This ethnographic photo essay raises questions concerning the best way to represent the disabled. Drawing on one author’s experience of stroke and subsequent fieldwork in “stroke country,” this essay argues for a new kind of disability studies ethnography, an ethnography that critically understands disability as social construct while at the same time remains faithful to the stories disabled people tell.
Ayala, Carma, Michele L. Casper, Kurt J. Greenlund, Janet B. Croft, Nora L Keenan, Ralph S. Donehoo, Wayne H. Giles, Steven J. Kittner, and James S. Marks. 2001. Racial/ethnic disparities in mortality by stroke subtype in the United States, 1995-1998. American Journal of Epidemiology54 (11): 1057-1063.
2.
Behar, Ruth1996. The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon Press.
3.
Casper, Michele L., Elizabeth Barnett, G. Ishmael Williams Jr., Joel A. Halverson, Valaerie E. Braham, and Kurt J. Greenlund. 2003. Atlas of stroke mortality: Racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in the United States. Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
4.
Collier, John, Jr., and Malcolm Collier. 1986. Visual anthropology: Photography as a research method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
5.
Davis, Lennard. 1995. Enforcing normalcy: Disability, deafness, and the body. New York: Verso.
6.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2001. Seeing the disabled: Visual rhetorics of disability in popular photography. In The new disability history: American perspectives, edited by Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky, 335-375. New York: New York University Press.
7.
Howard, George. 1999. Why do we have a stroke belt in the southeastern United States? A review of unlikely and uninvestigated potential causes. American Journal of Medical Science317 (3): 160-167.
8.
Howard, George, Roger Anderson, Norman Johnson, Paul Sorlie, Gregory Russell, and Virginia Howard. 1997. Evaluation of social status as contributing factor to the stroke belt region of the United States. Stroke28:936-940.
9.
Howard, George, George W. Evans, Kevin Pearce, Virginia J. Howard, Ronny A. Bell, Elizabeth J. Mayer, and Gregory L. Burke. 1995. Is the stroke belt disappearing? An analysis of racial, temporal and age effects. Stroke26:1153-1158. Available from www.stroke.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/26/7/1153.
10.
Kelley, Heidi, and Ken Betsalel. 2004. Normalcy and the contours of stroke country. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society. Decatur, GA, March.
11.
Kelley, Heidi, and Ken Betsalel. Forthcoming. Mind’s fire: Language, power and the representation of stroke. Anthropology and Humanism.
12.
Linton, Simi. 1998. Claiming disability: Knowledge and identity. New York: New York University.
13.
Noddings, Nel. 2003. Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14.
Obisesan, Thomas, Clemencia Vargas, and Richard Gillum. 2000. Geographic variation in stroke risk in the United States. Stroke31:1-19.
15.
Spradley, James, and David McCurdy. 1988. The cultural experience: Ethnography in complex society. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
