Spiritualità, disabilità e riabilitazione sociale nelle scuole speciali del Myanmar

Abstract

This article explores the social and cultural dynamics related to the rehabilitation of disabled people in Myanmar, focusing on two special schools in Yangon. The ethnography is based on the experiences and testimonies of parents with disabled children, interpreted through the lens of Theravāda Buddhist beliefs and practices related to spirits, such as the taïk. The article analyzes the processes of resemanticization of disability that emerge both in the parents’ daily practices and in their interactions within the school environment. Far from being merely educational spaces, schools represent crucial sites of social rehabilitation and parental role reconstruction, where families engage in reinterpreting the concept of disability. Religious and spiritual beliefs provide a symbolic framework, allowing parents to reinterpret their children’s disability not only as a challenge but also as a potential source of social and economic enrichment. Social and religious representations of disability play a central role in shaping both parents’ self-perception and their children’s paths towards social integration. By adopting articulated strategies involving the symbolic and moral reworking of the experience of disability, Burmese families confront and navigate the challenges posed by disability within a complex and multi-layered context, one which also lacks a social welfare system.