Commentary

On Being Autistic, and Social

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11623549
AutoresRoy Richard Grinker
Año2010
Volumen38
Número1
Páginas172-178
Fecha de publicación2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEthos (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1352.2010.01087.x
OpenAlexW1966658499
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas31
Referencias citadas6

In psychology and allied disciplines, autism has been erroneously conceived as a disease that precludes meaningful social behavior. Anthropologists are beginning to address this problem by rejecting the narrow confines of what constitutes human social functioning, and by showing the complex ways in which autistic children and adults participate in and contribute to their societies. At the same time, anthropologists have begun to contextualize public debates about autism prevalence and etiology in historical and cultural processes. This commentary identifies two major disjunctions in contemporary public debates about autism: the first between a depersonalized form of knowledge constructed by science and a narcissistic claim for knowledge that privileges anecdotal, personal experience; the second between a “mainstream” discourse on science and a new discourse on science that explains autism in terms of environmental insults. These new environmental perspectives, especially those that concern vaccine damage, can be situated in late modernity. They mediate between a nostalgic memory of ontological certainty, trust, and authenticity and a postmodern world characterized by a loss of faith in scientific institutions. [autism, sociality, vaccines, advocacy]

Aesthetics · Autism · Certainty · Developmental psychology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Identity (music · Late modernity · Mainstream · Modernity · Occupational science · Political science · Postmodernism · Psychiatry · Situated · Social science · Sociality · Sociology · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research · Infant Health and Development · Law · Psychology · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy