Disability, Colonialism, and Environmental Theory

• In Event: Perspectives on Climate Issues

Abstract

This paper explores the complicated intersection of disability, environmentalism, and colonialism from a political theory perspective. Though there is a substantial literature in political theory on colonialism, little of it attends to either disability or environmentalism. And while environmental political theory is growing in popularity, it, too, ignores disability and often colonialism. And the majority of disability theory ignores both environmentalism and colonialism. But I argue that the relationship between disability, environmental degradation, and colonialism is not merely coincidental or parallel, but intertwined and causal, and considering all three of these together can help us understand new ways of viewing approaches to environmentalism as well as disability and colonialism. At a most literal level, as Mark Sherry succinctly puts it, “the history of colonialism is the poverty of the majority world, which has created large numbers of impairments.” More abstractly, however, a disability theory perspective can help us rethink terms such as “natural” and “nature.” The paper attends to these intersections with reference to specific cases such as Rwanda, where civil conflict resulted as a legacy of colonialism and resulted in terrible environmental damage with particular implications for disability.

Author

• Nancy J. Hirschmann, The University of Pennsylvania