Tsunami and the construction of disabled Southern body

This paper explores a Southern disabled standpoint as a theoretical and strategic approach to examine disability. In situating disabled people in the South within dominant Northern notions of development and medicine, this paper focuses on the 2004 December Tsunami. Our aim is to highlight how the separation of an episodic natural disaster from the ongoing social disaster of war and poverty, is based on a specific approach to understanding the Southern body within Northern medicine. By explaining how able-bodied masculine notions of the body are constructed within imperialist and ethno-nationalist projects, this paper suggests a deeper understanding of disability in the South for informed social transformation.