Clashing Vulnerabilities, Disability and Conflict

Don Kulick is Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at Uppsala University and Visiting Chair Professor at Hong Kong University.Simo Vehmas is Professor of Special Education at Stockholm University.

• 0.Introduction - Clashing Vulnerabilities. 1.Curb clash: Blindness, wheelchairs, and tactile paving. 2.Embodied vulnerability vs. capitalist privilege. 3.Freedom vs. disability. 4.Rights vs. wrong: Debates about sex and disability. 5.Grassroots disability movement vs. Disability organizations. 6.French teachers vs. disabled students. 7.Long Covid vs. Functional Neurological Disorder: punching down. 8.Day centre staff vs. service users during the Covid-19 pandemic. 9.Inherent vs. contingent vulnerabilities in the care for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities.

An excellent volume with each chapter offering fresh revelations! This critical subject is rarely discussed in disability studies. Every fix for one vulnerability creates new problems for another form of vulnerability. The probing essays challenge us to be attentive to conflicts and more innovative in seeking solutions.Eva Feder Kittay, Stony Brook UniversityAn extraordinarily useful discussion of conceptual tensions inherent in disability, which should be required reading for all who wish to explore its complications.Tom Shakespeare, London School of Hygiene & Tropical MedicineIn showing the need for detailed, empirically based analyses to gain an understanding of vulnerabilities in conflict, this collection marks a significant step in the development of the field of disability studies.Jackie Leach Scully, University of New South Wales