Geodisability Knowledges - Watching for Global North Impositions

Abstract

Critical disability studies have shown that disability has been geographically and culturally defined and regulated by Western Governments. Thus, disability has history and context (Campbell 2008; Thomson 1997). This paper focuses on the impact these processes may have on people with disability in Sri Lanka. An underlying dilemma presented here concerns the relationship between philosophy and action. A critique of the universalist approach to disability governance could occur through a critical appraisal of globalisation. However, some writers would argue that a focus on globalisation is a distraction from a more pressing concern; the continued Eurocentricism of knowledge and the domination of the Global North in social policy, law reform and research (Alatas 2006; Connell 2007). I argue that the United Nations delimits and denotes the kinds of bodies known as ‘disabled’ and this culture of knowledge production controls notions of difference.