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Disability Culture and Politics
Disabling Barriers

Disabling Barriers

Social Movements, Disability History, and the Law

Edited by Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Series: Disability Culture and Politics

Imprint: UBC Press

244 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 2 b&w illus.

Paperback
9780774835244
Published: April 2018

£26.99

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Hardcover
9780774835237
Published: October 2017

£76.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Disabling Barriers analyzes issues relating to disability at different moments in Canadian and American history. In this volume, legal scholars, historians, and disability-rights activists demonstrate that disabled people can change their social status by transforming the political and legal discourse surrounding disablement.

Employing tools from the fields of law and history, this original contribution explores how disabled people have been portrayed and treated in a variety of contexts, including within the labour market, the workers' compensation system, the immigration process, and the legal system (both as litigants and as lawyers). It deepens our knowledge of the role of people with disabilities within social movements in disability history. The contributors encourage us to rethink our understanding of both the systemic barriers disabled people face and the capacity of disabled people to effect positive societal change.

Foreword / Bryan D. Palmer

Introduction: Bringing History and Law to Disability Studies / Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt

Part 1: Historical Debates on Work and Disability

1 Bearing the Marks of Capital: Solidarities and Fractures in E.T. Kingsley's British Columbia / Mark Leier

2 Employers, Disabled Workers, and the War on Attitudes in Late Twentieth-Century Canada / Dustin Galer

3 Gender and the Value of Work in Canadian Disability History / Geoffrey Reaume

Part 2: Debates in Disability Studies

4 Dancing with a Cane: The Public Perception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Disability / Anne Finger

5 Disability in Motion: Aesthetics, Embodiment, Sensation, and the Emergence of Modern Vestibular Science in the Nineteenth Century / Mark Walters

6 "Of Dark Type and Poor Physique": Law, Immigration Restriction, and Disability in Canada, 1900–30 / Jen Rinaldi and Jay Dolmage

Part 3: Legal Debates

7 Battling the Warrior-Litigator: An Exploration of Chronic Illness and Employment Discrimination Paradigms / Odelia R. Bay

8 Towards Full Inclusion: Addressing the Issue of Income Inequality for People with Disabilities in Canada / Megan A. Rusciano

9 Compensating Work-Related Disability: The Theory, Politics, and History of the Commodification-Decommodification Dialectic / Eric Tucker

Index

Ravi Malhotra is a full professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, at the University of Ottawa. He has been a disability-rights advocate for more than twenty-five years and is a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. He is the co-author (with Morgan Rowe) of Exploring Disability Identity and Disability Rights through Narratives: Finding a Voice of Their Own, which examines the narratives and life experiences of adults with physical disabilities. He is the editor of the interdisciplinary anthology Disability Politics in a Global Economy: Essays in Honour of Marta Russell, which explores the impact of globalization on disability politics.

Benjamin Isitt is a historian and legal scholar specializing in the relationship between social movements and the state in Canada and globally. He is the author of three books that examine social movements and states in diverse historical and geographic contexts: From Victoria to Vladivistok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917–19; Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948–1972; and Duty With Dignity: The Professional Employees' Association in British Columbia. Alongside his scholarly work, Benjamin Isitt serves the public as a city councillor and regional director in Victoria, BC.

Contributors: Odelia R. Bay, Jay Dolmage, Anne Finger, Dustin Galer, Mark Leier, Geoffrey Reaume, Jen Rinaldi, Megan A. Rusciano, Eric Tucker, and Mark Walters

Disabled Barriers is an intricate and thorough analysis of the interaction between labour histories and disability rights. The collection introduces a focus that has been largely ignored in the literature but would be quite valuable to researchers of labour and disability studies.
- Sara Klein, Research and Learning Services Librarian, University of Calgary (Canadian Law Library Review, Vol. 43, No. 4)