ABSTRACT

The historical state categorization of disability, as a mechanism for delineating the so-called ‘deserving poor’ from the ‘undeserving poor’ for state poor relief, is evidence of the complex set of social and economic relations of disability. Stone (1981) was one of the first disability studies scholars to reveal the extent to which the emergence of the modern capitalist state relies on the categorization of the human body. The modern nation state and the capitalist political economy operate jointly not only in harnessing a multiplicity of state regulatory measures for regulating internal populations within the nation state but also external populations attempting to enter its borders (Jakubowicz and Meekosha 2002).