Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DISABILITY (Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective)

Teaser

Approximately 10%-15% of the world’s population is estimated to have a form of disability and this number is expected to rise in the next few decades. Disability has consequences not only for the individuals concerned, but also for their families and their environment, it is...

Summary

Approximately 10%-15% of the world’s population is estimated to have a form of disability and this number is expected to rise in the next few decades. Disability has consequences not only for the individuals concerned, but also for their families and their environment, it is a human and social issue that touches us all. People in different cultural settings ascribe different meanings to disability; consequently, its repercussions are both culturally contingent and universal. This project brings together the local and global dimensions of disability and examines the interaction, tension and conflict between these two aspects by undertaking the first comprehensive study of the far-reaching political, societal and cultural implications of the International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP), a landmark event organized by the United Nations in 1981, which appears to have gone virtually unrecognized in scholarship. The hypothesis of this project is that the International Year, together with its counterpart, the International Decade of Disabled Persons (1982-1993) was the most significant watershed in the modern history of disability. It was the first occasion to place disability into a global context by endorsing it authoritatively as a human rights issue and thereby raising the question as to how the concept may be understood in a multicultural world. The project’s innovative contribution lies in connecting the IYDP to broader political, social and cultural processes in the last quarter of the twentieth century and thereby bringing disability in a global context to the attention of mainstream historical scholarship.

IYDP as a catalyst for change
The International Year was marked not only by celebrations, but also by vigorous protests in several countries: the official rhetoric associated with the event raised expectations significantly, but these could not be met in a period which coincided with the first major financial crisis in post-war history. This project purports that the vast gap between official discourses and everyday realities at the grassroots level produced a creative tension, from which a new paradigm started to emerge. Historical time became ‘compressed’ and, by accelerating pre-existing tendencies, the International Year led to the kind of fundamental changes, which would, under normal circumstances, take several decades to occur. It became a major catalyst for the politicization of disabled citizens, who were at the time still not regarded as part of the ‘general public’, but as people with separate and special needs.

IYDP and the formation of a new identity
The International Year inspired disabled people to think about their status in new ways. It encouraged them to no longer hide their condition and take pride in it. As a result, in several countries disabled people came to reject traditional approaches of charity and pity and realized that they were better equipped than anyone else to understand their own needs. They came to feel a sense of belonging together and disability gradually evolved into a distinct identity, giving rise to an alternative lifestyle and unleashing artistic potentials. Frequent meetings and an intensive exchange of ideas informed this period and - in addition to the transnational networks of medical experts, politicians and policymakers - for the first time disabled people themselves started to contribute to those exchanges, forming Disabled People’s International, the first global organization entirely run by disabled citizens.

IYDP and the developing world
It was in preparation for the IDYP that, in 1980 the World Health Organization (WHO) produced the first classification of disability designed for universal application. This classification was based on an ideological framework which reflected the standards of the modern ‘Western world’ It focused on the individual and assumed that equality, independence, self-reliance and personal self-fulfilment are universally desi

Work performed

Conferences and workshops organized within the remit of the project:

Whose Welfare? Fresh Perspectives on the Post-war Welfare State and its Global Entanglements, Leiden University, 19-20 January, 2017
Report:
https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7080

‘Calendar Propaganda’ of Human Rights? Historical Perspectives on the United Nations’ Global Observances, Leiden University, 13-15 June, 2017
Report:
https://www.hsozkult.de/searching/id/tagungsberichte-7412?title=calendar-propaganda-of-human-rights-historical-perspectives-on-the-united-nations-global-observances&q=Calendar%20propaganda&sort=&fq=&total=7&recno=1&subType=fdkn


Workshop Historians without Borders: Writing Histories of International Organizations, Leiden University 22-23 March 2018

Co-organized events:

Workshop co-organinized with Babette Hellemans, Douwe Draaisma, Anne Baker, Elise de Bree and Piet Devos, Perspectives on diversity: the cultural history of absence, Lorentz Center, Leiden, 10-13 January 2016.

Workshop co-organized with Gildas Brégain, Colonialism and disability, L\'École des hautes études en sciences socials (EHESS), Paris, 20 June 2016.

Individual work by project members:

Monika Baár, Principal Investigator

Conference attendance
Workshop ‘Communicating International Organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European University Institute, Florence. Paper: ‘Vulnerable groups in the centre of global attention: communicating the UN\'s International Years in the media’, 13-15 March 2016.

Workshop ‘The emergence of Global Mental Health’, King\'s College, Department for Social Science, Health and Medicine, London. Paper: \'The emergence of a common language for Global Mental Health\', 28 April 2016.

