Description
There is a small but quickly growing body of literature into Disability in the Appalachian region. Appalachia is widely understood as a “disability belt" (a region with higher rates of disability than the general population), and anti-Appalachian social systems are deeply connected to ableist ones. This research guide serves to assist researchers in their inquiry into Appalachian Disability Studies and hopefully foster further growth of the field.
This research guide is not intended to force identities of disability or Appalachia onto individuals but to collect existing research and stories that can expand researchers’ understandings of nuances of disability, ability, and chronic health in and around the Appalachian region.
If you have any questions about the contents of this guide, contact Mack Thompson at MackThompson222@gmail.com.
Disability and Debility in Appalachia
Symposium on Dis/Ability & Debility in Appalachia
Hosted by the University of Kentucky on September 28, 2024
The Symposium on Dis/Ability and Debility in Appalachia seeks to foster an interdisciplinary and intersectional conversation on dis/ability and debility in the region, bringing together Disabled and Appalachian people, theorists, practitioners, advocates, and attendees at the many intersections of these identities.
Common Terminology and Working Definitions
Ability: A term used to describe the diversity of ways that members of a society may experience differences in ability to interact with built, social, and other environments and dominant social systems.
Ableism: A system of beliefs and practices embedded into our social world that prioritizes the lives, needs, and voices of those who are labeled as able-bodied and able-minded.
Appalachia: The sociocultural and political region surrounding the Appalachian mountains. It is generally thought to span from southern New York to northern Mississippi.
Coal Town: A town that is (or used to be) owned by a coal company and occupied primarily by coal miners and their families.
Comorbidity: When multiple health conditions co-occur
Crip Theory: The merging of critical disability studies and queer theory, popularized by Robert McRuer and Carrie Sandahl. The term “crip” comes from a reclamation of the slur cripple. Some common traits of crip theory include viewing difference of the body and mind as a valuable part of human diversity, analyzing how political and socioeconomic systems control and frame bodily and embodied experiences, and seeking a broader understanding of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory able-mindedness.
Debility: The systemic weakening or changing levels of impairment of one’s body due to illness, injury, or aging. Debility is often used in biopolitics (the study of the body as being political and impacted by politics) to discuss the ways with which groups of people experience systemic weakening or loss of abilities due to their environments and health inequities.
Disability: Disability is both an identity label and a method of inquiry to describe those with less ability to interact with built, social, and other environments and dominant social systems than what is deemed normative or expected. Types of disabilities include physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, cognitive and intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, and mental illnesses and emotional and psychiatric disabilities.
Disability Justice: A social movement founded by the Disability Justice Collective and led primarily by queer femmes of color. Disability justice performance art group Sins Invalid has listed Ten Principles of Disability Justice that are frequently-reprinted: intersectionality, leadership of those most impacted, anti-capitalist politic, commitment to cross-movement organizing, recognizing wholeness, sustainability, commitment to cross-disability solidarity, interdependence, collective access, and collective liberation. See their website for further information, https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/10-principles-of-disability-justice.
Disparity: an unfair difference in treatment or amount, e.g. one group of people having higher rates of illness or less access to treatment
Environmental Health: The relationship between the environment around someone and their health.
Holler/ Hollow: A small valley between mountains
Mad Studies: A field of critical research that discusses mental illness, psychiatric disability, and mental states and conditions labeled as ‘mad’ and ‘insane’ in a way that recognizes the oppression of people in these groups. Mad studies looks at the psychiatric field from a critical viewpoint, seeing how the field has used diagnosis and prescription as means to control the population and force conformity and sameness through medicine and forced holding of people deemed “dangerous” in institutions like psychiatric wards and “insane asylums.” Mad studies also recognizes the connection of being labeled “mad” to colonization and White supremacist patriarchy.
Medicalization: The process of defining a set of traits or experiences as a medical condition needing the intervention and treatment of medical professionals.
Medical Model of Disability: A model of disability that views disability as a medical issue to be treated by doctors and hopefully cured. The onus is put on the disabled person to figure out how to move beyond their disability and figure out how to perform abledness the best they can.
Neurodivergence: Refers to people whose brain and/or mind function different than what is perceived to be the typical neurotype (“neurotypical”). The terms neurodivergent and neurodivergence were coined by multiply-neurodivergent activist Kassiane Asasumasu in 2000. These terms are most frequently used to describe neurodevelopmental disabilities like autism and ADHD, but can be used to describe a wide range of conditions, e.g. schizophrenia, depression, Tourette’s, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, etc.
Neurodiversity: Refers both to the wide range of ways that people’s brains can be and the social movement calling to accept and celebrate this diversity. Coined by Judy Singer in her 1998 thesis.
Rural: An area where not a lot of people live, like the countryside
Social Model of Disability: Model of disability that emphasizes disability as a social issue caused by the prioritization of certain types of bodies and minds over others. Instead of focusing on medical intervention, prioritizes community supports, accessible infrastructure, and universal design. Has been critiqued for decentralizing non-social parts of disability life like pain, fatigue, or lack of a sense (“impairment”) that one would have regardless of how accessible the world became.
Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) (“Disability”): Monthly government payments for those accepted into the program and deemed unable to work due to their disability. Recipients must either have acquired their disability prior to the age of 22 or have previously worked and earned enough social security credits in order to get on SSDI. There are strict limitations as to how much someone on SSDI is allowed to earn in income or have in savings in order to stay on SSDI.