Disabled persons' struggles for rights and recognition
Honorable Mention, 2011 Davis Center Book Prize Honorable Mention, 2011 Heldt Prize, Association for Women in Slavic Studies
Sarah D. Phillips examines the struggles of disabled persons in Ukraine and the other former Soviet states to secure their rights during the tumultuous political, economic, and social reforms of the last two decades. Through participant observation and interviews with disabled Ukrainians across the social spectrum—rights activists, politicians, students, workers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and others—Phillips documents the creative strategies used by people on the margins of postsocialist societies to assert claims to "mobile citizenship." She draws on this rich ethnographic material to argue that public storytelling is a powerful means to expand notions of relatedness, kinship, and social responsibility, and which help shape a more tolerant and inclusive society.
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This ethnography is quite accessible and would be appropriate for courses in applied, medical, and development anthropology, anthropology of globalization and cultural change, as well as to historians of disability, and gender studies scholars and students.
" - Anthropology of East Europe Review
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Crafted with an interdisciplinary audience in mind, [this] volume will be of interest to historians of disability, Europe, and the Soviet Union, as well as to cultural and medical anthropologists. Written with accessibility in mind, Phillips weaves theoretical concerns into narrative accounts and historical and ethnographic detail. May 2011
" - H-Disability
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[This] entire study is a much-needed and welcome addition to the postsocialist literature and would fit well in anthropology, as well as interdisciplinary, courses on Russian and Eastern European studies.
" - somatosphere.net
