The Social, Cultural, and Political Discourses of Autism

2021-11-13

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Author: Jessica Nina Lester
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9402421343
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Taking up a social constructionist position, this book illustrates the social and cultural construction of autism as made visible in everyday, educational, institutional and historical discourses, alongside a careful consideration of the bodily and material realities of embodied differences. The authors highlight the economic consequences of a disabling culture, and explore how autism fits within broader arguments related to normality, abnormality and stigma. To do this, they provide a theoretically and historically grounded discussion of autism—one designed to layer and complicate the discussions that surround autism and disability in schools, health clinics, and society writ large. In addition, they locate this discussion across two contexts – the US and the UK – and draw upon empirical examples to illustrate the key points. Located at the intersection of critical disability studies and discourse studies, the book offers a critical reframing of autism and childhood mental health disorders more generally.

War on Autism

2016-04-28

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Author: Anne McGuire
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053124
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 275

War on Autism examines autism as a historically specific and power-laden cultural phenomenon that has much to teach about the social organization of a neoliberal western modernity. Bringing together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives including critical disability studies, queer and critical race theory, and cultural studies, the book analyzes the social significance and productive effects of contemporary discourses of autism as these are produced and circulated in the field of autism advocacy. Anne McGuire reveals how in the field of autism advocacy, autism often appears as an abbreviation, its multiple meanings distilled to various "red flag" warnings in awareness campaigns, bulleted biomedical "facts" in information pamphlets, or worrisome statistics in policy reports. She analyzes the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and traces their continuities to reveal an underlying, powerful, and ubiquitous logic of violence that casts autism as a pathological threat that advocacy must work to eliminate. Such logic, McGuire contends, functions to delimit the role of the "good" autism advocate to one who is positioned "against" autism. Book jacket.

Learning Disability and Everyday Life

2024-03-29

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Author: Alex Cockain
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003860303
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Learning Disability and Everyday Life brings into conversation ideas from social theory with “thick” descriptions of the everyday life of a middle-aged man with learning disabilities and autism. This book is markedly ethnographic in its orientation to the gritty graininess of everyday life—eating, drinking, walking, cooking, talking, and so on—in, with, and alongside learning disability. However, preoccupation with, the “small” coexists with a gaze intent upon capturing a bigger picture, to the extent that the things constituting everyday life are deployed as prisms through and with which to critically reflect upon the wider worlds of dis/ability and everyday life. Such attention to the small and the big—the micro and the macro—allows this book to explore the ordinary and everyday ways meanings about normalcy and abnormalcy, ability and disability, are put together, enacted, practised, made (up)—in the sense of constituting and fabricating—and, crucially, accomplished through and between people in specific, and invariably contingent, sociocultural, discursive, and material conditions of possibility. This book will be of specific interest not only to students and scholars of disability but also to persons with lived experiences of disability. This book will also be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology and sociology.

War on Autism

2016-05-10

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Author: Anne McGuire
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472121928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

War on Autism examines autism as a historically specific and powerladen cultural phenomenon that has much to teach about the social organization of a neoliberal western modernity. Bringing together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives including critical disability studies, queer and critical race theory, and cultural studies, the book analyzes the social significance and productive effects of contemporary discourses of autism as these are produced and circulated in the field of autism advocacy. Anne McGuire discusses how in the field of autism advocacy, autism often appears as an abbreviation, its multiple meanings distilled to various “red flag” warnings in awareness campaigns, bulleted biomedical ”facts” in information pamphlets, or worrisome statistics in policy reports. She analyzes the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and traces their continuities to reveal an underlying, powerful, and ubiquitous logic of violence that casts autism as a pathological threat that advocacy must work to eliminate. Such logic, McGuire contends, functions to delimit the role of the “good” autism advocate to one who is positioned “against” autism.

Authoring Autism

2018-01-05

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Author: M. Remi Yergeau
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372185
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

In Authoring Autism M. Remi Yergeau defines neurodivergence as an identity—neuroqueerness—rather than an impairment. Using a queer theory framework, Yergeau notes the stereotypes that deny autistic people their humanity and the chance to define themselves while also challenging cognitive studies scholarship and its reification of the neurological passivity of autistics. They also critique early intensive behavioral interventions—which have much in common with gay conversion therapy—and questions the ableist privileging of intentionality and diplomacy in rhetorical traditions. Using storying as their method, they present an alternative view of autistic rhetoricity by foregrounding the cunning rhetorical abilities of autistics and by framing autism as a narrative condition wherein autistics are the best-equipped people to define their experience. Contending that autism represents a queer way of being that simultaneously embraces and rejects the rhetorical, Yergeau shows how autistic people queer the lines of rhetoric, humanity, and agency. In so doing, they demonstrate how an autistic rhetoric requires the reconceptualization of rhetoric’s very essence.

