Flying on Hope

Flying on Hope explores the lived experience of being 'disabled' in rural Cambodia. It challenges dominant discourses which represent disability as a tragic consequence of poor karmic status. The men and women whose stories shape this book are far from being victims; they pragmatically negotiate the social and physical barriers they encounter as best they can to maximise their life choices. This book moves understandings of disability away from western, medical models based on rehabilitation. Ethnographic methods are used to examine what 'disability' means to village men and women in north-west Cambodia, and to demonstrate how society produces limited opportunity structures and institutionalises disadvantage for those considered to be outside the boundaries of normality. Until disabled people are valued as different, but equally worthy people, exclusionary social structures will continue to keep them on the margins, their lives characterised by poverty, degradation and isolation. This book begins this process by providing a space for the voices and experiences of disabled men and women to be heard.