Book Review: Disability and Development: Learning from Action and Research on Disability in the Majority World
Abstract
logic of the argument--signalled in the subtitle of the book--implies an acceptance of a shift towards some form of postmodern future. However, it is not entirely clear how such a position fits with anti-modernist perspectives, which also privilege civil society, and are, if anything, more hostile to the state than their postmodern counterpart. The issue of just what a post- (or anti-) modern welfare society would look like needs more exploration because, as things stand, there is a tendency to elide these potentially very different positions. Rodger asserts, for example, that 'the view held by both anti-modernists and postmodernists regarding the importance of self-organised welfare in a civil society in which state control is at "arm's length" may come to pass through sheer necessity' (p. 188) without sufficient regard for the very different forms of organization that these protagonists might support or the different epistemological positions that inform them. While many readers will have sympathy with the post- Keynesian tenor of the analysis, there is a need to push beyond perhaps rather dated associationalist or communitarian ideas (pp. 10819) offered as possible blueprints for a welfare society--and an even greater need to subject alternative possibilities such as 'social