![]() They believe that autism represents one acceptable cognitive style or mode of interaction among many. Jim Sinclair (1993), Martijn Dekker (2000) and Amanda Baggs (2007), among many other self-advocates, have argued for the validity of autistic experience from the perspective of the neurodiversity movement. ![]() Perhaps the most significant focus of anthropological studies of autism has been inspired by the advocacy of individuals with diagnoses on the autism spectrum. Finally, I return to some reasons that studies of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders in general may be productive subjects for the social studies of the life sciences and biomedicine. I think that it is particularly important to ask how both the work of clinical and basic researchers studying autism and the work of social scientists has been influenced by the preoccupations of their particular disciplines and the research traditions that have preceded and in some cases informed them. In the process, I suggest some ways that this research might be broadened, deepened, brought to bear on new issues or repositioned in such a way as to enable researchers to address new questions. I also look at studies of social movements and advocacy groups concerned with autism. They include the idea of autistic culture and the role of autism in different cultural contexts, the use of treatment strategies as starting points for theories about the causes and mechanisms of autism, the ways that autism has been used to explore different forms of subjectivity, and the importance of sociological and anthropological studies of autism researchers. In this commentary, I survey the existing work on the social studies of the autism spectrum disorders by characterizing some central themes. Social scientists have begun to turn their attention to the autism spectrum disorders in earnest as a means to discuss identity politics, subjectivity and interpersonal relationships, and a great deal of suggestive work has emerged as a result of this interest. With the increased visibility have come public controversies regarding the causes of autism, appropriate treatment strategies and the desirability of aggressive treatment as opposed to social policies focused on accommodation and acceptance. If changes in social and medical practices can explain the increase, the possibility that environmental changes also play a role remains open ( Rutter, 2005). In this sense, autism could be seen as an exemplary case of ‘making up people’ ( Hacking, 1999), in which a previously obscure disorder was defined in broad terms by medical authorities just as parents learned to see their children's unusual behaviors as potential signs of autism ( Hacking, 2006). This is at least partially the result of improved awareness among parents, pediatricians and educators, and of a broadening of the diagnostic category to include disorders like Asperger Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified ( Gernsbacher et al., 2005). Although it was first described in the 1940s, diagnoses of syndromes on what is now known as the ‘autism spectrum’ have risen dramatically since the 1990s. I also consider some reasons why the autism spectrum disorders are a particularly interesting site for studies of the ways that biomedical information is used to craft individual and group identities.Īutism is defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder of communication, behavior and social interaction, with onset before the age of three ( APA, 2000). In the process, I suggest some further directions for this area of research. I identify some key approaches in the work, including the idea of autism as a culture, transcultural comparisons, studies based on treatment strategies, investigations of subjectivity and interpersonal relations, and research on social movements. In this commentary, I review social science research on the autism spectrum. This research has been motivated by the prospect of critiquing and improving support services and therapies, by self-advocates who have argued that autism should be tolerated as a form of difference rather than treated as a disorder, and by the interest inherent in syndromes that seem to affect many of the attributes that we use to define personhood. Over the past decade, they have received increasing attention from scholars in the social sciences. The autism spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental syndromes of communication, behavior and social cognition.
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