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Niklas Altermark

Niklas Altermark

Associate professor

Niklas Altermark

The post-institutional era : visions of history in research on intellectual disability

Author

  • Niklas Altermark

Summary, in English

In this article, I address how the history of intellectual disability politics is made sense of in social scientific research and popular discourse. In particular, I discuss the construction of a narrative break between a past of institutionalisation and the present policies of citizenship. By drawing on how postcolonial theorists criticise common ideas about decolonisation, I argue that this narrative impedes our appreciation of how power has transformed, rather than disappeared, after deinstitutionalisation. Instead, I propose ‘post-institutionalisation’ as a name for the present era of intellectual disability politics, suggesting that we need to attend to continuities and discontinuities of how the group is governed; how paternalism lives on after deinstitutionalisation and how the goals of citizenship inclusion give rise to new technologies of government. I conclude the article by discussing the necessity and the dangers of involving people with intellectual disabilities in the analysis of post-institutional government.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2017-10-21

Language

English

Pages

1315-1332

Publication/Series

Disability and Society

Volume

32

Issue

9

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Routledge

Topic

  • Public Administration Studies

Keywords

  • deinstitutionalisation
  • disability studies
  • Intellectual disability
  • postcolonial theory
  • Spivak

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0968-7599