Engaging with the politics of structural disablement through Political Studies

The completion of my ESRC-funded doctoral research project, The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work: Prefiguring a Non-Productivist Future, coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the first UPIAS (Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation) conference. UPIAS was a pioneering UK-based activist group of disabled people who, in the 1970s, introduced the radical distinction between ‘disability’ and ‘impairment’. This approach later became known as the social model of disability.

In The Fundamental Principles of Disability, UPIAS argue that disability is ‘something imposed on top of our impairments, by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society’. By contrast, they regard impairment as a morally neutral feature of one’s bodymind. The proponents of the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability seek to change how society is organised. Thus, they stand in opposition to the individual model of disability, which permeates capitalist societies and aims to ‘fix’ people with impairments, who are chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or who experience mental distress.

However, with the introduction of disability discrimination legislation in the UK in the 1990s, many UK-based Disability Studies scholars and activists moved away from the radical and Marxist underpinnings of the UPIAS-inspired social model. A more liberal, human rights-based approach to disability gained prominence. Since then, the prospect of undertaking Marxist scholarship on disability has become less prevalent.

The absence of the social model of disability within social and Political Studies research has meant that disability, disablement, and disabled people have, inadvertently, been approached through the lens of the individual model of disability. Additionally, disability and disabled people continue to appear in publications as part (and at the end) of lists of social issues or groups, without deeper engagement with the ongoing processes and manifestations of disablement and -what I call- disabling capitalism.

Disability politics is also rarely included in Political Studies/Science degrees’ curricula. As an undergraduate student, my only encounter with disability politics was in my third year, as part of an optional module offered by the School of Education. Similarly, Political Studies conferences and associations rarely include disability-related panels or specialist groups. The panels I have presented on have often been only tangentially related to my research (though I am grateful for those opportunities).

Through my research in the Political Science and International Studies department at the University of Birmingham, I aimed to intervene in both Disability Studies and Political Science/Political Economy literatures. I did so by synthesising anti-productivist, post-’68 Marxisms (Autonomist, Black, and Feminist) with the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability. This synthesis helped me articulate a key argument regarding the basis upon which people with impairments, who are chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or who experience mental distress share commonalities in capitalist societies (whether or not they self-identify as disabled) in capitalist societies. The argument is detailed in my paper published in the Global Political Economy Journal (GPE), titled The centrality of disablement subjectivation to the reproduction of capitalist social relations: considerations for Critical and Global Political Economy. In short, everyone who is part of the groups above is subjected to structural disablement oppression and exploitation. Therefore, I propose the concept subjects of disablement as an analytical tool for disability abolitionist and anti-capitalist activists and scholars. Capitalism itself, I argue, is inherently disabling for these groups, making disablement an ongoing and continuously changing process that Political Studies scholars must examine theoretically and empirically through a bottom-up approach and in collaboration with the subjects of disablement.

The synthesis between the post-’68 Marxisms and the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability also created the possibility of critiquing mainstream feminist accounts of social reproduction and care. This critique is presented in an article titled Contesting the service model of “care” in disabling capitalism: a Disability Politics perspective, published in the International Journal of Care and Caring (IJCC). In it, I make a distinction between mainstream accounts of ‘care’ as a ‘service’ offered by non-disabled women to those subjected to disablement, which have paternalistic and disablist implications. Instead, I propose an organising model of care through which the social relations of care would be transformed and collectively organised.

In a forthcoming (September 2024) article in the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice (IJDSJ), titled Theorising Disablement through the Collective-Materialist Approach to Disabling Capitalism, I delve deeper into the theoretical framework developed in this thesis. The framework is called the collective-materialist approach to disablement, through which I propose five tenets as a starting point. They emphasise relational autonomy, In(ter)dependent Living, collectivity, and anti-productivism as principles for analysis and struggle against-and-beyond disabling capitalist oppression and exploitation.

This research study was made possible through a collaboration with twenty-seven gig economy subjects of disablement. Twenty-seven interviews, twelve diaries kept over eight weeks, and ten post-diary interviews informed the theoretical and empirical findings of this project. Thus, empirically, I offer an account of the continuous and competing demands of waged and unwaged work faced by the research participants. The Initial Research Report offers preliminary findings, which may be expanded upon in a future book, if funded opportunities for such work arise.

Despite the relatively marginalised status of disability politics within Political Studies, during my PhD, I have observed several positive initiatives worth highlighting. First, since January 2023, the Marxism and Disability Network (where I serve as a steering group member) has held monthly online talks, reading groups, and interdisciplinary discussions from a variety of Marxist approaches and with a focus on disability-related matters. Second, in early 2024, the American Political Science Association’s Virtual Research Meeting (two-day conference) hosted three disability-focused panels. Third, the 2024 Political Studies Association Conference featured a book launch event for ‘Disability and Political Representation’ – a groundbreaking book by Stefanie Reher (University of Strathclyde) and Elizabeth Evans (University of Southampton). Fourth, the Marxism and Disability Network are planning a joint event with PSA’s Marxism Specialist Group for early 2025.

These promising developments signal the type of contributions from which Political Studies and Disability Studies can significantly benefit. I hope they will inspire more meaningful engagement with the politics of disablement, the introduction of disability-related matters in the curriculum (as a way of -what some would call- ‘cripping’ the curriculum/classroom), and concrete plans to hire scholars of Political Studies whose research has been informed by Disability Studies.

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