From Self-help to Charity in Disability Service: the Jairos Jiri Association in Zimbabwe

In today's Zimbabwe, an extended network of institutions which serve persons with disabilities are the legacy of Jairos Jiri, one of the greatest African philanthropists. Started as a personal initiative to help Africans with disabilities, it became part of a larger self-help movement in colonial Rhodesia. This movement was characterized by the idea to establish independent African-controlled schools and black-run business ventures in an effort to uplift Africans. Jiri's activities started as early as 1945 but gained momentum in the early 1950s with the establishment of a leather shop followed by institutional expansion all over the country. The period 1950-60 is characterized by Jairos Jiri's effort to build African consciousness and the solicitation of financial support for Africans with disabilities. In this process, the financial contributions from non-Africans and from overseas, institutional expansion, and the idea in the 1960 that political control would uplift Africans overshadowed Jiri's self-help philosophy. In the 1980s and 1990s, disability advocates portrayed the Association in terms of charity rather than self-help thus underestimating the liberating role Jairos Jiri played prior to independence. This article challenges the assumption that the Jairos Jiri Association is merely an institutional effort, devoid of the liberating philosophy of the disability movement.     

Physical Disability in 1986 and Beyond: A Response to Simon Brisenden

The report of the Royal College of Physicians Physical Disability in 1986 and Beyond has been criticised by some disabled people because it deals exclusively with medical aspects of disability and not with the whole range of services and resources that disabled people require. This criticism is unfair since it would be totally inappropriate for a committee composed only of doctors to make recommendations other than of a medical or N.H.S. managerial nature. There are many deficiencies in the medical support of disabled people, particularly those with complex impairments and those with brain damage. Correcting these deficiencies needs a change in medical practice and in the N.H.S. resources devoted to rehabilitation medicine. The College report has defined very clearly the scale of this problem, suggested specific practical solutions and how they should be audited, and provides guidelines which all those concerned with disabled people can use to check on the medical services that should be available and to identify those who are responsible for providing them.     

Kana sora ratswa ngaritswe: African Nationalists and Black Workers – The 1948 General Strike in Colonial Zimbabwe

For almost two weeks in April 1948 colonial Zimbabwe's two major cities, as well as smaller towns, mines and farms were convulsed by mass unrest. Although the causes of the General Strike have long been recognised as having their origins in the urban squalor and rampant inflation of the immediate post-war era, there is little agreement about either its organisation or its significance. Recent interventions in the debate have tended to strengthen existing prejudices. This paper advances four linked propositions which radically reformulate previous positions: that, while the development of secondary industry and the related growth of colonial Zimbabwe's urban areas were both relatively large by the modest standards of Sub-Saharan African, the scale was small in absolute terms; that these processes and their social consequences differed considerably between Bulawayo and Salisbury; that that the limited scale of these processes often meant that parochial concerns were more important than national issues; and that while all of this facilitated a greater degree of control over events in Bulawayo, if not in Salisbury, by an elite leadership than some writers have conceded, these events did not amount to a colony-wide General Strike.     

Examining More Inclusive Approaches to Social Work,Physical Disability,and Sexuality

People with disabilities often experience the idea that those with disabilities are not, or should not be, sexual beings. This article examines how people with physical disabilities define sexual activity, their levels of sexual satisfaction, group differences in how people define different acts as sexual activities, and the differences in levels of sexual satisfaction. Additionally, this study (N?=?450) looks at the correlations between levels of independence in multiple contexts. Levels of independence are also assessed in relationship to severity of disability and sexual satisfaction. Implications for social work and social service practice, education, and policy are discussed.     

Personal and Political: A Feminist Perspective on Researching Physical Disability

Feminist theory and methodology have much to offer in understanding how disability research has been experienced as alienated research by disabled people. However, feminist research has failed to apply its principles to disability and disabled women's subjective reality has found no place in mainstream feminist work. The paper identifies the challenges for feminism in addressing the interests and reality of disabled women, asserting that it is not helpful to focus on 'double disadvantage'. Disability research itself has much to learn from feminist methodology, in particular the principle of making the personal political. The role of non-disabled researchers as allies of disabled people is discussed, and the importance of research which turns the spotlight on the way in which non-disabled society oppresses disabled people. Finally, it is asserted that disability research and politics are of general relevance because the experience of disability is an integral part of a society characterised by fundamental inequalities and ideologies which divide people against each other.     

