Svetlana Borodina

SVETLANA BORODINA, then a graduate student at Rice University, Houston, Texas, was granted funding in April 2016 to aid research on ‘Governing Productive (Dis)Abilities: The Inkluzivnyi Work Regime and Moral Citizenship in Russia,’ supervised by Dr. James D. Faubion. In 2017, many actors of different professional and cultural backgrounds collaborated to drive a cultural change in Russia in matters that concern the value of disability and humanity in general. Persons with and without disabilities worked together to implement the idea that persons with disabilities (further, PWD) have highly valued ‘extrabilities’ ‘ skills developed because of their disabilities. In multiplying inkluzivnye practices and contexts ‘ practices whereby PWD use their extrabilities and thus occupy a significant role in mixed collectives and contexts ‘ these actors see a possible solution to such problems as social apathy, mass unemployment, overconsumption, underproduction, depression and marginalization of certain groups. This research anthropologically investigates forms of such collaborative initiatives that draw PWD of different occupations, nondisabled policy makers, business representatives, NGO workers and other nondisabled professionals together under the umbrella of inkluzivnye practices. Guided by the question: What are these new cultural forms productive of?, the grantee conducted 15 months of fieldwork in Russia. The study seeks to offer insight on a new conceptual constellation of disability, society, work, citizenship and humanity, and to provide a glimpse on cultural dynamics and complexity in Russia, against the popular overdetermined images dominant in the public imagination in the West in 2017.