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Autism in Translation

An Intercultural Conversation on Autism Spectrum Conditions

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Editors:
  1. Elizabeth Fein

    1. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA

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  2. Clarice Rios

    1. Department of Social Psychology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Considers autism in cultural, historical, and political contexts
  • Represents a collaboration between North American psychological anthropology and the South American intellectual tradition of Collective Health
  • Seeks to take a respectful and inclusive stance towards autism and the people affected by it

Part of the book series: Culture, Mind, and Society (CMAS)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
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  2. Introduction

    • Elizabeth Fein, Clarice Rios
    Pages 1-13

  3. Political Histories of Autism

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15
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    2. Autism Policy and Advocacy in Brazil and the USA

      • Rossano Cabral Lima, Clara Feldman, Cassandra Evans, Pamela Block
      Pages 17-52

    3. Psychiatric Reform and Autism Services in Italy and Brazil

      • M. Ariel Cascio, Bárbara Costa Andrada, Benilton Bezerra Jr.
      Pages 53-87

    4. Commentary: “Why Not Both?” Negotiating Ideas About Autism in Italy, Brazil, and the US

      • Francisco Ortega
      Pages 89-106

  4. Voice, Narrative and Representation

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107
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    2. Music and Autism, Representation and Re-presentation: An Ethnomusicological Perspective

      • Michael B. Bakan
      Pages 109-128

    3. Autism as a Mode of Engagement

      • Elizabeth Fein
      Pages 129-153

    4. Autism and First-Person Accounts: The Cognitive Problem

      • Jurandir Freire Costa, Roy Richard Grinker
      Pages 155-174

    5. Commentary: Words, Voice, Silence

      • Laura Sterponi
      Pages 175-181

  5. The Autism Concept

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183
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    2. Expert on Your Own Child, Expert on Your Own World—Reinventing Autism Expertise(s)

      • Clarice Rios
      Pages 185-206

    3. A.S.: Classification, Interpellation

      • Enrico Valtellina
      Pages 207-229

    4. Who Owns Autism? Economics, Fetishism, and Stakeholders

      • Roy Richard Grinker
      Pages 231-249

    5. Commentary: What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Autism?

      • M. Ariel Cascio
      Pages 251-260

  6. Closing Commentaries

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 261-261
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    2. Psychological Anthropology and the Study of Disability

      • Thomas S. Weisner
      Pages 263-281

    3. Joy

      • Dawn Prince-Hughes
      Pages 283-289

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 291-304
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Keywords

About this book

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




Reviews

“This transgressive and ambitious volume, which includes prominent voices in autism and disability scholarship, is an experiment in thinking. This is a must read book - not only for those interested in autism, but for all of us grappling with how to bring critical social science, epidemiology, and public policy together while also attending to the ways in which lived experience can exceed diagnostic categories and normative discourses.” (Cheryl Mattingly, Professor of Anthropology, University of Southern California, USA)

“Autism in Translation is both a much-needed historical and cultural contextualization of autism and the record of a risky polyvocal experiment in its own right. A piercing collection of essays on how the category of autism is put together and lived in diverse global and psychological contexts,this superb volume offers a compelling path toward figuring out how psychology, culture, and experience intersect.” (Des Fitzgerald, Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK)

“This volume is brimming with life. It communicates the vitality of autistic lives in ways that invites autistic and non-autistic readers to imagine cultures of autism across all of the spaces that separate us. Autism in Translation compels us to center the diversity of autistic experience in ways that do not essentialize difference, focusing instead on how knowledge about autism is co-produced through a series of complex interactions that are not reducible to individuals or systems.” (Michael Orsini, Professor of Political Studies, University of Ottowa, Canada)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA

    Elizabeth Fein

  • Department of Social Psychology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Clarice Rios

About the editors

Elizabeth Fein, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University, USA. Dr. Fein is a psychological anthropologist and licensed clinical psychologist who uses clinical ethnography to explore the intersections of culture and neurodevelopmental difference. 




Clarice Rios, Ph.D., is Lecturer in Social Psychology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. A psychological anthropologist, her current research explores the biopolitics of autism treatment within the Brazilian Unified Health System.


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