The body has always been a site of political struggle. Gender, colour, disability, and other expressions of human diversity have always intersected in ways that affect the access different bodies have to community spaces, places, information, and resources. In what has been described as the 'last liberation movement', disabled peoples' resistance, both to their marginalisation and to the narratives used to legitimise discrimination coalesce with the demand for countries like New Zealand to move from a 'disabling' to 'fully inclusive' society.

Consistent with the aims of the, now global, disability movement, the course places a human rights framework at the centre of its exploration of whether disabled people have equal and equivalent opportunities to participate in the spaces and places of civic society. To do that we will introduce you to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the social policy and legislation that provides the architecture of the human rights framework with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand today. And in the final three Discussion Topics, we take a deeper dive to explore how inclusive public spaces, schools, and workplaces are, and whether reimagining the disabled body as a site of possibility can transform these settings into more vital, profitable, and welcoming spaces for every-body.

The Shape of the paper

In HMDEV320-22B, we will explore the central question of, “how to construct a society that is inclusive of every-body? We will do this mahi together by working as a learning community within six related Discussion Topics.

1. Ko wai au? Weeks 1 & 2
2. He tangagta, he tangagta, he tangagta. Weeks 3 & 4
3. He waka eke noa. Weeks 5 & 6
4. Ko te whare e hanga te tangata, ko te tangata e hangaia e te where. Weeks 7 & 8
5. Whaiwhia te kete mātauranga hei oranga mō koutou. Weeks 9 & 10
6. Mā pango mā whero ka oti te mahi. Weeks 11 & 12

Although we hope you read and dip into each Discussion Topic in a fluid and non-linear way, we begin by exploring how the disabled body has been culturally represented, and how the beliefs and values that underwrite those readings have shaped the way society has responded to those who move, think, imagine, create, and connect differently. From there we will unpack what might be meant by a fully inclusive society and how disabled peoples' vision of what that might look like is changing the way we think about and measure the single most important social policy goal for Governments all over the world.

How will it work?