Writing

Disability Politics and Theory Revised and Expanded Edition

Disability Politics and Theory, a historical exploration of the concept of disability, covers the late nineteenth century to the present, introducing the main models of disability theory and politics: eugenics, medicalization, rehabilitation, charity, rights and social and disability justice. A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the currently dominant social model of disability, this book offers an alternative. The radical framework Withers puts forward draws from schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of interlocking oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience, this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. — and a call for social and economic justice.

This revised and expanded edition includes a new chapter on the rehabilitation model, expands the discussion of eugenics, and adds the context of the growth of the disability justice movement, Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding the police, decolonial and Indigenous land protection struggles, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing

Fight to Win tells the stories of four key OCAP homelessness campaigns: stopping the criminalization of homeless people in a public park; the fight for poor people’s access to the Housing Shelter Fund; a campaign to improve the emergency shelter system and the City’s overarching, but inadequate, Housing First policy; and the attempt by the City of Toronto to drive homeless people from encampments during the COVID pandemic.

A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working

with Chris Chapman

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. We explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work’s violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical.

In the Parks and in the Courts: The Legal Fight against Encampment Evictions. In G. Cook & C. Crowe (Eds.), Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic (pp. 211–219). Aveo UofT, 2022. Co-authored with Derrick Black.

Cracks in my universe. In C. Milstein (Ed.), Rebellious Mourning: The collective work of grief (pp. 161–182). Oakland: AK Press, 2017

Capitalism, poverty and poor people’s resistance. In W. Antony, J. Antony, L. Samuelson (Eds.) Power and resistance Critical thinking about Canadian social issues, 7th Edition. Fernwood, 2022.

Caring for disabled LGBTQ people. In E. Kucharski & A. Bourns (Eds.), Caring for LGBTQ2S People: A Clinical Guide, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, (pp. 507-528), 2022, with Elizabeth Harrison and Laura MacDonald.

Fighting to win: Radical anti-poverty organizing.

Radical disability politics. Lydia X. Z. Brown, Loree Erickson, Rachel da Silveira Gorman, Talila A. Lewis, Lateef McLeod and Mia Mingus (authors), and A. J. Withers & Liat Ben-Moshe (editors).

In Uri Gordon & Ruth Kinna (Eds.), Routledge handbook of radical politics. Routledge, 2019.

Disability, divisions, definitions and disablism: When resisting psychiatry is oppressive. In B. Burstow, B. LeFrancois & S. Diamond (Eds.), Psychiatry disrupted: Theorizing resistance and crafting the (r)evolution (pp. 114-128). McGill-Queens University Press, 2014.

Queer-cripping anarchism. In C. B. Daring, J. Rogue, D. Shannon & A. Volcano (Eds.), Queering anarchism: Essays on gender, power, and desire (207-20). AK Press, 2014 with Liat Ben-Moshe and Anthony J. Nocella II.

Disablism within animal advocacy and environmentalism. In J. K. C. Bentley, J. M. Duncan & A. J. Nocella (Eds.), Earth, animal, and disability liberation: The rise of the eco-ability movement (pp. 111-125). Peter Lang, 2012.