Epistemic inertia in human rights expert bodies: Continuity amid pluralisation

Abstract This article introduces the heuristic of epistemic inertia to complicate narratives of radical rupture in global sites of expertise. In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), widely celebrated as a radical break from the medical model, which had long framed disability as an individual impairment to be treated by medical doctors. Through the heuristic of epistemic inertia, we examine how, despite adopting a more pluralised expert repertoire, the CRPD Committee retains some deep-seated (neo)liberal assumptions of the medical model. Through an analysis of General Comment No. 8, we identify three main manifestations of this persistence across both models: first, an understanding of dignity as tied to productivity and autonomy; second, the idea that individuals must ‘adapt’ to existing societal arrangements through merit; and third, the portrayal of market participation as the privileged moral horizon. What falls out of view are alternative imaginaries grounded in interdependence or collective forms of care, which exist outside prevailing economic logics. In this configuration, the figure of the rights-bearer is not a radical alternative to the medical patient, insofar as rights are still articulated through expectations of optimisation and self-reliance within prevailing market logics.