRAM”.- 23) Leroy Moore: Krip Hop, Police Brutality.- 24) Rikki Chaplin: Blindness and Occupation in Australia.- 25) Roy Birch: Creative Survival in Stevenage.- 26) Liat Ben Moshe: Movements at War? Lessons from Disability and Anti-occupation Movements in Israel.- 27) Bob Perry: Charters Towers Magic Society.- 28) Editors: Conclusion. ​