Project Description:
Rebecca Long, graduate student in Appalachian Studies, will travel to Vancouver, BC to present her paper Disability Justice Potentialities: Prefigurative Politics in Appalachia at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, which is the flagship conference for anthropological research as part of a panel on “Potentiality and Structural Violence.” This paper explores the complexities around disability justice work in Appalachia as potentiality - a capacity that exists but is not yet, or may never be, fully realized. Appalachia itself is often presented as a space devoid of potential, especially in a post-coal economy that makes extractive industries less viable and leaves towns struggling to find future options. Drawn to the forefront of national imagination following the 2016 presidential election, Appalachia has been simplified into an area of persistent disparity, left behind by the country as a whole. Yet, Appalachia has also traditionally been an incubator for activism and political organizing, and there is a strong regional history of social justice. Through fieldwork with elderly and disabled Appalachians, Long explore the contours of latent disability justice potentiality, asking what does it mean to do fieldwork with an ideal in mind that may not be completely recognized?
Rebecca Long
Graduate student in Appalachian Studies