Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the interconnections between the disability support services, the medical-bureaucratic infrastructure and cultural perceptions of disability in Iceland.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the interconnections between the disability support services, the medical-bureaucratic infrastructure and cultural perceptions of disability in Iceland.

During the course of a previous multi-year ethnographic research project in Reykjavik, Iceland, it was learned that disability pensioners were often associated with high levels of suspicion and stigmatization. The typical explanations for these views pointed to Icelandic history and 'culture.' Yet the category 'disability pensioner' is predominantly a product of bureaucratic and medical forms of knowledge and power, a good deal of which is imported from abroad. As such, Icelandic understandings of disability appear to be the product of complex interconnections between local culture, history, and international forms of knowledge and governance.

This paper presents some findings of a post-doctoral project in progress which seeks to, among other things, explore these interconnections and the production of disabled subjectivities in Iceland though interviews with a wide range of stakeholders.