140057 VO+UE VM3 / VM8 - ‘The world’s largest minority’ (2018S)

Human rights debates have by now become mainstreamed instruments in international policy discourses, subject to fairly little questioning in public and political debate. However, issues that revolve around ‘dis/ability’ – a very broad category that is either narrowed down in each individual case or sufficiently universalised in order to become operational – were largely neglected in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and have only slowly gained discursive traction. This course introduces students to how notions of fundamental rights have been furthered by efforts of social movements, and which theoretical streams these actors contributed to. Considering the lives and voices of persons with disabilities – estimated by the WHO to range from 10 to 20% of the world’s population – may sensitise development researchers to become more reflexive in their work and inform development strategies.
In this course, we will first inspect the institutional category of ‘dis/ability’ (including ‘dis/ableism’ as socially and physically discriminatory practices) and the genesis of modern human rights. Second, origins of normativity, social norms and institutional normalisation will be scrutinised in light of a globalising market economy, promoting an informed discussion on where ‘categories’ of human beings are socially constructed. Third, global tendencies in defining and locating solutions to given problems are to be critically inspected from a neo-institutionalist viewpoint, to locate how influence is maintained in today’s international network of actors. Literature work will include (1) academic papers that provide an overview of historical challenges at the heart of general human rights, and of disability-sensitive approaches; (2) methodology papers that discuss an international shift from coercive towards normative and mimetic reproduction of structures; on this basis, we can contextualise (3) grey literature that covers development paradigms and programmes authored by governmental institutions and civil society.
During the seminar, students are to critically engage with the knowledge they have already gathered, recognising how it applies when we take persons with disabilities into account in development contexts. In light of social constructionism, feminist ethics, queer theory and sociological world society theory, this can frame what has contributed to former and concurrent development agendas. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and human rights treaties that followed it, tailored with respect for given minority groups (e.g. women, people of colour, children, migrants) are to be inspected for how they shape present normative popular expectations, knowledge and practices. They will be contrasted with the aims set out in the MDGs (2000), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs, 2015), and the European Commission’s new European Consensus on Development (2016). Our goal is to recognise changes in how proposed human rights-sensitive strategies are framed, and which circumstances they respond to in the eyes of nation states and civil society actors.

Aims:
a. Understanding disability as a vantage point from which to critique oversights in human rights, normativity and intersectional inequalities.
b. Methodological sensitivity and recognition of varied social actors, to shed light on historical and theoretical linkages and what makes them strategically applicable across interest groups.
c. Finding practical examples of where rights efforts may raise attention to diverse groups’ interest overlaps and new means of collective action.