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Who is DiStA?
Since 2009, DiStA (Disability Studies Austria, research on disability, Austria) has functioned as both a working group and a cooperation platform for people researching and working in the spirit of disability studies.
In contrast to other approaches to disability that prevailed for a long time and that are, indeed, still adopted, disability studies focuses on the complex constituting, naming, social attributing and excluding processes regarding people who are assigned to the category of disability. Accordingly, disability studies examines disability together with social, cultural, psychological, political, legal and economic dimensions.
Being disabled or being personally affected by disability is mostly a question of identity and is located at the intersection of self-image as well as assumed and “actual” external perception. In this context, disability constitutes a central dimension of social inequality and collective identity-building; it should thus be considered a social category similar to class, gender and ethnicity.
The members of DiStA come from a variety of disciplines. During their first networking meetings, the members of DiStA decided against establishing any criteria based on social identity for membership. As such, DiStA intends to neither include nor exclude anyone per se. We have decided that being personally affected, being politically active and having specialist expertise is necessary and sufficient to become part of this initiative. All those personally affected—directly and indirectly—by disability as well as allies are welcome to contribute.
We have drafted a position paper and reviewed it with others. We welcome any feedback on it (either leave a comment below or send us an email via disabilitystudies@jku.at/ )
DiStA’s Objectives
In line with the spirit of disability studies, we use political action mainly to change both existing structures and social conditions; we also make use of it to promote a positive disability identity. In this respect, we regard the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a current basis for our political engagement.
We undertake not only our work but also our research in accordance with the tenets of disability studies and, hence, distance ourselves from any research that is primarily grounded in the individual, medical, rehabilitative or special-education models of disability. We aim to popularize and further develop a multi-dimensional, social and cultural model of disability in Austria.
We especially encourage and call for research undertaken from an intertheoretical and inter-/transdisciplinary perspective. Such transdisciplinarity requires the development and promotion of methodologies that permit to include non-academic and academic epistemologies in equal measure and to conduct participatory research.
DiStA has set out to establish disability studies in research as well as in higher and further education in Austria.
Our goal is to develop an egalitarian, positive understanding of disability in society.
By Laura Hochsteiner, Matthias Forstner +, Andreas Jeitler, Valerie Sophie List, Ursula Naue, Rahel More, Volker Schönwiese, Angela Wegscheider
+ Passed away on March 8, 2024