Themes in critical approaches to autism

The network activities explore a critical understanding of autism through three linked key themes:

Constructing ‘autistic personhoods’

It is evident that the construction of autism as a developmental disorder has led to a focus on childhood. However, there are increasing numbers of adults with autism speaking about their lives through a number of channels, including social media, books and seminars.

• How do ideas about normative childhood and adulthood impact on children and adults with autism and their families?
• How do ideas about normative development and talk about autism in the public arena intersect to produce the autistic child/adult and families living with autism?
• How do these ideas shift across different cultural and geographical contexts?

Neurodiversity and identity

In the UK a re-construction of autism as a form of neurodiversity is gaining ground. Through this discourse autistic traits are positioned on a continuum with ‘neurologically typical’ NT (non autistic, or ‘normal’) behaviours. A neurodiversity discourse has enabled parents, and adults with autism, to talk positively about the (dis)order. The network will provide opportunities to discuss the concept of neurodiversity and examine ways in which biologically based discourses are drawn on to make sense of autism.

• How has the discourse of neurodiversity travelled through the five national contexts?
• Does this discourse offer an alternative understanding for, and of, children and adults with autism?
• How does an abilities framework enable different ways of considering autism?
• In what ways can critical autism studies challenge the biomedical construction of autism?

How do public and research discourses of neurology affect our theoretical and conceptual understandings of autism?

Interventions and policy

Policies and programs to deal with autism are often grounded in competing conceptions of how autism is produced, and correspondingly, what types of public action are required. The network will explore and document the range of social and policy interventions, including private, public, and third sector involvement in autism services. A further consideration within this theme is the agency of people with autism and a recognition that some people will not want to engage with mainstream (NT) culture. We draw on the work of the philosopher Barnbaum who argues that autistic ways of being in the world might be “incomprehensively different from the life led by those who are not autistic”.

• How is provision shaped by, and implicated within, different national contexts?
• What constructions of autism are drawn on to legitimise particular forms of intervention?
• What is the respective role of experts and autistic people themselves in shaping autism policy?
• What do government and policy responses to autism tell us about these unfolding power relations?