Toyin Falola, Nic Hamel, eds. Disability in Africa: Inclusion, Care, and the Ethics of Humanity. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Series. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2021. 452 pp. $65.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-78744-990-9; $65.00 (pdf), ISBN 978-1-78744-671-7; $135.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-58046-971-5.
Reviewed by Joanne Neille (University of Witwatersrand)
Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (November, 2022)
Commissioned by Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Toyin Falola and Nic Hamel provide a comprehensive, nuanced synthesis of disability in Africa, exploring the topic from an interdisciplinary approach. The book examines various topics related to inclusion, care, and the ethics of humanity across five parts: "Introducing the Field," "Theorizing Disability in Africa," "Representation and Cultural Expressions," "Education, Community, and Caregiving," and "Activism and Barriers to Inclusion." Critiques and discussion around complex phenomena, such as eugenics, morality, culture, context, ubuntu (a Nguni Bantu principle meaning "humanity"), and identity, contribute to a rigorous discussion on how concepts originating from the Global North have shaped understandings and practices relating to disability in the African context. It is a particularly welcome change to have the voices of researchers from Africa foregrounding discussions pertaining to inclusion and the ethics of care, interrogating these concepts and providing potential solutions that are applicable in the African context.
This book provides much-needed insight into African perspectives on disability and contributes toward calls for the transformation and decolonization of research and practice. It recognizes ontologies and epistemologies that do not originate from the Global North, while adding to global debates pertaining to facilitators and to barriers experienced by disabled people. Of importance is the fact that several innovative Afrocentric solutions are offered within each of the chapters, which are of direct relevance to the Global South. This book, joining only a few others, views disability in a truly interdisciplinary way, drawing on intersections of health, identity, gender, generational differences, context, belief systems, attitudes, arts and culture, education, and economics. The diverse methodologies employed across chapters is a strength, showcasing how various methods of data collection and approaches for interpreting findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of disability.
Part 1 introduces the field of disability studies in Africa, with contributions from Toyin Falola, Nic Hamel, and Anna Lee Carothers. The introduction contributes toward discussions pertaining to the application of such concepts as "disability" and "impairment" in African contexts and examines how the use of terminology originating in Western contexts has influenced understandings and practices around disability. These discussions are contextualized within colonial and postcolonial impositions related to oppression and disempowerment, as well as from a geopolitical, policy, linguistic, ethical, and theoretical perspective.
Part 2 addresses the challenges associated with definitions and operationalizing conceptions of disability in African contexts and situates African approaches to understanding disability within the global context. The contributions from Maria Berghs, Fikru Negash Gebrekidan, Mary Nyangweso, and Kathryn Geurts span the fields of sociology, history, theology, and anthropology, contributing to a robust discussion on how language use influences the understanding of disability in the African context. This is particularly relevant, given that the definitions of "disability" and "impairment" are not inherent to the African context. This part contributes to dialogue on how language may delimit our understanding of disability and, in so doing, how it has the potential to decontextualize and misrepresent understandings of disability.
Part 3 focuses on how disabled people are represented and understood in literature and how these depictions have influenced societies’ responses toward disabled people. This section draws on input from the arts, with contributions from literary studies (Ernest Cole), performance (Nic Hamel), drama (Kolawole Olaiya), and linguistics (Saloua Ben Zahra). These authors use their arts-based backgrounds to provide insight into the representation of disabled people in the arts and in mainstream media, highlighting how arts and culture have the potential to sustain stigma and marginalization. This section provides insight into the contrast between agency and dependency, with a focus on the embodiment of physical disability and mental health; in so doing, it illuminates the role of the body as both a witness and punishment and a sense of the perpetuation of discrimination and stigmatization of disabled people in the African context.
Part 4 includes input from the fields of inclusive education, economic empowerment and community development, and psychology. Serges Djoyou Kamga, Angi Stone-MacDonald, and Ozden H. Pinar-Irmak present arguments for the changes needed to achieve inclusive education, while Ntombekhaya Tshabalala, Elizabeth Ladjer Bibi Agbettor, and Theresa Lorenzo discuss the challenges and successes around employment for disabled people and the value of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programs but also the need to expand on CBR priorities to ensure that the goals and implementation of such programs meet the needs of people in the African context. This is complemented by the contribution from Emily Owuso-Ansah regarding the challenges associated with ensuring that caregivers are taken care of and receive the respite they require. Reflexive discussions around the potential application of Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom [1999]) and Martha Nussbaum's (Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership [2006]) capabilities approach and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory (The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design [1979]) offer a way of understanding barriers and strategies for enabling communities. These discussions suggest that access to inclusive education may provide a contributing solution to poverty alleviation.
Part 5 draws on input from the fields of sociology, occupational therapy, politics, and law in exploring activism and barriers to inclusion. Denise Nepveux explores women's experiences of leadership, while Emmanuel Sackey comments on policy, activism, and the lack of enforcement of a disability act in Ghana. Desire Chiwandire provides insight into disabled students' opportunities for engaging in sport and recreational activities in South African universities, while Serges Djoyou Kamga concludes the section by offering thoughts on rehabilitation and the realization of disability rights within the African context. This section contributes to discussions around the role and impact of disability rights movements and the impact that gender inequality, patriarchy, and governments’ commitments (or lack thereof) have on activism and inclusion.
The book concludes with recommendations for future academic engagements but does not provide recommendations for policy or practice. While I believe that Disability in Africa provides an important contribution to Afrocentric knowledge and thus to ensuring that knowledge production is locally and contextually relevant, caution must be heeded with regard to oversimplifying the notion of "African perspectives" or suggesting that the experience of disability in Africa is homogenous or substantially different from how disability is experienced in other contexts. Importantly, few of the chapters refer to the inclusion of people with communicative impairments in research and the need to build on current guidelines for ethical inclusion of people with cognitive-communicative impairments in research practices. Similarly, the book does not address considerations regarding the language in which data are collected and the cultural and contextual nuances that may be lost in crosslinguistic research. While the recommendations are valid, underlying assumptions seem to suggest that current research excludes engagements with activists, government departments, and the medical sector, which is contrary to the evidence provided in parts 2 through 5 and does not account for the complexities of conducting research during periods of socioeconomic and political uncertainty.
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Citation:
Joanne Neille. Review of Falola, Toyin; Hamel, Nic, eds., Disability in Africa: Inclusion, Care, and the Ethics of Humanity.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2022.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58178
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