Disability and the Making of Place

This edited collection advances critical scholarship about the complex interrelationships between disability and place. Developing theorising around place-making as a relational, everyday practice, it draws on disabled people’s lived experiences to explore the myriad ways in which they encounter, negotiate, and (re)make place.

Offering novel insights drawn from research in eight countries, and refracted through diverse experiences of impairment, disability and embodiment, the text draws attention to everyday place-making as a series of performances, feelings, narratives and tactics through which disabled people navigate, occupy and proactively take place. Using a diverse array of methodological approaches, chapters shed light on the embodied experiences and meanings of disability as they are worked out in place. At its heart, this collection argues for a fundamental rethinking of place to foster a radical openness to difference, where disabled people can build meaningful lives, valued social identities and a sense of belonging.

Disability and the Making of Place will be of interest to scholars and students within disability studies, human geography, sociology, urban studies, and the social sciences more broadly.

Claire Edwards is Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work sits at the intersection of urban and social geography, social policy, and critical disability studies. Claire’s research focuses on geographies of disability and experiences of socio-spatial in/justice and citizenship rights in disabled people’s lives.

Edward Hall is a Reader in Human Geography in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Dundee, Scotland. His research is concerned with the social geographies of people with learning disabilities, with particular attention to social inclusion and belonging, the changing landscape of social care and support, and experiences of hate crime.

Andrew Power is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Southampton in the UK. His research interests concern social care and disability, with a particular focus on the forms of support for disabled people, across the community and in care settings. He also has an allied interest in the relational geographies of the voluntary sector and family care.

Robert Wilton is a Professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University in Hamilton in Canada. His research is broadly concerned with disabled people’s experiences of, and struggles over, social inclusion/exclusion. He has focused particular attention on access to paid work in both ‘mainstream’ and social economies.