Re-Thinking Autism

Katherine Runswick-Cole is a Senior Research Fellow in Disability Studies and Psychology at The Research Centre for Social Change: Community Wellbeing, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She locates her work in the field of critical disability studies. She is co-editor of Disabled Children's Childhood Studies and co-author of Approaching Disability: Critical Issues and Perspectives.Rebecca Mallett is Principal Lecturer in Education and Disability Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She has a background in Social and Cultural Geography and is interested in the cultural aspects of disability. She is co-author of Approaching Disability: Critical Issues and Perspectives.Sami Timimi is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Lincoln, UK. He writes from a critical psychiatry perspective on topics related to mental health and has authored, co-edited and co-authored many books, including The Myth of Autism: Medicalising Boys' and Men's Social and Emotional Competence.

• Introduction. Katherine Runswick-Cole, Rebecca Mallett and Sami Timimi. Part 1. What is autism? 1. Understanding this thing called autism. Katherine Runswick-Cole. 2. What have we learned from the science of autism? Sami Timimi and Brian McCabe. 3. Does everybody with autism have the same underlying condition? Richard Hassall. 4. The Biopolitics of autism in Brazil. Francisco Ortega, Rafaela Zorzanelli and Clarice Rios. Part 2. Deconstructing autism. 5. Life without autism: A cultural logic of violence. Anne McGuire. 6. The commodification of autism: What's at stake? Rebecca Mallett and Katherine Runswick-Cole. 7. How rude! Autism as a study in ability. Kim Davies. 8. Autism and the human. Dan Goodley. 9. Autism screening and diagnostic tools. Sami Timimi and Brian McCabe. Part 3. Changing practice. 10. Schools without labels. Nick Hodge. 11. Questions of treatment: Does a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder help us to help a person with Intellectual Disabilities? Graham Collins. 12. Critical Systemic Therapy: Autism stories and disabled people with learning difficulties. Mark Haydon Laurelut. 13. Critical autism and critical neuroscience: Towards a science of research and practice. Tom Billington. 14. Early diagnosis of autism: Is earlier always better? Ginny Russell. 15. Thinking systems: Mind as a relational activity. Gail Simon. 16. The ethics and consequences of making Autism Spectrum diagnosis. Saqib Latif. 17. Examining language and communication in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Tom Muskett.

Impressive! This book inaugurates both Critical Autism Studies and a crucial unsettling of all previous accounts of the meaning of autism. In chapters that unpack the label, its diagnosis and use, autism treatments, politics, identities, Re-Thinking Autism vibrantly demonstrates that it is time to begin our lives with autism as an integral part of human life rather than treating it as an unnatural condition. This book is an antidote to the normative violence that regularly surrounds lives lived with the label of autism, inviting all people to affirm a more complex version of humanity.