Politicising Polio

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxv

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2. Staging a Play (A Critical Ethnography of Disability)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. The Set: Parallel Worlds (Sierra Leone on the World Stage)

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 3-35

   3. The Cast On-stage and Off: Polio and Beggars on Wheels

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 37-74

   4. Writing the Play: Creating Disability and DPOs

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 75-116

   5. Scripts About Disability: Stories from the Polio-Houses

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 117-149

3. After the Play? (An Ethnographic Critique of Project Society)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 151-151

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   2. Discrimination as Structural Violence

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 153-183

   3. Perceptions, Representations and Coloniality

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 185-219

   4. Expulsions: Disability, Power, Land and Citizen’s Rights

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 221-251

   5. Hope

      • Diana Szántó

      Pages 253-281

4. Back Matter

   Pages 283-313

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This book examines disability in post-war Sierra Leone. Its protagonists are polio-disabled people living in the nation’s capital of Freetown, organizing themselves as best as they can in a state without welfare. There is little concrete support for people with disabilities in a country where the government is struggling with the competing requirements of the international community, demanding - in exchange for its support - good standards of democracy and the maintenance of a free market economy. To what extent is the Human Rights framework of the disability movement effective in protecting the polio-disabled and what are the limitations of this framework? Diana Szántó’s detailed ethnography reveals, through many real-life examples, the vulnerability of disabled people living in the intersections of poverty, informality and disability activism. At the same time, it also tells about the many ways the polio-disabled community is transforming vulnerability into strength.

• disability studies
• Sierra Leone
• critical global health
• Social Work
• Post War Reconstruction
• West Africa
• Global South
• anthropology of Africa
• political anthropology
• poverty
• civil society
• democratization
• NGOs
• liberal peace
• governance
• agency
• disabled people’s organizations
• postcolonial studies

“This is an author who knows how to unsettle the basic meaning of a condition and to invite us to rethink what we think we know. Brilliant work. And deeply unsettling even when confronted with beauty.” (Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, author of Expulsions)

“So much more than a study on disabilities. Szántó takes us deep into understanding urban poverty and the local workings of the international humanitarian aid regime. Rich in detail and insight, a rare and profoundly human book that ought to be read in wider circles than just by the specialists.” (Mats Utas, Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden)

“This is a detailed, anthropological exploration of polio and its aftermath in Sierra Leone, that covers so much – disability, institutionalisation, development charities, self-help and radicalism – and reads like a novel, it is so endlessly fascinating.  I wish it has been available to read before I went to Freetown!” (Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)

• Budapest, Hungary

  Diana Szántó

Diana Szántó is a cultural anthropologist, independent researcher and activist. She worked for more than 20 years as the leader of a Hungarian-based NGO, creating opportunities, channels and incentives for intercultural understanding, learning and co-existence. Her research focuses on urban anthropology, migration and social movements, and the intersection of international development, social justice and health. In recent years she has been teaching medical anthropology and qualitative research methodology at the Health and Community program of the School for International Training.

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