Liberation, Resistance, and Agency in Intellectual Disability: An Ethnographic Study for Christian Ethics

The primary thesis of this dissertation is that in order to shape an adequate and inclusive response to disability, the Church must listen to the voices and experiences of those with disabilities — especially people with intellectual disabilities. I make my argument through the use of ethnographic field research in a local sheltered workshop that serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD); the questions about inclusion and participation raised at this field site illuminates the ethical challenges that church practices face concerning inclusion of people with IDD. The first chapter of the dissertation addresses the history of my fieldwork site within the larger context of the disability rights movement that took place in the last half of the twentieth century. Within this historical perspective, I draw forward the places where the institutional church either helped or hindered the efforts at inclusion of people with IDD in society and improvements for their quality of life. The second chapter is methodologically oriented, justifying my use of ethnography with an appeal to the epistemic privilege of the poor in Latin American liberation theology. Ethnography serves as a tool for accessing — albeit imperfectly, and mediated through myself as the researcher — the standpoint of people with intellectual disabilities (the epistemic privilege of the poor). Finally, the third and fourth chapters detail my findings over the course of my fieldwork about how the people with IDD in the workshop navigate through relationships and structures and develop their own sense of inclusion. The third chapter is organized around the theme of experiences of grace and liberation; the fourth and final chapter is organized around the theme of sin and resistance to sin.