Representations of disability in print news media in postsocialist Ukraine

Phillips, Sarah D.

doi:10.1080/09687599.2012.662826

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Such accounts have generally focussed on Anglophone examples, but important work has also been undertaken in international contexts (e.g. Devlieger, 1998;Saito and Ishiyama 2005;Phillips 2012;Atilola and Olayiwola 2013;O'Dell 2015).…”

Section: Disability Dyslexia and Popular Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Gift from the gods? Dyslexia, popular culture and the ethics of representation

Kirby

2019

Disability & Society

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In 2010, 21 st Century Fox released Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief: an action-adventure film aimed at young adults, based on the first of a series of five books by the American author, Rick Riordan. To date, the book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, has sold over 20 million copies worldwide (Mead 2014), and the film has grossed over $200 million (Box Office Mojo 2010). A sequel to the film, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, was released in 2013, also exceeding $200 million in global receipts (Box Office Mojo 2013). A number of spin-off productions have been created, including a second five-book series, The Heroes of Olympus.The series' plot, inspired by the Harry Potter series of novels/films, sees the eponymous Percy, a struggling student from a troubled home in New York, discover that he actually possesses superhuman parentage: his full name is Perseus, and he is the son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon. Called by Poseidon and the other gods to undertake a series of quests, the books and films detail Percy's various adventures, alongside several fellow teenage demigods, which culminate with him successfully defending Olympus against a host of invading titans. Percy is offered immortality as reward, but refuses, so that he might stay with his friends on Earth.In its writing, the series is perhaps unremarkable, and it has encountered little critical attention (cf. Morey and Nelson 2015). It does, however, provide a useful point of entry for examining the representation of dyslexia in popular culture. Originally, the tales were told by Riordan to his son, who has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as bedtime stories. To let his son know, in Riordan's words, "that being different wasn't a bad thing", Riordan gave Percy dyslexia and ADHD (Riordan 2005). Both are central to Percy's character and reformulated by Riordan into gifts, contrary to common perceptions of dyslexia and ADHD, especially from educational perspectives, as learning difficulties (Rose 2009). While such educational perspectives have limitations, they are useful in summarising the difficulties experienced by those with dyslexia -leaving aside, for the moment, the question of how best to conceptualise the cause of such difficulties (see below). 1 The definition of the Rose Report (2009, 10), on dyslexia and literacy difficulties, remains the most influential and commonly-cited definition of dyslexia in the UK: 1 The paper uses 'dyslexic' as adjective, but not noun. This reflects usage by research participants interviewed for the UK Dyslexia Archive (see below).

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Section: Disability Dyslexia and Popular Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Gift from the gods? Dyslexia, popular culture and the ethics of representation

Kirby

2019

Disability & Society

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“…As Phillips (, p. 1) reminds us in an article entitled ‘There are no invalids in the USSR!’, those with ‘physical and mental disabilities in the former Soviet bloc…[were]…stigmatized, hidden from the public, and thus made seemingly invisible’. Actions of this nature are a by‐product of the many societal misperceptions of disabilities, grounded in the aforementioned legacy of defectology (Hartblay, ; Hartblay and Ailchieva, ; Phillips, ). For this conceptualisation of how individuals with disabilities are perceived, we draw on social comparison theory.…”

Section: Armenian Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armenian teachers’ dichotomous perspectives on children with high‐functioning autism

Allan

Hallett

2019

Research in Spec Educ Needs

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This article uses the views of student teachers and serving teachers from a post‐Soviet context in order to better understand current thinking around teachers’ perceptions of children with what might be termed ‘hidden’ disabilities. Drawing on social comparison theory, and adopting a phenomenographical approach, the study explores teachers’ perspectives of autism in the Republic of Armenia, offering an insight into the impact of its social, cultural and political history. Whilst serving teachers demonstrated contrastive and downward comparisons when presented with a vignette of a young person with Asperger's Syndrome, student teachers expressed more connective comparisons. The data suggest, then, that Armenian student teachers represent progressive attitudinal change towards individuals with disabilities. These results also shed light on how social comparison theory might be used to tease out assumptions and taken‐for‐granted attitudes in the global West.

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“…Several studies by anthropologists and others have noted similarly ambiguous and uneven outcomes of disability rights in postsocialist Eastern Europe, which provides an additional argument in favour of grasping the workings of rights in their historical and geographical specificity. In her work on spinally injured people in Ukraine, Sarah Phillips (: 3–8, 87–92; ) describes a situation in which the rhetoric of the government, activists, and media emphasized their equal rights paired with ‘independence’ while ongoing material, institutional, and social barriers limited their realization in practice. This often compelled disabled people to perform the kind of ‘balancing act’ observed in the monitoring meeting, juggling the new model of equal citizen with the pre‐existing ‘biological citizenship’, which emphasized needs caused by impairments (Phillips : 7).…”

Section: Anti‐discrimination and Accessibility: The Potential And Limmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This discourse is far from unique. Anthropologists and other scholars working on disability have documented the recent emergence of similar discursive dichotomies of, on the one hand, equal ‘rights’ bundled with autonomy and, on the other, welfare linked to ‘dependence’ (Harris, Owen & Fisher ; Hartblay ; Phillips : 84‐92, : 493‐5; Zaviršek ). Engaging the Serbian variant of this formation requires going beyond the focus on legal knowledge, practices, and practitioners in much anthropological work on human rights.…”

Section: ‘Independence’ and Labour: The Poetics And Prosaics Of Neolimentioning

confidence: 99%

Between recognition and redistribution: disability, (human) rights, and struggles over welfare in Serbia

Mikuš

2018

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article analyses the discourse surrounding, implementation of, and struggles over the new disability policy in Serbia to show how its founding principles of human rights became partially co‐opted by neoliberal welfare restructuring. As a result, it sought to make disabled people not only equal but also economically ‘independent’ in the sense of relying on wage labour instead of welfare. Owing to its inadequate assumptions and instruments, the policy has largely failed to deliver on these objectives. Disabled people mobilized against neoliberalization by defending material welfare entitlements inherited from Yugoslav socialism. At the same time, they appropriated the register of human rights to demand a substantive political and civic equality. This points to the possibility of rights‐based projects that fuse rather than oppose the politics of recognition and redistribution.

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Representations of disability in print news media in postsocialist Ukraine

Cited by 15 publications

References 12 publications

Gift from the gods? Dyslexia, popular culture and the ethics of representation

Gift from the gods? Dyslexia, popular culture and the ethics of representation

Armenian teachers’ dichotomous perspectives on children with high‐functioning autism

Between recognition and redistribution: disability, (human) rights, and struggles over welfare in Serbia

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