The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies

by Tsitsi Chataika (Editor), Dan Goodley (Editor)

This book centres and explores postcolonial theory, which looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation, and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South. The book is divided into 5 sections • Decolonising Disability Studies • Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development and Engagements with Disability Studies • Postcolonial Disability Studies, Intersectionalities and Disability Activism • Postcolonial Disability, Childhood and Educational Studies • Postcolonial Discourse, Arts and Literature And comprised of 33 newly written chapters, this book leads with postcolonial perspectives - closely followed by an engagement with critical disability studies - with the explicit aim of foregrounding these contributions; pulling them in from the edges of empirical and theoretical work where they often reside in mainstream academic literature. The book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies and postcolonial studies as well as those working in sociology, literature and development studies.

360 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2026