On June 28, Brandeis University held the webinar “Parents and Parenting with Disabilities: Perspectives from Chile” with three Chilean researchers, including Florencia Herrera, Director of DISCA and PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Barcelona.
Jimena Luna, Industrial Civil Engineer and Project Coordinator at CEDETi UC, and Soledad Véliz, Doctorate in Education from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and researcher at CEDETi UC, participated in the dialogue.
To learn more about their perspectives on parenting and raising children with disabilities in Chile, as well as their experiences and research, you can review their webinar here.
Comments Off on Salvajes, indígenas, cojas, inválidas: Epistemologías anticapacitistas del Sur [Wild, indigenous, limp, invalid: Anticapacitic epistemologies of the South]
Points of interest:
The article presents an epistemological approach that reflects on corporeality.
The article’s proposal is part of Latin American critical thought.
The aim is to understand the different bodies located in the Global South.
The importance of the sex, gender, and ability system in social and epistemological organization is reiterated.
Notes:
The following summary was prepared by the Millennium Nucleus DISCA and is based exclusively on the publication. Therefore, it cannot be used for citations or references.
Since the 1960s, the Independent Life Movement has demanded personal assistance as a right for people with disabilities to access autonomy. In turn, feminist movements have shown a special concern for the care and profile of the providers. Both postures have created tensions around the provision of personal assistance and care for people with disabilities.
Aim: To know and analyze the scientific evidence regarding approaches to personal assistance and care for people with disabilities.
Methods: An Integrative Literature Review using five databases: Dialnet, Scielo, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The Boolean combinations were: “Personal assistance AND disability”; “Personal assistance AND care AND disability”; “Care AND disability” in English, and “Asistencia personal AND discapacidad”; “Asistencia personal AND cuidados AND discapacidad”; “Cuidados AND discapacidad” in Spanish. A total of 31 scientific articles were obtained. A content analysis was then, with five analysis dimensions emerging.
Results: The articles approached the positive aspects of personal assistance. Others established the need for more resources in order to not be an exclusive reality for developed countries. Profiles were made of racialized, young, migrant women as the identity behind (informal) care. From the perspective of a feminist disability care ethic, new forms of providing care are proposed, by changing the focus from individual and family responsibility, towards a social and collective focus.
Conclusion: The evidence analyzed considers various dimensions of the epistemo-political tension between personal assistance and care. The meeting point between both perspectives is interdependence and autonomy; on the one side, for people with disabilities, and on the other, for the women profiled as the main caregivers.
Note: This article was originally published in English.