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My dissertation research focuses on the experience of disabled Ecuadorians. My anthropological perspective explores the political economy of disability, structural violence, biopolitics, and the spatial dimensions of accessibility. 

Title: Governing Bodily Difference: Biopolitics, Citizenship and Spaces of Exclusion in Ecuador

Abstract (informal): This ethnographic study explores the socio-political emergence of people with physical and visual disabilities in Cuenca, Ecuador. Since the 1990s, disabled Ecuadorians have moved from a state of social and physical isolation to wider societal participation, fueled in part by inclusive policy from biopolitical state institutions. Many have joined grassroots organizations through biosocial networks based on the collective identity of shared impairment. However, their incorporation into the labor market, educational systems, and public sphere has been uneven and impeded by underlying attitudinal, gender, spatial, and cultural barriers. Through life history interviews and participant observation, the project documents the range of hierarchies and diversity within the disabled community.

Participants: I worked primarily with three groups of people with disabilities in Ecuador: an association of people with physical disabilities, an association of people with visual disabilities, and a group of wheelchair basketball athletes.

Location: I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in 2006 and 2008 in Cuenca and Quito, Ecuador.

Support: I am grateful for the support of the Institute for International Education for the Fulbright Student Grant, the Fulbright Commission in Quito, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona.