Paper short abstract:

Acknowledge discourse as practices, doings, activities and interaction between people, objects, environments, technology; disability becomes enacted as heterogeneous understanding.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigate practices of disability in the context of enactment (Mol, 2002), interface (Latour, 2004) and reciprocity. Using ethnographic material from South Africa (2005-2008) these analytical concepts create an insight into the enactment of ability in disability among politicians, activities, entrepreneur with disabilities in post-apartheid South Africa. Moving between and with people, places, environments and objects, located both in rural areas and at national level, this paper describe new spaces of interaction, intra- activities situate disability knowledge in a particular historical, political and socio-economic context. New practices are been shaped: disability becomes ways of affecting others, articulated locally as sensitization. In the interface between disabled and able persons, learning to be affected by more and more elements emerge as an engagement for change. In this context, the enactment of disability appear in between persons, objects, technology and environments. These positions create new practices of participation where people with disability becomes the locus for these intra activities that reinforce change. The paper argue that such new knowledge can easily be overlooked or taken for granted locally, also by people engaged and shaping these new practices. These aspects strengthen the importance of study the enactment of disability both locally and globally, staring within practice, doings and activities. The methods used enable interaction to emerge through discursive practices. In such way, this paper contribute with a complex and heterogeneous understanding of disability from the South.

The research and fieldwork in South Africa was funded by Norwegian Research Council.