Conference ‘Objects of psychiatry: between think-making, reification & personhood’, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zürich. Paper: \'Inventing the psychiatric patient in the non-Western World\', 8-11 June 2016.

3rd Conference of the International Federation of Public History, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota. Paper: \'Oral history interviews with vulnerable people: methodological problems\', 7-9 July 2016.

Conference ‘Africa, Eastern Europe and the dream of international socialism’, St Anthony\'s College, Oxford University. Paper: ‘Socialist countries’ development projects in Africa in the context of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981)’, 28-29 October 2016.

Conference ‘History of Disability and Disability Policies’, Katholische Akademie, Schwerte. Paper: ‘The UN’s International Year: A Paradigm Change?’13-14, March, 2017.

Intersections: 24th Annual Conference of EUROCLIO (European Association of History Teachers), San Sebastian, 2-7 April, 2017, discussion group leader: Teaching the History of Groups with Vulnerabilities, subsequently holding training sessions on disability studies in the Hague

Conference ‘Histories of Socialist Medicine’, Wellcome Unit, Exeter University. Paper: ‘The Resonance of Health for All and the Alma Ata Declaration (1979) in Cold War Europe and Beyond’, 1-2 June, 2017.

Conference ‘5th ENIUGH (European Congress on World and Global History)’, Central European University, Budapest. Paper: ‘Competing Missionaries, Clashing Ideologies in Latin America during the Cold War: the Birth of Liberation Psychology in El Salvador’, 30 August, 2017.

Workshop ‘Socialist Health Histories’, Exeter University. Paper: ‘History of Rehabilitation and its Place within the Study of Global Health’, 12-13 January, 2018.

Conference ‘1st Riyadh Humanitarian Forum’. Paper: ‘Integration of Disability into Humanitarian Action: Opportunities and Challenges’, 25-28 February, 2018.

Workshop ‘Historians without Borders’, Leiden University. Paper: ‘Writing Disability into the History of International Organizations’, 22 March, 2018.

Invited talks
Boundaries of History lecture series, High School of Economics, Depar

Final results

Progress beyond the state of the art:

The \'state of the art\' in the global study of disability barely exists, and it is primarily based on Anglo-Saxon research frameworks. With its events, archival visits and publications, the project is on the way to bring about a very substantial change in this.
There are two major ways in which the project moved beyond the state of the art: by initiating a multi-level (international, regional/national and local) analytical framework that goes beyond \'Western\' paradigms and by bringing disability to the attention
of scholars who have so far thought of the concept as being only relevant for historians working on the history of rehabilitation. The project has therefore contributed to the destigmatization of the subject, and it is determined to continue the efforts in that direction.

Expected results:

Three further conferences and some smaller side-events are planned until the end of the project. In June, 2018, a talk given by Sam Moyn at Leiden University \'The Neoliberal Maelstorm\' will be followed by a discussion on
the implications of neoliberal regimes for disabled citizens. The first major future events is supported by the Dutch Embassy in Cairo and the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo.
This conference is titled \'Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability: the MENA Region in the Modern Period and it will take place on 25-26 November, 2018. Speakers and participants will include academics, artists,
and activists. This is an excellent opportunity for knowledge transfer and the conference will give a significant impetus to the promotion of the academic study of disability in Egypt. An edited volume (presumably
in Brill\' s Leiden Studies in Islam and Society series) is envisaged on the basis of selected papers. Another conference \'Criptic Identities. Historicizing the Identity Formation of People with Disabilities Across the Globe\' is
planned for 21-22 March, 2019 at Leiden University, to be accompanied by a special issue/edited volume. Lastly, the final conference, which will also showcase the main findings of the project is expected to take place in spring, 2020.
Other smaller-scale events will include a workshop on disability and sexuality and on the visualizations of disability, while the project members will make conscious efforts to showcase their work at Area Studies conferences,
in order to stregthen its global appeal. In July, 2019 Leiden University will host the ICAS convention (International Convention of Asia Scholars) and the project will be present with a special panel. Ongoing collaboration will be
streghtened with the Asia Studies Centre of Leiden University, while project members will be co-founders of the Leiden Deaf Studies Network.


A travelling exhibition highlighting the visual findings of the project is being planned to be launched in September, 2019 in the Palace of Nations in Geneva, to be later displayed in the European Parliament and at Leiden University.

For 2019 a Proof of Concept application is being planned with the aim to strengthen the presence of disability history in European school curricula.

Altogether, the most important expected (albeit longer-term) result arising from this project is the laying down the foundations for a truly global study of the history of disability.

Discussions have started with Brill on launching a new journal on the Global History of Disabilty.

Website & more info

More info: http://rethinkingdisability.net/.