Alternative Explanations: Disability and Inclusion in Africa

这一合作构想的项目将建立非洲残疾和包容网络。该项目将跨学科开展艺术和人文研究，以加强残疾人在国际发展中的包容性。残疾人话语往往是由医疗专业人员、社会科学家或发展机构创造的，而且大多数情况下是在全球北方，与当地的现实情况相去甚远。该项目的重点是非洲背景下残疾的“替代解释”这一中心主题，以邀请讨论对残疾的一系列信仰和态度，其中可能包括假设和误解、传统信仰、宗教信仰、医学决定论、超自然或巫术相关信仰。通过提高对这些替代解释的影响的认识，该网络将有助于了解如何加强纳入国际发展方案和战略的方法，在新的和现有的伙伴关系的基础上，非洲残疾和包容网络将在尼日利亚、喀麦隆、坦桑尼亚、尼日利亚、南非和英国。该项目不仅填补了学术方面的空白，而且将从该项目中产生的文化知情研究旨在逐步改变非洲内外残疾研究的方式，以及社区、民间社会和国际发展的利益攸关方对残疾问题的理解方式。

This collaboratively conceived project will establish the Disability and Inclusion in Africa network. Working across disciplines, the project will engage Arts and Humanities research to enhance disability inclusion in international development.Discourses of disability are often created by medical professionals, social scientists or development agencies, and most often in the global north, quite removed from the realities experienced on the ground. This project focuses on the central theme of 'alternative explanations' for disability in African contexts to invite discussion of a range of beliefs and attitudes towards disability, which may include assumptions and misconceptions, traditional beliefs, religious beliefs, medical determinism, supernatural or witchcraft-related beliefs. By increasing awareness of the impact of these alternative explanations, the network will contribute to understandings of the ways in which approaches to inclusion in international development programmes and strategies can be enhanced.Building on new and existing partnerships, the Disability and Inclusion in Africa network will forge international dialogue between researchers and stakeholders at a series of events and exhibitions in Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania, South Africa and the UK. The project not only responds to gaps in scholarship, but the culturally-informed research that will emerge from the project aims to bring about a step-change in the way in which disability studies is approached within and beyond Africa, and in the way in which disability is understood by stakeholders in communities, civil society and international development.