Disabling Capitalism: A Critical Inquiry Into Work, Productivism, and Disablement book
Disabling Capitalism: A Critical Inquiry Into Work, Productivism, and Disablement – published by Bristol University Press
BUP page for the book (it can be preordered)
Countdown until the paperback release:
Brief overview:
This book offers a fresh and critical take on the relationship between disability, work, and capitalism in the UK. Challenging the idea that disabled people are ‘non-workers’, it shows how society is dependent upon their everyday paid and unpaid activities. Drawing on research with disabled participants, it expands what counts as work: from care, assistance, and work for the state to resistance and rest.
The book centres disabled people’s own critiques of precarious work and productivism, highlighting how disability is fundamental to debates on class and exploitation. Insightful and collaborative, it rejects the productivist lens through which disability is often approached, and rethinks possibilities for a non-capitalist organisation of society.
ISBN (paperback): 978-1529259032
ISBN (ebook): 978-1529259049 – available open access digitally under CC-BY licence.
Contact: Ioana Cerasella Chis at ioana.chis[at]glasgow.ac.uk or via the contact form here.
More information about prior publications and activities of the project: https://DisPrecWork.wordpress.com
WordPress website for the book: https://discapitalism.wordpress.com/
Engagement with / uses of the book – share your story!
For any past, present, or future engagements or uses of the book in any context (except for references in academic journal articles), I would be grateful if you could share this information with me via this Google Form. Any uses of the book’s arguments, however ‘small’, can be shared.
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Where insights from the book-related project have been presented:
National and International Scholarly Associations’ / Societies’ / Collectives’ conferences, symposia, seminars, and workshops:
AACS (Association for Applied & Clinical Sociology), AHE (Association for Heterodox Economics), APSA (American Political Science Association), ASA (American Sociological Association); BISA (British International Studies Association), BSA (British Sociological Association), BSA MedSoc (Medical Sociology Conference), BSA Symposium (Rest, Work, and Activism through the Lens of Disability Politics); CSA (Canadian Sociological Association); ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research), EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies), ESA’s CPERN (European Sociological Association), ESRC/MGS (ESRC Midlands Graduate School); HM/MDN (Historical Materialism Journal & Marxism and Disability Network); ISEE (International Society for Ecological Economics), ISA [forthcoming] (Italian Sociological Association); LSA (Leisure Studies Association); MDN (Marxism and Disability Network); MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association), MSSA (Mid-South Sociological Association); PSA (Political Studies Association), PSA ECN Conference (Early Career Network); SASE (Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics), SDS [skills workshop] (Society for Disability Studies), SLSA (Socio-Legal Studies Association); TASA (The Australian Sociological Association);
Events organised by university-based centres / networks / projects:
CAPPE (Centre for Politics, Philosophy, and Ethics), University of Brighton, UK; CAS (Centre for Advanced Studiess (CAS), University of Rijeka, Croatia; CDS (Center on Disability Studies), University of Hawai’i Honolulu, US; CERIC (Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change), University of Leeds; CDS (Centre for Disability Studies), University of Leeds, UK; CSMH (ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health), King’s College London UK; WIRC (Work Inclusivity Research Centre), University of Birmingham; PERG (Political Economy Research Group), University of Birmingham; SoG (School of Government), University of Birmingham; POLSIS (Political Science and International Studies Department), University of Birmingham, UK.
Research published in:
- GPE, IJCC, IJDSJ [with a future translation into Spanish for a political theory journal], BMS – as journal articles;
- European Sociologist e-magazine (of the European Sociological Association); Political Studies Association’s blog; National Survivor User Network‘s blog;
Testimonials:
‘In Disabling Capitalism, Chis crafts a ground-breaking anti-productivist, collectivist and disability abolitionist vision. It makes essential reading for our age of intensified capitalist disablement and precarious work.’
– Arianna Introna (Open University), author of Crip Enchantments: Autonomist Narratives of Disability in Modern Scottish Writing.
‘Disabling Capitalism offers compelling research underpinning a vital political analysis of how ‘welfare’ policies and economic structures and practices organise work, work that can be unseen, unpaid and unequally valued. By centring the lived experiences of disabled people navigating on-demand labour, Chis challenges the persistent (and harmful) belief that work-centric policy is inherently benign. Her bold contribution opens up new ways of understanding work and disability, and invites us to imagine more hopeful futures.’
– Harriet Clarke, Associate Professor in Social Policy, University of Birmingham.
‘Ioana Cerasella Chis prompts a powerful rethinking of disablement and work, revealing how disabled people sustain society while challenging disabling capitalism.’
– Saori Shibata (University of Sheffield), author of Contesting Precarity in Japan: The Rise of Nonregular Workers and the New Policy Dissensus.
‘In their incredibly timely book, Chis makes the groundbreaking argument that the abolition of capitalist disablement is the only way to stop the onslaught of its eugenics-style transhumanist ‘progress’.’
– Phoebe V. Moore (University of Essex), Professor of Management & the Futures of Work.
‘Disabling Capitalism is a timely, original and intellectually compelling intervention that rethinks disability, work and exploitation. Grounded in rich empirical research, it challenges conventional assumptions while offering a powerful vision of disability justice beyond productivist understandings of work. This important book will shape debates across disability studies, political economy and sociology.’
– Karen Soldatić, Canada Excellence Research Chair, Professor of Disability Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University.
‘Although Karl Marx spelled out and illustrated how capitalism disables waged workers through various forms of alienation – depriving them of 1) control over their work, 2) of cooperation with co-workers rather than competition, 3) of control over their products and finally 4) of their ability to realize their own humanity in self-directed activity – and how it disables unwaged workers through the denial of income, he neglected the specific ways capitalism disables people with mental or physical impairments, both on the job and off. In this book Ioana Cerasella Chis provides a long-overdue remedy to this neglect by spelling out the structures through which capitalism disables those with various impairments. Unlike Marx, who only dreamed of a “workers’ inquiry” in which waged workers could testify about their alienation and exploitation, Ioana’s collaborative work with people with impairments gives us their reports both on their disablement and on their efforts to craft alternative ways of being, against and beyond capitalists’ ever-increasing attempts to extract as much work from them as possible. In so doing, she reveals too long overlooked realms of exploitation, refusal and efforts to move beyond the capitalist subordination of life to work and takes up the issue of how to link their struggles with those of others.’
– Harry Cleaver (University of Texas at Austin), author of The Fragile Juggernaut: Marx & Engels on Capitalism, Class Struggle and Crisis.
‘Disabling Capitalism is a crucial contribution that will undoubtedly re-shape how we all think about disablement, work and capitalism. Wielding an impressive range of contributions from across Marxist theory, the book sheds light – in ways that are far more often concealed from view – on the intrinsic nature of disablement as a fundamental feature of capitalism. In doing so, it offers a vital, and yet concrete, abolitionist approach to praxis – as a concrete route to resistance, and with the potential for emancipation. Everyone who lives in capitalism should read this book!’
– David J. Bailey (University of Birmingham), Associate Professor in Politics, University of Birmingham.