10 Principles of
Cripping Ethnography

The idea of cripping ethnography comes from Erin L. Durban's "Doing It Together: A Queer Case for Cripping Ethnography" (2024) following up their article "Anthropology and Ableism" (2021). 

 

What is the relationship between “crip,” an analytic from disability activism and critical disability studies, and ethnographic methods and inquiries in and beyond anthropology? While leaving ample space for answering this question and the forms cripping ethnography might take in our disabled futures, here are principles for considering these relationships. Inspired by the Sins Invalid “10 Principles of Disability Justice,” these principles come from sustained engagement with disabled anthropologists and ethnographers, critical disability studies scholars, and cross-disability activism. They are intended to break down academic barriers and interrupt ableist gatekeeping practices in the service of diverse disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, and mad people.

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Cripping ethnography:

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1. is inseparable from the creative disabled bodyminds of researchers. 

2. approaches power dynamics intersectionally related to ableism, audism, sanism, (settler) colonialism, racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, capitalism, religion, nationalism, caste, ageism, militarism, xenophobia, and more.

3. attends to researchers’ as well as participants/informants’ wellbeing.

4. explicitly acknowledges and addresses the wide range of power and privilege that exist within the broad categories of disability, chronic illness, Deafness, and madness.

5. attunes to “disability gain”: the specific methodological and analytical benefits and insights of disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, and mad bodyminds.

6. cites disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, and mad scholars and theorists inside and outside the academy and ideally engages with disabled cultural production and progressive and liberatory disability activism—like Disability Justice in the U.S. context—articulated by multiply-marginalized disabled people.

7. makes ideas accessible to wide audiences through plain language, translation, and creative dissemination that gets beyond pay walls.

8. extends beyond accessible research practices to making space in the discipline of anthropology, the academy, and the professions for more disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, and mad people. 

9. dismisses convention and breaks rules to align with crip ways of thinking, communicating, and inhabiting the world. (For more, read Crip Authorship: Disability-as-Method available open access here.)

10. is more than inclusion and works towards collective access and the transformation of ethnographic knowledge production.

 

Written 2025, updated 2026