Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community

Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community

by Elizabeth Fein
Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community

Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community

by Elizabeth Fein

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Overview

Honorable Mention, 2020 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, given by the Society for Psychological Anthropology

Honorable Mention, New Millennium Book Award, given by the Society for Medical Anthropology

How youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversity

Autism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual’s identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity?

While most of the research on Asperger’s and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals or in settings in which people on the spectrum are in the minority, this book draws on two years of ethnographic work in communities that bring people with Asperger’s and related conditions together. It can thus begin to explore a form of autistic culture, through attending to how those on the spectrum make sense of their conditions through shared social practices.

Elizabeth Fein brings her many years of experience in both clinical psychology and psychological anthropology to analyze the connection between neuropsychological difference and culture. She argues that current medical models, which espouse a limited definition, are ill equipped to deal with the challenges of discussing autism-related conditions. Consequently, youths on the autism spectrum reach beyond medicine for their stories of difference and disorder, drawing instead on shared mythologies from popular culture and speculative fiction to conceptualize their experience of changing personhood.

In moving and persuasive prose, Living on the Spectrum illustrates that young people use these stories to pioneer more inclusive understandings of what makes us who we are.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781479889068
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 07/07/2020
Series: Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice , #8
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Fein is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University. She is a licensed psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania, and co-editor of Autism in Translation: An Intercultural Conversation on Autism Spectrum Conditions.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Summer of Adventure 25

2 Searching for a Place 53

3 Innocent Machines 83

4 Hardwired 108

5 The Pathogen and the Package 133

6 The Division of a Syndrome 166

7 The Dilemma of Cure 189

8 The Sword in the Soul 214

Conclusion: Bowling Together 239

Acknowledgments 255

Notes 261

References 265

Index 279

About the Author 293

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