Call for Contributions

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Disability is a central, though often neglected, dimension of contemporary societies and marketplaces. Affecting an estimated 15% of the global population (WHO and World Bank 2011), disability is not simply a medical or individual issue but a deeply social, cultural, economic, and political one. Consumption—understood broadly as access to goods, services, spaces, and symbolic systems—offers a critical vantage point for rethinking disability beyond the traditional binaries of impairment and normalcy.

Since the 1970s, disability studies have challenged dominant narratives that equate disability with personal tragedy or biological deficit (Goodley 2017; Winance 2016). This interdisciplinary field has contributed to major paradigm shifts, including the rise of the social model of disability (Oliver 1996), later nuanced by approaches informed by assemblage theory, new materialisms, and the ethics of care (Feely 2016; Winance 2016). Yet, many consumer and management scholars remain at the periphery of these critical conversations. Our aim with ICDC2026 is to continue building intellectual bridges between disability studies and the study of markets, consumption and organizations—a movement increasingly visible in recent years (e.g., Beudaert, Mason, and Nau 2024; Higgins 2020).

ICDC2026 invites contributions that critically examine the multiple intersections between disability and consumption across disciplines, geographies, methods, and theoretical orientations. We particularly welcome proposals that:

• Challenge ableist assumptions embedded in market and research practices (e.g., Higgins and O’Leary 2023; Kearney, Brittain, and Kipnis 2019; Södergren, Hietanen, and Vallström 2023)

• Propose alternative imaginaries of value, care, normalcy and participation

• Engage with overlooked impairments and embodied experiences

• Experiment with inclusive or participatory methodologies

While the conference is rooted in marketing and consumer research, we actively seek contributions from adjacent fields such as sociology, anthropology, human geography, political economy, design studies, innovation management, or philosophy. Proposals may address a broad range of impairments—motor, sensory, cognitive, psychosocial, neurodivergent, chronic or age-related—and various consumption or organizational contexts.

It is therefore worth considering that research not explicitly focused on disability—such as work on social imaginaries and body technologies (e.g., Askegaard, El-Jurdi, and Ourahmoune 2025)—may nonetheless provide fertile ground for further theorizing disability and rethinking its conceptual boundaries. More than ever, we seek and inter- and transdisciplinary conference, provided it offers fresh insights into disability theorization, whether at a micro, phenomenological level or through broader perspectives rooted in micromarketing and public policy.

Suggested (non-exhaustive) themes

• Crip perspectives on consumption, care, and value

• Disability and the critique of capitalist ableism

• Representation and commodification of disability in cultural and digital spaces

• Market activism, advocacy, and disability justice

• Disability, aging, and the ethics of care in late modernity

• (In)accessibility in design, retail, tourism, or digital services

• Disability and algorithmic discrimination

• Researching with—not on—participants with disabilities: ethics, methods, epistemologies

• Embodied experiences of impairment, chronic illness and pain

• Posthumanism, transhumanism, and bodily augmentations: dis/abled critiques of enhancement, normalization, and techno-utopias

• Time, rhythm and slowness in disabled lives and market relations

• Intersectionality (race, class, gender, age, queerness) in disability and consumption

• Dis/abling infrastructures: from transport to technology

• The role of caregivers and support networks in consumption

• Tensions between autonomy, dependence and interdependence

• Invisible impairments and misrecognition in market settings

• Disability and the life course: transitions, disruptions, reorientations

• Critique of normative consumer agency in light of vulnerability and precarity

Submission Guidelines

We encourage submissions in diverse formats, including traditional research papers, art-based or performative contributions, visual storytelling, video essays, as well as narrative interventions such as short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, drabbles, sudden fiction, or haiku. Our hope is to create a dedicated crip poetics space within the session, opening it to more experimental and creative forms of knowledge-making. All proposals should include an extended abstract of up to 1,500 words (excluding references and figures), clearly stating:

•    Research questions or objectives

•    Theoretical framework(s)

•    Methodological approach

•    Main findings or insights

•    Contribution to the field

Abstract must be anonymized for peer review, except for the cover page which should contain:

•    Title of the proposal

•    Full names, affiliations and contact details of all authors

•    Indication of the corresponding author (if more than one author)

•    Preferred format of presentation (paper, alternative format, etc.)

All proposals should be sent to conference coordinator Anum Ilyas (anum@sam.sdu.dk)

Important dates

•    Deadline for submissions: January 1st 2026

•    Notification of acceptance: February 1st 2026

•    Registration opens February 1st and closes March 15th 2026

•    Conference dates: April 9-10, 2026

References

Askegaard, Søren, Hounaida El-Jurdi, and Nacima Ourahmoune (2025), “Réflexions sur l’imaginaire social et les technologies du corps,” Recherche et Applications en Marketing.

Beudaert, Anthony, Marlys Mason, and Jean-Philippe Nau (2024), “The social model and consumers with disabilities research: Contributions, criticisms, and call for new perspectives,” Journal of Marketing Management, 40 (5–6), 481–511.

Feely, Michael (2016), “Disability studies after the ontological turn: a return to the material world and material bodies without a return to essentialism,” Disability & Society, 31 (7), 863–83.

Goodley, Dan (2017), Disability studies: an interdisciplinary introduction, London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Higgins, Leighanne (2020), “Psycho-emotional disability in the marketplace,” European Journal of Marketing, 54 (11), 2675–95.

Higgins, Leighanne and Killian O’Leary (2023), “‘Clap for “some” carers’: Problematizing heroism and ableist tenets of heroic discourse through the experiences of parent-carers,” Marketing Theory, 23 (1), 11–32.

Kearney, Shauna, Ian Brittain, and Eva Kipnis (2019), “‘Superdisabilities’ vs ‘disabilities’? Theorizing the role of ableism in (mis)representational mythology of disability in the marketplace,” Consumption, Markets & Culture, 22 (5–6), 545–67.

Oliver, Michael (1996), Understanding disability: from theory to practice, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Södergren, Jonatan, Joel Hietanen, and Niklas Vallström (2023), “Tales from the crypt: A psychoanalytic approach to disability representation in advertising,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 23 (4), 747–68.

WHO and World Bank (2011), World Report on Disability, Geneva: World Health Organization.

Winance, Myriam (2016), “Rethinking disability: lessons from the past, questions for the future. Contributions and limits of the social model, the sociology of science and technology, and the ethics of care,” ALTER. European Journal of Disability Research, 10 (2), 99–110.