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I am proud to announce the latest book in the Routledge Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Series, A Feminist Ethnography of Secure Wards for Women with Learning Disabilities: Locked Away By Rebecca Fish. What is life like for women with learning disabilities detained in a secure unit? This book presents a unique ethnographic study conducted in a contemporary institution in England. Rebecca Fish takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on both the social model of disability and intersectional feminist methodology, to explore the reasons why the women were placed in the unit, as well their experiences of day-to-day life as played out through relationships with staff and other residents. She raises important questions about the purpose of such units and the services they offer. Through making the women’s voices heard, this book presents their experiences and unique perspectives on topics such as seclusion, restraint, and resistance. Exploring how the ever present power disparity works to regulate women’s behaviour, the book shows how institutional responses replicate women’s bad experiences from the past, and how women’s responses are seen as pathological. It demonstrates that women are not passive recipients of care, but shape their own identity and futures, sometimes by resisting the norms expected of them (within allowed limits) and sometimes by transgressing the rules. These insights thus challenge traditional institutional accounts of gender, learning disability and deviance and highlight areas for reform in policy, practice, methodology, and social theory. It can be purchased via the following internet link: https://www.routledge.com/A-Feminist-Ethnography-of-Secure-Wards-for-Women-with-Learning-Disabilities/Fish/p/book/9781138088269 Please consider buying this book, or at least ordering it for your library. I think it is a really important contribution to Disability Studies - equivalent of Goffman's Asylum, but informed by feminist theory and principles, and applied to the experiences of people with learning disabilities in locked wards. I hope it is widely read and included in many disability studies courses, as well as feminist courses, ethnography, sociology, and other fields. This book is the latest in the Series, which can be found at: https://www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Disability-Studies/book-series/ASHSER1401 FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT FOLLOW THE SERIES, OTHER RECENT TITLES IN THE SERIES INCLUDE: 1. A Sociological Approach to Acquired Brain Injury and Identity By Jonathan Harvey Inspired by the author’s personal experience of sustaining acquired brain injury (ABI), this path-breaking book explores the (re)construction of identity after ABI. It offers a way of understanding ABI through a social scientific lens, promoting an understanding that is generated through close engagement with the lives and experiences of ABI survivors. The author follows the everyday experiences of six male survivors and critically investigates their identity (re)construction after their ABI. As well as demonstrating identity (re)construction after ABI, the experiences of the participants allow the reader to investigate neurological rehabilitation from their perspective. This book suggests that rehabilitation after ABI is often a continual process that extends beyond the formal, medically prescribed period. It also shows that identity after ABI is often (re)constructed in an unpredictable way; a way that emphasises the importance of reciprocal support and the uncertainty of future life. This book can be purchased via the following link: https://www.routledge.com/A-Sociological-Approach-to-Acquired-Brain-Injury-and-Identity/Harvey/p/book/9781472474476 -------- 2 .DISABILITY AND POSTSOCIALISM BY TEODOR MLADENOV In the decades following the collapse of state socialism at the end of 1980s, disabled people in Central and Eastern Europe endured economic marginalisation, cultural devaluation and political disempowerment. Some of the mechanisms producing these injustices were inherited from state socialism, while others emerged with postsocialist neoliberalisation. State socialism promised social security guaranteed by the public, and postsocialist neoliberalisation promised independent living underpinned by the market. This book argues that both promises failed as far as disabled people were concerned, drawing on a wide range of scholarly reports and analyses, policy documents, legislation, and historical accounts, as well as on disability studies and social justice theory. Besides differences, the book also illuminates continuities between state socialism and postsocialist capitalism, providing on this basis a more general and historically grounded critique of contemporary neoliberalisation and its impact on individual and collective life. It can be purchased via the following link: https://www.routledge.com/Disability-and-Postsocialism/Mladenov/p/book/9781138234468 -------- 3. PEDAGOGY, DISABILITY AND COMMUNICATION: APPLYING DISABILITY STUDIES IN THE CLASSROOM, EDITED BY MICHAEL S. JEFFRESS Research has long substantiated the fact that living with a disability creates significant and complex challenges to identity negotiation, the practice of communication, and the development of interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, individuals without disabilities often lack the knowledge and tools to experience self-efficacy in communicating with their differently-abled peers. So how do these challenges translate to the incorporation of disability studies in a classroom context and the need to foster an inclusive environment for differently-abled students? Bringing together a range of perspectives from communication and disability studies scholars, this collection provides a theoretical foundation along with practical solutions for the inclusion of disability studies within the everyday curriculum. It examines a variety of aspects of communication studies including interpersonal, intercultural, health, political and business communication as well as ethics, gender and public speaking, offering case study examples and pedagogical strategies as to the best way to approach the subject of disability in education. It can be purchased via the following link: https://www.routledge.com/Pedagogy-Disability-and-Communication-Applying-Disability-Studies-in/Jeffress/p/book/9781138225527 ------- 4. DISABILITY AND RURALITY: IDENTITY, GENDER AND BELONGING EDITED BY KAREN SOLDATIC, KELLEY JOHNSON This is the first book to explore how far disability challenges dominant understandings of rurality, identity, gender and belonging within the rural literature. The book focuses particularly on the ways disabled people give, and are given, meaning and value in relation to ethical rural considerations of place, physical strength, productivity and social reciprocity. A range of different perspectives to the issues of living rurally with a disability inform this work. It includes the lived experience of people with disabilities through the use of life history methodologies, rich qualitative accounts and theoretical perspectives. It goes beyond conventional notions of rurality, grounding its analysis in a range of disability spaces and places and including the work of disability sociologists, geographers, cultural theorists and policy analysts. This interdisciplinary focus reveals the contradictory and competing relations of rurality for disabled people and the resultant impacts and effects upon disabled people and their communities materially, discursively and symbolically. It can be purchased via the following link: https://www.routledge.com/Disability-and-Rurality-Identity-Gender-and-Belonging/Soldatic-Johnson/p/book/9781472454843 --------- ANOTHER NOTE FROM MARK SHERRY I realize these titles are expensive, as is often the case with Routledge hardcover books. However, please at least consider buying them via your library. The more sales occur, the more likely they will be reissued in paperback. If you are interested in submitting to the Series, which is incredibly active (publishing 17 books since 2014), please contact the Routledge Commissioning Editor, Claire Jarvis, in the first instance. Her email is [log in to unmask] Claire Jarvis will then distribute the book to me, as the Series Editor, to the external reviewers and to the Routledge Board. Cheers,Mark ________________End of message________________ This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies). Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask] Archives and tools are located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.