The Autism Matrix (eBook)

Gil Eyal is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University Brendan Hart is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Emine Oncular is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University Neta Oren is Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University Natasha Rossi is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University

Introduction: The Autism Matrix.

Why focus on therapies?

Between mental illness and mental retardation.

Chapter 1: The Puzzle of US States and International
Variation in Autism Rates.

Diagnostic substitution.

Supply-side and demand-side explanations for diagnostic
substitution.

Deinstitutionalization as key to explaining diagnostic
substitution.

Deinstitutionalization and the variation in autism rates.

Chapter 2: The Feebleminded.

Chapter 3: The Surveillance of Childhood.

The unification of mental deficiency and mental hygiene under
child psychiatry.

The role of the middle class family.

The institutionalization of children as part of a comprehensive
surveillance system.

Chapter 4: Deinstitutionalization.

A new look at the deinstitutionalization of the retarded.

The middle class family and the "valorization of retarded
existence".

Chapter 5: "An existence as close to the normal as possible":
Normalization.

Normalization as therapeutic practice.

Behavior modification and normalization.

Chapter 6: Childhood Schizophrenia.

Chapter 7: The Rise of the Therapies.

Autism therapies in the 1950s and 1960s.

Working on the child's brain.

Inculcating habits and building skills.

Fuzzifying the boundary between expert and layman.

The space between fields.

Chapter 8: Rimland and the Formation of NSAC.

The problem of credibility.

Schopler and the new economy of blame and worth.

The implications of behavioral therapy.

Conclusion.

Chapter 9: The Atypical Children.

The struggle over inclusion in the developmental disabilities
act: Autism as analogous with mental retardation.

"Items of autistic behavior": Autism as concurrent with mental
retardation.

Looping and the transformation of autism.

Chapter 10: Asperger and Neurodiversity.

The riddle of simultaneous discovery dissolved.

"Personality trait" vs. "psychotic process".

Twins reunited.

Loops of self-advocacy.

Chapter11: The space of autism therapies and the making and
remaking of the Spectrum.

The Return of Rimland.

The agonistic network.

Fuzzifying the boundary between medicine and alternative
medicine.

The space of autism therapies.

Conclusion.

"The Autism Matrix fills in crucial gaps, and will greatly improve
how the context of diagnosis and treatment is understood...The
original research represented here is wide-ranging and
invaluable."

Times Higher Education

"Gil Eyal and colleagues, five sociologists from Columbia
University, have brought a fresh perspective from a different
discipline to try to explain autism's expansion in prevalence and
popularity...Overall I found much to admire in this detailed
study."

British Medical Journal

"This is a very useful book for those interested in autism and
the role of parent movements and activists, and more generally in
the social factors affecting changes in the classification of
diseases."

Sociology of Health and Illness

"The development of the autistic spectrum is laid bare as a
cultural construct still in evolutionary process, and the
elucidation of this morphing phenomenon is the crowning achievement
of this book."

The
Kelvingrove Review

"Autism, rare and little publicized twenty years ago, is now
constantly in the news and is absorbing ever larger sums of public
funding and concern. It has changed school classrooms and perhaps
the very nature of childhood. This book is the best available
sociological analysis of how this happened, linking recent events
to those early in the twentieth century. It tells of the formidable
labour of autism activists, their dreams and schisms, with
generosity and insight. Institutions, the ideals of the family and
its management, and child minding, all play their role. This is a
reflective analysis of a pervasive event of our times, replacing
clichés by new ideas."

Ian Hacking, Collège de France

"The Autism Matrix is an exemplary exercise in historically
informed medical anthropology and sociology. This richly argued,
engaging, and well-researched book begins with the basic question
of why autism diagnoses have increased in recent years and then
offers a wealth of cascading implications. The authors succeed in
showing that the simplistic question of 'epidemic or not?' is
unproductive in comparison to the more intellectually fruitful
question of how institutional matrices identify, name, count, and
treat neuropsychiatric difference."

Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, The George
Washington University,and author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping
the World of Autism