Sense and the Senses: Anthropology and the Study of Autism

Posted: 18 Oct 2010

See all articles by Olga Solomon

Olga Solomon

University of Southern California

Date Written: October 2010

Abstract

As a clinical category and a sociocultural phenomenon, autism occupies a prominent albeit ambiguous place in ongoing social science and humanities debates about empathy, intersubjectivity, intentionality, epistemological certainty, and moral agency. Autism is used as a counterexample to feeling empathy and understanding other people's beliefs and intentions. Alternatively, it is given as evidence of the limitless potential and neurodiversity of the human mind. This review examines the field of autism research relevant to anthropology of the senses. It considers the production of knowledge about autism as a clinically relevant category at the intersection of sense as culturally organized competence in meaning making and the senses as a culturally normative and institutionally ratified sensory and perceptual endowment. In such a distinction, both sense and the senses are paths toward and objects of the empirical understanding of autism.

Suggested Citation

Solomon, Olga, Sense and the Senses: Anthropology and the Study of Autism (October 2010). Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 39, pp. 241-259, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1692547 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.105012

Olga Solomon (Contact Author)

University of Southern California ( email )

2250 Alcazar Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

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