In a capitalist society, disability is framed as the inability to perform labor. Thus those who are unable to work are excluded and stigmatized. Traditional histories identify the rise of eighteenth-century industrialization as the root of disabled people’s exclusion from work. As recent historians have contended, however, industrialization did not completely displace people with disabilities and impairments, for a wider range of employment was available or created for those refusing to be excluded from the labor market. The logic of capitalism, nevertheless, remained inscribed on peoples’ bodies and asserted itself by oppressing those who were unable to fulfill expectations of labor.
Working toward Equity examines the emergence of disabled peoples’ resistance to their systemic exclusion from the labor market in Canada, focusing on a central pair of questions: “What did economic liminality and exclusion from the labor market look like for most people with disabilities in Canada and how did...
