Teodor Mladenov
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Conclusion
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The concluding chapter revisits the book’s key arguments. Independent Living has been approached as an evolving, contextually inflected, organic epistemology, preserved and developed in the work of activist organisations like ENIL. This epistemology has rendered independence not in terms of self-sufficiency but in terms of self-determination underpinned by specific relations of interdependence (identified in the book as ‘egalitarian care’). The book has analysed how the ensuing intellectual and policy agenda has clashed with all three organising principles of social welfare – with the market under liberal and postsocialist residualism; with the state under social democratic and state socialist welfarism; and with the family under conservative and postsocialist traditionalism. In all these clashes, the Independent Living movement has sought to overcome the hermeneutical marginalisation of disabled people in defining key terms such as independence. These multiple lines of contestation suggest that Independent Living is a transformative rather than affirmative approach to injustice. Towards the end of the chapter, several issues likely to shape the future of this effort at social transformation are identified. The mainstreaming of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has already started to intensify definitional struggles and this trend is expected to continue. Other global challenges include housing crises, poverty, inequality, transnational migration, and creeping retraditionalisation. In response, Independent Living campaigning and analysis are likely to become increasingly intersectional and transnational. Finally, it is argued that the critique of capacity is likely to take centre stage, strengthening the movement’s conceptual coherence and inclusiveness.

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