This volume puts disability and labour at the centre of historical enquiry. It offers fresh perspectives on the history of disability and labour in the twentieth century and highlights the need to address the topic beyond regional boundaries. Bringing together historians and disability scholars from a variety of disciplines and regions, the chapters investigate various historical settings, ranging from work cooperatives to disability associations and informal workplaces, and analyse multiple meanings of labour in different political and economic systems through the lens of disability.
The book’s contributors demonstrate that the nexus between labour and disability in modern, industrialised societies resists easy generalisations, as marginalisation and integration were often two sides of the same coin: While the experience of many disabled people has been marked by exclusion from mainstream production, labour also became a vehicle for integration and emancipation. Addressing one of the research gaps of the disability history field, which has long been dominated by British and North American perspectives, the book sheds light on less-studied examples from Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe including Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Romania.
Cutting across national, cultural and class divides the volume provides a springboard for reflections on common experiences of disability and labour during the twentieth century. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the field of disability studies, sociology and labour history.
Author(s): Radu Harald Dinu, Staffan Bengtsson
Series: Interdisciplinary Disability Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 250
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Disability and Labour in Modern Societies
The multiple meanings of labour and disability
Three models of disability
Labour through the lens of disability history
Outline of the volume
Notes
1. The Right to Work: Disability Awareness and Activism in Twentieth-Century Canada
Patterns of unemployment and poverty
'A new breed of disabled person': A growing culture of protest in Canada
Disability rights movement and poverty issues
Influence of disability and anti-poverty activism on major policy developments
The problem with attitudes and political will
Conclusion
Notes
2. Gendered Labour and Consumer Culture in the Multiple Sclerosis Associations in Sweden and West Germany
Labour and disability
Distinctive multiplicity: Multiple sclerosis as an illness object
MS organisations
Methodology
A touch of glamour: MS-förbundet
Do-it-yourself: MS-Gesellschaft
Conclusion
Notes
3. 'Salaries, Not Benefits!' Disability Rights Activism and the Right to Work in the Scandinavian Welfare States
'Partial working ability': Origins, trajectories, problematisations
Advocating the right to work
Disability, labour, and the 'society for all'
A question of equality
Labour as entrance to the political discourse
Rethinking Scandinavian welfare states through the lens of disability?
Notes
4. For Society and the Individual: Disability and Work in Post-War Sweden
Introduction
The value of work
The fluctuations of capitalism
The target group
Re-organisation and individualisation
Listening to those concerned
Concluding remarks
Notes
5. From Industrialised to Knowledge-Based Societies: The Metamorphosis of the French Disabled Worker since 1957
The professional reclassification of disabled workers
The social downgrading
The obligation to employ
The challenge of equal opportunities
Notes
6. Warriors into Workers: Soviet Labour Policy and Disabled Veterans of the Great Patriotic War
Disability and labour policy before the war
War, disabled soldiers, and VTEK
VTEK in action
Employment
Employment instruction
Becoming a hero of labour
Conclusion
Notes
7. Beyond Labour: Socialist Disability Policy in the Realm of Mental Health
Introduction
Socialist disability policy in Bulgaria
(Re)insertion into employment: Traces of the reality on the ground
Transcending labour: Transformations in conceptualising disability
Conclusion
Notes
8. Socialist Humanism, Work, and Disability in Socialist Romania
Work and social security in the constitutions of socialist Romania
The Social Insurances Reform and the third-degree invalidity pension
The third-degree invalidity pensions
The minimum income: an incentive to work?
The obligation of the state institutions to hire disabled people
The legal regime of multiple incomes
Conclusions
Notes
9. Becoming a Productive Citizen: Labour and the Blind Community in Socialist Romania
Introduction
Precursors to the Association of the Blind
Towards a new life
The cooperative as a socialist microcosmos
Socialist emulation and the duty to work
Old wine in new bottles?
Behind the scenes
Conclusion
Notes
10. Vocational Guidance in Socialist Czechoslovakia and the Context of Global and National Histories of Disability
Continuities and ruptures in vocational guidance for disabled people in Czechoslovakia
The impact of vocational guidance on the social deprivation of disabled people
From differentiation in vocational guidance to occupational segregation
Conclusion
Notes
11. Work and Life Courses of Polio Survivors in Socialist Poland
'The invalids' and their work
Bypassing 'invalidity'
Conclusion
Notes
Afterword
Note
Index
