Ewen, Abigail;
(2025)
Disability and Identity in Times of Crisis: Balancing urgency and Inclusion in the Bagmati Province, Nepal.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
There is a prevailing narrative in disaster discourse that presents people with disabilities as passive subjects of assistance. This research asks, through the case of Nepal, if urgent disaster response and resilience building has enabled or hindered struggles for inclusion in public life and collective action, through the acute experiences of people who identify as disabled. Inspired by Foucauldian concepts of discourse, governmentality and subject formation, the research carried out a discursive policy analysis, semi-structured interviews and participatory timeline activities coproduced by people with disabilities. This identified the systems of meaning and institutionalised relations drawn on the social construction of disability. The research provides important insight into the ways that international frameworks on DRR and human rights are diffused and adopted within Majority world settings and how top-down, rights-based policy frameworks may empower some while marginalising others. It demonstrates how a vulnerability paradigm collides with entrenched assumptions of people with disabilities as ‘passive’ and ‘dependant’ creating processes of exclusion in the preparedness, response, and recovery to disasters. Most critically it presents substantial empirical evidence on how the meaningful participation of people with disabilities opened up opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, making way for a reimagining of disability. This helped to deconstruct structural stigma and provided a space for people with disabilities to negotiate, resist and reconstruct their identities in relation to these prevailing discourses. This attests to the broader transformational potential of inclusive disaster risk reduction when vulnerability is reframed in light of capabilities.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Disability and Identity in Times of Crisis: Balancing urgency and Inclusion in the Bagmati Province, Nepal |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Inst for Risk and Disaster Reduction |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213920 |
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