“How do you feel when you’re happy?”: Autism and the production neurodivergent difference in clinical spaces

• In Event: 40207 - Research in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, the terms “neurodivergent” and neurobiological” have become increasingly popular ways to describe differences between autistic people and so-called “neurotypical” people. The intent is to communicate that autistic brains are not disordered, but simply wired differently, and that they are a naturally occurring form of human variation. While we agree that it is important to treat autism as a difference rather than a deficit, the terms neurodivergent and neurobiological nonetheless locate autistic challenges within individuals rather than in the social environments where this divergence is constructed. In this paper, we argue that autism, like other social identities, is a social fact assembled in interaction, where interactional trouble becomes the basis for attributions of neurological difference. To call attention to the irreducibly social dimension of autism, we introduce the terms “socio-typical” and “socio-divergent”, thereby emphasizing the deviation from ‘commonsense’ expectations that is constitutive of autism as a social phenomenon. Examining interactions between children and clinicians at a clinic that specializes in diagnosing autism, we show how socio-divergent interactions are treated as evidence of neurodivergence, such that co-produced atypical features of these interactions are attributed to the children alone. Furthermore, we argue that this process of individualizing autism is built into the interaction order of the clinic, which accounts for interactional trouble in terms of personal pathology. Finally, we discuss the implications of our interactionist approach for the study of autism, identity, and the stigma that can arise when non-socio-typical ways of sensemaking are treated as signs of neurobiological disorder.

Authors

• Jason Turowetz, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Waverly Duck, University of California-Santa Barbara