Autistic Intelligence - by Douglas W Maynard (Paperback)

About the Book

"As autism has become a widely prevalent diagnosis, we have grown increasingly desperate to understand it. Whether through baseless blame on vaccination or struggles to determine the potential genetic origins of autism, Americans have devoted a great deal of thought to what autism is and where it comes from. In "Autistic Intelligence," Douglas Maynard and Jason Turowetz focus on a different origin of autism: the diagnostic process. By turning to diagnosis, they ask us to begin with the basic questions of what norms we measure autistic behavior against, why we understand autistic behavior as disordered, and how we go about assigning that disorder to particular people. The authors take a close look at a clinic in which children are assessed for and diagnosed with autism. They spent hours in assessment evaluations with psychologists, pediatricians, parents, and children, and the resulting data enabled them to make plain the systems, language, and categories that clinicians rely upon when making their assessments. Those diagnostic tools determine the kind of information doctors can gather about children, and indeed, those assessments affect how children act. Autism is not a stable category, they show, but the result of an interpretive act. And in the process of diagnosing children with autism, they argue, we miss all of the unique contributions they make the world around them"--

Book Synopsis

Winner 2024 Outstanding Recent Contribution in Social Psychology Award, Social Psychology Section, American Sociological Association

Winner 2024 Melvin Pollner Prize, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Section, American Sociological Association

As autism has grown in prevalence, so too have our attempts to make sense of it. From placing unfounded blame on vaccines to seeking a genetic cause, Americans have struggled to understand what autism is and where it comes from. Amidst these efforts, however, a key aspect of autism has been largely overlooked: the diagnostic process itself. That process is the central focus of Autistic Intelligence. The authors ask us to question the norms by which we measure autistic behavior, to probe how that behavior can be considered sensible rather than disordered, and to explore how we can better appreciate the individuality of those who receive the diagnosis.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of video recordings and ethnographic observations at a clinic where professionals evaluated children for autism, the authors' analysis of interactions among clinicians, parents, and children demystifies the categories, tools, and practices involved in the diagnostic process. Autistic Intelligence shows that autism is not a stable category; it is the outcome of complex interactional processes involving professionals, children, families, and facets of the social and clinical environments they inhabit. The authors suggest that diagnosis, in addition to carefully classifying children, also can highlight or include unique and particular contributions those with autism potentially can make to the world around us.

Review Quotes

"Autism diagnoses have been on the rise for years. . . Thus, a book about the process of arriving at, and communicating, such diagnoses is important and timely, and an adroitly executed book such as Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis is especially welcome."-- "American Journal of Sociology"

"Drawing on a decade of collaboration and co-authoring, not to mention Maynard's illustrious forty-year career dissecting social interactions, Autistic Intelligence is the result of systematic and dedicated research into the psychological label of
our time. The book shifts attention from the internal processes that predominate in public representations of autism to the space between autistic people and the contexts that constitute their life worlds."-- "Social Forces"

"In Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis, Maynard and Turowetz offer a detailed and caring investigation of the autism diagnostic process. Drawing on a wealth of data and personal experience with autism spectrum disorders, the authors argue for expanding everyday interactional repertoires to enable intersubjectivity (co-meaning making) with autistic people, increasing the flexibility of the commonsense repertoires we all use to navigate the world."--Alexandra H. Vinson "Symbolic Interaction"

"Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis proposes and characterizes a way of understanding autistic strengths, based on research conducted in two decades: the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s . . . Autistic Intelligence is rich with stories and very readable . . . [It] richly unpacks these stories and provides tools for perhaps remaking them."

-- "Social Service Review"

"A creative and original ethnographic study of a clinic at which developmental disabilities are diagnosed. Maynard and Turowetz introduce new analytical tools to understand the nature and varieties of autistic intelligence."--Mitchell Duneier, Princeton University

"An authoritative challenge to conventional public and expert orientations toward autism, this is an ethnography about meaning-making that is brilliant in its own way."--Harvey Molotch, New York University

About the Author

Douglas W. Maynard is the Maureen T. Hallinan Professor of Sociology, emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Jason Turowetz is postdoctoral research fellow at the the University of Siegen's Center for Media of Cooperation with an appointment at the Garfinkel archive in Newburyport, MA. He is the author of over thirty academic articles and co-author of Morality in the Making: Stanley Milgram's 'Obedience' Experiments and the New Science of Morality (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).