Vulnerability in action: the role of the disabled body in shaping geographies of protest

Butler-Rees, Angharad and Power, Andrew (2025) Vulnerability in action: the role of the disabled body in shaping geographies of protest. Social & Cultural Geography. (doi:10.1080/14649365.2025.2479697).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Protest has been a long-held concern of geographers who have examined the socio-spatial practices of activists and social movements. Yet, within this corpus of work, limited attention has been paid to the role and experience of the body among those involved in protest. Drawing on a study focusing on the experiences of disabled activists organizing in response to austerity in the UK, the paper examines the use of the individual body in activism and explores how disabled people use their bodies for social change in a way that seeks to turn corporeal vulnerability into a site of defiant resistance. While vulnerability is often seen as anathema to direct-action protest, the study reveals that vulnerability can be a fundamental and inherent element of activism. The paper seeks to challenge the implicitly ableist and masculinist accounts of activism persisting in some geographic scholarship and calls for greater attention to be paid to more inclusive spaces for different embodiments.

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