Negotiating Parenthood and Responsibility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
Completing the arc from the desire to assert membership and rights as an handicapé, the final chapter considers how disabled Kinois turned away from this identity to pursue one of becoming a responsable, someone ‘responsible [for others]’. While controversial, begging and brokering gave access to hard-won economic resources that made it possible to have and care for children. Aspiring to such responsibilities, disabled people showed that integrating economic and social values was both means and ends. By successfully fulfilling the responsibilities of parenthood – the comparatively stable, higher value of social respectability that was once considered impossible for disabled people to achieve – they sought to become ‘valuable people’ (batu ya valeur). Claiming full adult personhood, they both conformed to and transformed the measurement of this highest regime of personhood, enjoining a debate over whether it is good to have many or fewer, well-supported children. Between action and aspiration, a testing and critiquing disposition towards value demonstrates how the extraordinary livelihood strategies of disabled people in the margins of urban society may be a most productive stage from which to examine the emerging debates about what is, or should be, good in society.
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