Mobilizing feminist disability studies for expansive social work scholarship

Abstract Despite overlaps in their theoretical roots and objects of inquiry, feminist disability studies (FDS) have yet to be meaningfully integrated into social work’s eclectic theoretical fabric. In this article, I trace the history and evolution of FDS as an academic field. In doing so, I highlight some of the ways that FDS offers rich conceptualizations of phenomena relevant to social work scholarship, including disability and debility, social justice, the marketization of care, and coalitional care politics. This discussion emphasizes the value of adopting a nuanced conceptualization of care in social work to understand the inextricable linkages between the liberation of care workers and disabled people. In the second section, I examine some current frictions between social work and FDS, and identify generative possibilities of tending to these frictions rather than avoiding them. I present a vision for an expansive future of social work scholarship that mobilizes the conceptual contributions of FDS and begins to redress the ableism endemic in social work research and theory. I focus this discussion on two opportunities: the utility of adopting a gradient understanding of disability identity in social work scholarship, and the value of a coalitional approach to analysing and conceptualizing care.