IJFAB Blog

CALL FOR PAPERS
edited volume: Disability Justice in Emergency Conditions

DESCRIPTION

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into the foreground—and exacerbated—a host of existing social inequities and injustices, including and especially those facing disabled people. Prior to the pandemic, people with disabilities across the globe dealt with wage and labor discrimination, housing discrimination, education discrimination, and discrimination in care and treatment across specialties. All of these issues became especially apparent as the pandemic unfolded. Unjust crisis standards of care emerged, heated disagreements over accessibility and accommodations became omnipresent, and utilitarian calculi were deployed across multiple domains in ways that ran roughshod over human rights’ commitments. As everyone from national policy-makers to clinical bioethicists to employers scrambled to respond to the threat of COVID-19, it became increasingly clear that many lacked clarity and guidance concerning how to carry out disability justice under emergency conditions. The pandemic is, of course, by no means over, and this need for clarity and guidance has neither gone away nor been sufficiently addressed.

This CFP is for an edited volume that takes up the challenge of providing actionable guidance concerning how to create, maintain, and forward disability justice under emergency conditions. This volume is intended to be a resource for a wide range of stakeholders and decision-makers—whether a triage nurse or UN intern; whether an ombudsperson, a small business owner, or a middle school teacher; whether the head of an NGO, a community organizer, or a university president—and not just in relationship to pandemic contexts, but for all manner of emergency situations. Questions to be addressed are likely to include: should metrics like quality of life, quality-adjusted life years, or frailty scores be used in crisis standards of care contexts? What sorts of accessibility should be mandated for public health communications? What do national laws (like the ADA in the USA and the DDA in the UK) and international laws and treaties (like the UNCRPD) suggest for emergency preparedness and response? What role should social determinates of health play in emergency situations where resource allocation is limited? How should policy-makers think about the intersections of disability justice, racial justice, gender justice, indigenous justice and more when setting pandemic or other emergency-related priorities? How should the media combat disability stigma when reporting about pathogens that result in significant impairment? What insights does a disability justice lens offer for global emergency responses in light of the legacies of settler colonialism as well as ongoing imperial aggressions? What values related to disability justice should guide national and international pandemic preparedness and response?

Authors already committed to contribute to the volume include: Joseph Stramondo, Eva Feder Kittay, Desiree Valentine, Kevin Timpe, Johnathan Flowers, Sarah Clark Miller, and Ally Peabody Smith. A wide range of disciplinary and methodological approaches is encouraged. The editor is especially interested in contributions that involve intersectional analyses and/or the incorporation of international perspectives. Although theoretical work is welcome, strong preference will be given to pieces that contain or at least conclude with concrete and actionable recommendations and/or applications. The editor anticipates sending the volume to Cambridge University Press or Oxford University Press.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions will be collected until July 1, 2022. Submission does not guarantee acceptance, and all contributions will undergo peer-review. Shorter pieces (4500 words) words will be accepted alongside longer pieces (though pieces exceeding 8000 words exclusive of notes will be subject to greater scrutiny). A relatively fast review process will be used in light of the goal of sending off the proposal in the early fall of 2022. All submissions should follow the Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition using footnotes in addition to a complete bibliography at the end.

Submissions as well as any questions can be addressed to co-editors Joel Michael Reynolds and Mercer Gary at the following email address: disjustemercondit [at] gmail [dot] com.