Out with the University of Toronto Press is Working Towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada by Dustin Galer, personal historian and founder of MyHistorian.com. From the publisher:
"This is an ambitious and largely successful book. It deserves a wide readership because of its potential to expand the historiography about work, rights and rights movements, and policy (federal and provincial) – in the style of the new disability history – by bringing a disability analysis to bear on these topics." -Jason Ellis
"Working towards Equity makes a notable and worthwhile contribution to the field of disability studies as well as to social policy, labour history, and social movement activism studies in Canada. The illustrations and photographs are terrific features helping to bring alive the history, making it both personal and political." -Michael J. Prince
"Working towards Equity draws from a broad array of sources, including archived manuscript collections, documentary films, interviews, government reports, and published monographs and articles. Filling a significant gap in the historiography of disability rights, employment, and labour, this study makes a significant contribution to twentieth-century social and cultural history." -Michael Rembi
Further information is available here.
--Mitra Sharafi
Praise for the book:In Working towards Equity, Dustin Galer argues that paid work significantly shaped the experience of disability during the late twentieth century. Using a critical analysis of disability in archival records, personal collections, government publications and a series of interviews, Galer demonstrates how demands for greater access among disabled people for paid employment stimulated the development of a new discourse of disability in Canada. Family advocates helped people living in institutions move out into the community as rehabilitation professionals played an increasingly critical role in the lives of working-age adults with disabilities. Meanwhile, civil rights activists crafted a new consumer-led vision of social and economic integration. Employment was, and remains, a central component in disabled peoples' efforts to become productive, autonomous and financially secure members of Canadian society. Working towards Equity offers new in-depth analysis on rights activism as it relates to employment, sheltered workshops, deinstitutionalization and labour markets in the contemporary context in Canada.
"This is an ambitious and largely successful book. It deserves a wide readership because of its potential to expand the historiography about work, rights and rights movements, and policy (federal and provincial) – in the style of the new disability history – by bringing a disability analysis to bear on these topics." -Jason Ellis
"Working towards Equity makes a notable and worthwhile contribution to the field of disability studies as well as to social policy, labour history, and social movement activism studies in Canada. The illustrations and photographs are terrific features helping to bring alive the history, making it both personal and political." -Michael J. Prince
"Working towards Equity draws from a broad array of sources, including archived manuscript collections, documentary films, interviews, government reports, and published monographs and articles. Filling a significant gap in the historiography of disability rights, employment, and labour, this study makes a significant contribution to twentieth-century social and cultural history." -Michael Rembi
Further information is available here.
--Mitra Sharafi
