Kinship Destabilized!

Abstract

In the Global South, disability is often lived as a family experience. The spatiotemporal context in neoliberal India, characterized by rapid social and cultural change disrupting traditional family structures and creating the possibility for the emergence of new and alternative kinship imaginaries. This paper positions disability within families, to explore intrahousehold dynamics around care work and caring. Using a contextual approach to disability and care, it is the purpose of this paper to capture these micro- and macro-level dynamics in the context of urban families in contemporary India through ethnographically informed fieldwork. The discussion is positioned on the cusp of disability and feminist scholarship and activism. Care is considered as a multidimensional polysemous concept that is both universal and specific in definition and scope; labor, affect, and justice are its predominant components as it intersects with disability. Historically, the biological family is most germane to care. It is families that continue to matter as a critical source of survival for disabled people particularly in low-income countries; and in many instances, they also play the dual role of being oppressive toward the disabled family member(s) to whom they provide support. Gender is a critical structuring principle in the organization of care throughout the life cycle, given women’s centrality in procreation, childcare, and the larger domestic sphere.

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