Normality and Disability

<p>Hotly contested normality remains a powerful complex category in contemporary law and culture. What is little realized are the ways in which disability underpins and shapes the operation of norms and the power dynamics of normalization. </p><p></p><p>This pioneering collection explores the place of law in political social scientific and biomedical developments relating to disability and other categories of ‘abnormality’. The contributors show how law produces cultural meanings norms representations artefacts and expressions of disability abnormality and normality as well as how law responds to and is constituted by cultures of disability. The collection traverses a range of contemporary legal and political issues including human rights mercy killing reproductive technologies hate crime policing immigration and disability housing. It also explores the impact and ongoing legacies of historical practices such as eugenics and deinstitutionalization.</p><p></p><p>Of interest to a wide range of scholars working on normality and law the book also creates an opening for critical scholars and activists engaged with other marginalized and denigrated categories notably contesting institutional violence in the context of settler colonialism neoliberalism and imperialism to engage more richly and politically with disability. This book was originally published as a special issue of the <i>Continuum </i>journal.</p>