We are Part of the Family: Disabled Women and Othering in Urban Accra
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29120/jds.v12i1.776Abstract
Anthropologists and other scholars have demonstrated that disability or impairment is a socially constructed and relational phenomenon. But, how people with disability are defined and understood differs from one society to the other. Through the concept of othering, this paper examines how social, cultural, religious and political factors affect disabled women and how they navigate the social and physical spaces they inhabit. Drawing on ethnographic data from urban Accra and archival material, the study contributes to the broader understanding of disability, but more importantly, the specific case of disabled women and how they deal with the condition of disability in the family and in society. The study argues that the othering of disabled women in the family and society is more or less the presentation of a society that has disabled itself through the social and cultural borders/barriers it has set or built, and not disabled persons. The paper concludes by demonstrating that rethinking the lifeworld of disabled women and making them feel they belong requires a deconstruction of the social, cultural, political and religious barriers that create othering in its multiple manifestations.
Keywords: Disability, Women, Othering, Family, Urban Accra, Ghana
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