Unanticipated productivity: Reflexive analysis of postcolonial disability research shows how productivity can be understood differently

Abstract

Stimulated by a disjuncture between the expectations and the experiences of conducting research on disability in Zambia, we reflexively reviewed our own research practice to find that it was premised upon an unconscious assumption about the value of productivity. This reflexive finding led us to reflect more deeply about the concept of productivity. From our own observations as health professionals and researchers in the global North complemented by literature, we described a hegemonic conception of productivity that we see to be represented. Through a more conscious articulation of our own approach to research and the responses that we observed from research participants with disabilities in Zambia, we articulated two alternative conceptions of productivity. We propose that the alternative conceptions of productivity are useful to inform more robust disability research in the global South. More generally, these alternative conceptions can be used as resistance to a narrowly conceived notion of productivity.

Keywords

• critical social science perspective
• global south
• neoliberalism
• productivism
• zambia
• reflexivity
• social theory
• qualitative research