Colonial Oppression, Gender, and Women in the Irish Diaspora

This paper explores the relationship between colonial oppression in pre-famine Ireland and the development of gender patterns that fostered uncommon social and familial roles for women. In post-famine Ireland women's traditional family roles illustrate cultural empowerment that combined with the pull factors of employment opportunities to spawn higher female than male emigration at the same time that patriarchal oppression restricted women's full social participation in Ireland and limited their authority to specific domains of family life. Cultural changes in post-famine Ireland, including increased power for the Catholic Church, mothers' socialization of children to the moral teachings of the Church, delayed marriage, and permanent celibacy among large segments of the population, intersected to produce unique patterns of migration. For women who immigrated to the United States, the cultural background of colonial oppression instilled values that respected independence and employment. In the case of the Irish, colonial oppression initiated gender patterns that pushed women to greater familial power and occupational independence than was typical of other ethnic groups.     

Official Documentary Systems and Colonial Government: From Imperial Sovereignty to Colonial Autonomy in the Canadas, 1841–18671

Some dimensions of the official documentary system through which England ruled its colonies in the nineteenth century are examined. A shift in the centre of gravity of documentary production from imperium to colony resulting from the development of colonial state administrative capacity is described. Keywords: State.     

Doing Disability: Disability Formations in the Search for Work*

Disability theorists have spent much time discussing how disability is defined. The theoretical roots for these debates reside in the medical, structural, and minority models of disability. The medical model views disability as equivalent to a functional impairment; the minority model sees a lack of equal rights as a primary impediment to social equality between able and disabled populations; and the structural model looks to environmental factors as the cause of disability. While debates over how to define disability are informative, there is currently an insufficient amount of empirical research looking at how people come to identify themselves as having a disability. Rather than focus on how disability is (or should be) defined, herein we look at how disability identities are constructed as people search for work. We show that people's interactions with employers and employment agencies have important influences on how disability identities are constructed. We borrow from the “doing gender” and “racial formations” paradigms to introduce an interactive approach to looking at how disability identities are constructed. We introduce the concept of disability formation to highlight how disability identities are continually negotiated through interactions with employment agencies and employers. Our findings are based on focus groups with 58 people who self‐identified as having a disability and were working or searching for work.     

Dangerous Discourses: Anxiety,Desire, and Disability

The pleasure and danger of sexuality thematizes erotic desire as always accompanied by a certain anxiety. Although some anxiety is material and precautionary, I address the issue somewhat differently through investigating the psychic factors at play in the western imaginary. Discomfort with manifestations of erotic desire is most clearly invoked by differential embodiment where the challenge to the normative body not only results in disqualification from discourses of sexuality but also raises the contested question of who is to count as a sexual subject. My purpose is not to inquire empirically into the ways that people with disabilities are denied sexual subjectivity but to ask what is at stake in the cultural imaginary that requires such a closing down of possibilities. I develop a psychoanalytic approach to sexually marked anomalous embodiment and ask what part the link between desire and lack plays in thwarting a positive model of disability and sexuality.     

Ability,Disability, and the Oldest Old

Abstract

A measure of range of ability is used to profile the 85-years-old-and-older (oldest old) population, including the highly disabled institutional population. This new measure uses two new questions available in the 1990 Decennial Census concerning a selfcare limitation and a mobility limitation as well as the usual question concerning a work limitation. In addition to examining the extent of disability among the oldest old, the article examines the extent of care potentially available in the household as well as the economic characteristics of this age group. It is also profiled in terms of relevant personal characteristics, including age, gender, marital status, race, ethnicity, rural residence, education, and employment. A key question addressed is the need for help or care among the oldest old and how various long-term care proposals would meet such needs. A careful analysis of this unique and growing population is necessary to both allay fears of the cost of care or help as well as to dispel stereotypes of this age group as frail and dependent, and in need of institutional care.