Penelope Carroll, Linda Madden, Karen Witten Ableism: a potent force impeding full citizenship?
Ableism – largely unseen and unquestioned – plays a significant role in the structure and functioning of society in Aotearoa, as elsewhere. People whose bodies fit an ‘ablebodied’ norm are situated as ideal (and are thus privileged) while ‘disabled’ bodies are deemed deviant (and problematised and marginalised). This has a significant effect on participation parity across all life domains, denying many disabled New Zealanders full citizenship. As more than one-in-five New Zealanders are categorised as ‘disabled’, ableism’s reach in cementing socio-cultural and economic inequalities is vast.
Despite decades of rights-based rhetoric, accessibility legislation and inclusionary frameworks, disabled people continue to be marginalised. A clear and critical focus is required to surface ableist attitudes and practices and avoid reproducing exclusionary ableist systems and structures. Two current research projects – one Health Research Council-funded, the other Marsden-funded – are surfacing ableist beliefs in the physical activity, health, employment and culture sectors; provoking self-reflection within the sectors; and employing creative strategies to tackle ableism and help ensure a non-ableist future for Aotearoa.
In this presentation, we discuss deep-seated ableist attitudes and practices revealed in research with participants from across all sectors and our creative dissemination of these findings to date.
Conor Lorigan Outside the university is outside the modern self.
1. Rangi as resonance (Carl Mika) operates from a different subjectivity to the modern (Pākehā) self (Denise Ferreira Da Silva). 2. What is rangi as resonance? (Carl Mika, Maori Marsden, Symon Palmer, Madi Williams, Edouard Glissant) 3. What is the modern self? (Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Mark Fisher, Achille Mbembe, Simon Barber) 4. Rangi as resonance as surreal – returning Pākehā to an image unrecognisable from before (Viveiros Da Castro, Mark Fisher).
From this outline I will attempt to raise questions of what we mean by outside the university. The outside is going on regardless of us (inside) so then we can ask why or how we think we could be removed from the outside and how this then structures our thought of in/outside the university.
