Benedicte Ingstad – författare

Spurred by the United Nation's International Decade for Disabled Persons and medical anthropology's coming of age, anthropologists have recently begun to explore the effects of culture on the lives of the mentally and physically impaired. This major collection of essays both reframes disability in terms of social processes and offers for the first time a global, multicultural perspective on the subject. Using research undertaken in a wide variety of settings--from a longhouse in central Borneo to a community of Turkish immigrants in Stockholm--contributors explore the significance of mental, sensory, and motor impairments in light of fundamental, culturally determined assumptions about humanity and personhood.

The lives of many disabled people in Europe and North America have improved over the past two decades through innovative technologies and the efforts of the disability rights movement. These changes have been spreading to other societies around the globe-albeit unevenly. In this collection of essays, leading scholars explore global changes in disability awareness, technology, and policy from the viewpoint of disabled people and their families in a wide range of local contexts. The authors report on ethnographic research in Brazil, Uganda, Botswana, Somalia, Britain, Israel, China, Egypt, India, and Japan. They address the definition of disability, the new eugenics, human rights in local contexts, domestic and state citizenship of disabled people, and issues of identity and belonging.