Disability and Peripherality: Perspectives and Narratives from India?s North East (People, Cultures and Societies: Exploring and Documenting Diversities)

This book presents the intersectionality between ethnicity and disability in the peripheral region of Northeast India. It familiarises the readers with micro issues, local cultural imagination, and social navigation of disability. It explores the region's social imaginary associated with disability through literary, cultural, folk, and historical narratives. It also reveals the material realities of disability with empirical investigation. It includes chapters on the literary representation of disability, the portrayal of disability through cinema, disability jurisprudence, disability rights, and the role of institutions in addressing the issue of disability in the region. The chapters present empirical, ontological as well as qualitative research. It widens the scope of understanding the limitation of disability-related provisions in India by locating the issue in the cultural landscape of Northeast India. The book dwells upon the experiential terrain of disability. It is a valuable resource for social science scholars, particularly researchers of disability studies, social work, literature, social science disciplines, North East studies, NGO activists, disability activists, and policymakers.

Debajyoti Biswas is an Associate Professor and currently heading the Department of English at Bodoland University. He is the founding editor of an ejournal (transcript: An e-Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies). He has contributed to journals of international repute like National Identities (T&F), South Asian Popular Culture (T&F), English: Journal of the English Association (OUP), Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (Springer), and  Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Nature). His edited books are Nationalism in India (Routledge 2021), Global Perspectives on Nationalism (Routledge 2022), and Environmental Humanities in India (Springer 2024). His areas of research include Critical Theory, Environmental Humanities, Nationalism and Anglophone Writings from India’s Northeast. He is the principal investigator of a Major Research project on “Identity and Conflict in Assam” funded by Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. He is a member of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), The Indian Disability Studies Collective (IDSC), the Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) and the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies in India (IACLALS).

Pankaj Jyoti Gogoi is presently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Head (i/c) in the Department of Disability Studies at Arya Vidyapeeth College (Autonomous), Guwahati, Assam. He completed his PhD in Political Science at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, in 2014. He was a junior research fellow at Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development (OKDISCD), an ICSSR Institute based in Guwahati in 2008. He co-edited a volume titled Politics in North East India: Diversity, Historiography, and Contemporary Issues in 2015. His textbook An Introduction to Political Theory has been published by Pearson in 2013. His latest article is “Dihing Patkai National Park,” published by Economic and Political Weekly in 2023.