Family and Disability Activism : Beyond Allies and Obstacles

In 2020, Pamela Block, Allison C. Carey, and Richard K. Scotch published Allies and Obstacles, which examined the tensions and connections between disability activism and parents of children with disabilities. In Family and Disability Activism, they continue to examine these issues with a focus on the path-breaking advocacy by marginalized activists with intersectional lived experiences.

Family and Disability Activism reveals how families and disabled people who identify as BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA2S+ understand issues of rights versus justice. Contributions by Deaf and disabled activists emphasize the frequent need for either care or independence. Other chapters show how members of the disabled community and their families must navigate systemic issues of segregation, institutionalization, and access to special education services differently depending on their ethnic and racial identities.

Expanding the conversation about disability, kinship, biological and chosen families, and activism, this volume amplifies important voices in the fight for disability rights.

Contributors: Erin Compton, Diane Compton, Jaclyn Ellis, Laura LeBrun Hatcher, Elena Hung, Bridget Liang, Jenelle Rouse, Cheryl Najarian Souza, Jeneva Stone, Roger A. Stone, Lisette E. Torres, Grace Tsao, and the editors

Pamela Block is a Professor of Anthropology at Western University. She is coeditor of Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability and coauthor of Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities (Temple).

Allison C. Carey is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Shippensburg University. She is the author of On the Margins of Citizenship: Intellectual Disability and Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century America (Temple) and Disability and the Sociological Imagination, and co-author of Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities (Temple).

Richard K. Scotch is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Texas, Dallas. He is the author of From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy (Temple); coauthor of Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities (Temple) and Disability Protests: Contentious Politics, 1970–1999; and the coeditor of Disability and Community.