Autism

2012

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Author: Stuart Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136652191
Category : Autism
Languages : en
Pages : 131

"Autism is the first book on the condition that seeks to combine medical, historical and cultural approaches to an understanding of the condition. Its purpose is to present a rounded portrayal of the ways in which autism is currently represented in the world, It focuses on three broad areas: the facts of scientific research, including new ideas surrounding research into genetics and neuroscience, as well as the details of diagnosis and therapy; the history of the condition as it developed through psychiatric approaches to the rise of parent associations, neurodiversity and autism advocacy; and the fictional and media narratives through which it is increasingly expressed in the contemporary moment. Accessible and written in clear English, Autism is designed for student audiences in English, Disability Studies, Cultural Studies, History, Sociology, and Medicine and Health, as well as medical practitioners and the general reader. Autism is a condition surrounded by misunderstanding and often defined by contestation and argument. The purpose of this book is to bring clarity to the subject of autism across the full range of its manifestations"--Provided by publisher.

Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education

2010-01-01

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Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9460911773
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 588

In academia, the effects of the “cultural turn” have been felt deeply. In everyday life, tenets from cultural politics have influenced how people behave or regard their options for action, such as the reconfiguration of social movements, protests, and praxis in general.

Worlds of Autism

2013-11-01

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Author: Joyce Davidson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145294024X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Since first being identified as a distinct psychiatric disorder in 1943, autism has been steeped in contestation and controversy. Present-day skirmishes over the potential causes of autism, how or even if it should be treated, and the place of Asperger’s syndrome on the autism spectrum are the subjects of intense debate in the research community, in the media, and among those with autism and their families. Bringing together innovative work on autism by international scholars in the social sciences and humanities, Worlds of Autism boldly challenges the deficit narrative prevalent in both popular and scientific accounts of autism spectrum disorders, instead situating autism within an abilities framework that respects the complex personhood of individuals with autism. A major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of critical autism studies, this book is methodologically and conceptually broad. Its authors explore the philosophical questions raised by autism, such as how it complicates neurotypical understandings of personhood; grapple with the politics that inform autism research, treatment, and care; investigate the diagnosis of autism and the recognition of difference; and assess representations of autism and stories told by and about those with autism. From empathy, social circles, and Internet communities to biopolitics, genetics, and diagnoses, Worlds of Autism features a range of perspectives on autistic subjectivities and the politics of cognitive difference, confronting society’s assumptions about those with autism and the characterization of autism as a disability. Contributors: Dana Lee Baker, Washington State U; Beatrice Bonniau, Paris Descartes U; Charlotte Brownlow, U of Southern Queensland, Australia; Kristin Bumiller, Amherst College; Brigitte Chamak, Paris Descartes U; Kristina Chew, Saint Peter’s U, New Jersey; Patrick McDonagh, Concordia U, Montreal; Stuart Murray, U of Leeds; Majia Holmer Nadesan, Arizona State U; Christina Nicolaidis, Portland State U; Lindsay O'Dell, Open U, London; Francisco Ortega, State U of Rio de Janeiro; Mark Osteen, Loyola U, Maryland; Dawn Eddings Prince; Dora Raymaker; Sara Ryan, U of Oxford; Lila Walsh.

Autism in Translation

2018-08-28

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Author: Elizabeth Fein
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319932934
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Autism is a complex phenomenon that is both individual and social. Showing both robust similarities and intriguing differences across cultural contexts, the autism spectrum raises innumerable questions about self, subjectivity, and society in a globalized world. Yet it is often misrepresented as a problem of broken bodies and disordered brains. So, in 2015, a group of interdisciplinary scholars gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for an intellectual experiment: a workshop that joined approaches from psychological anthropology to the South American tradition of Collective Health in order to consider autism within social, historical, and political settings. This book is the product of the ongoing conversation emerging from this event. It contains a series of comparative histories of autism policy in Italy, Brazil, and the United States; focuses on issues of voice, narrative, and representation in autism; and examines how the concept of autism shapes both individual lives and broader social and economic systems. Featuring contributions from: Michael Bakan Benilton Bezerra Pamela Block M. Ariel Cascio Jurandir Freire Costa Bárbara Costa Andrada Cassandra Evans Elizabeth Fein Clara Feldman Roy Richard Grinker Rossano Lima Francisco Ortega Dawn Prince-Hughes Clarice Rios Laura Sterponi Thomas S. Weisner Enrico Valtellina

Re-Thinking Autism

2016-05-05

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Author: Sami Timimi
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1784500275
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Challenging existing approaches to autism that limit, and sometimes damage, the individuals who attract and receive the label, this book questions the lazy prejudices and assumptions that can surround autism as a diagnosis in the 21st Century. Arguing that autism can only be understood through examining 'it' as a socially or culturally produced phenomenon, the authors offer a critique of the medical model that has produced a perpetually marginalising approach to autism, and explain the contradictions and difficulties inherent in existing attitudes. They examine and dispute the scientific validity of diagnosis and 'treatment', asking whether autism actually exists at the biological level, and question the value of diagnosis in the lives of those labelled with autism. The book recognises that there are no easy answers but encourages engagement with these essential questions, and looks towards service provision and practice that moves beyond a reliance on all-encompassing labels. This unique contribution to the growing field of critical autism studies brings together authors from clinical psychiatry, clinical and community psychology, social sciences, disability studies, education and cultural studies, as well as those with personal experiences of autism. It is essential and challenging reading for anyone with a personal, professional or academic interest in 'autism'.