Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine

Download or read book Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine written by Sarah D. Phillips and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-26 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah D. Phillips examines the struggles of disabled persons in Ukraine and the other former Soviet states to secure their rights during the tumultuous political, economic, and social reforms of the last two decades. Through participant observation and interviews with disabled Ukrainians across the social spectrum -- rights activists, politicians, students, workers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and others -- Phillips documents the creative strategies used by people on the margins of postsocialist societies to assert claims to "mobile citizenship." She draws on this rich ethnographic material to argue that public storytelling is a powerful means to expand notions of relatedness, kinship, and social responsibility, and which help shape a more tolerant and inclusive society.