Taking Apart Developmentalism From the Point of View of Disability Studies

Taking Apart Developmentalism From The Point Of View Of Disability Studies Presented by: Dr. Ktenidis Date8 March 2025 Outline - Introduction to Critical Disability Studies - Introduction to Disabled Children's Childhood Studies - Introduction to Developmentalism - Developmentalism and Growth Charts: Short Provocations - Concluding Thoughts Critical Disability Studies - CDS has accompanied a social, political and intellectual re-evaluation of explanatory paradigms used to understand the lived experience of disabled people and potential ways forward for social, political and economic change (Meekosha & Shuttleworth, 2009: 49) - What Critical Disability Studies has done is to welcome in a smorgasbord of perspectives drawn from inside and outside of the disability experience. Critical Disability Studies is a 'location populated by people who advocate building upon the foundational perspectives of disability studies whilst integrating new and transformative agendas associated with postcolonial, queer and feminist theories' (Goodley 2016, 190-191). - The sheer diversity of disabled people - that is, the variety and degrees of their impairments and their intersection with other relevant social categories of experience demands a much broader and contextual interrogation of their restrictions. To that effect, CDS draws from a much more eclectic mix of critical theories than earlier work in disability studies (Meekosha and Shuttleworth, 2009: 55). Key Concepts in Critical Disability Studies - Disablism: a form of social oppression involving the social imposition of restrictions of activity on people with impairments and the socially engendered undermining of their psycho-emotional well-being (Thomas 2007: 73). - Ableism: a set of beliefs, processes and practices that produce based on abilities one exhibits or values - a particular understanding of oneself, one's body and one's relationship with others of humanity, other species and the environment, and includes how one is judged by others (Wolbring, 2008: 252-253). Disabled Children's Childhood Studies - Disabled children's lives have often been discussed through medical concepts of disability rather than concepts of childhood. Western understandings of childhood have defined disabled children against child development 'norms' and have provided the rationale for segregated or 'special' welfare and education provision. In contrast, disabled children's childhood studies begins with the view that studies of children's impairment are not studies of their childhoods. Disabled children's childhood studies demands ethical research practices that position disabled children and young people at the center of the inquiry outside of the shadow of perceived 'norms'. • (Runswick-Cole, Curran and Liddiard, 2018) Developmental Psychology & Developmentalism - Developmental psychology is premised upon the construction of an object of study, 'the developing child', and that very object is not real, not timeless but produced for particular purposes within very specific historical, social and political conditions (Walkerdine, 1993: 453-454). - Developmental psychology is a kind of story'.[...]What is important here is the kind of story which developmental psychology claims to be: a grand, totalizing story, the story of children's development (ibid: 452). - Critical Disability Studies - Disabled Children's Childhood Studies - Developmentalism Concluding Thoughts - The Pursuit and Tyranny of Development(alism) in disabled childhoods and beyond. - The need to reimagine developmental paradigms that acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of disabled childhoods.