Book review: Stories about the neurodiversity movement

The Commons Social Change website features a new book which is a collection of stories about the neurodiversity movement. The collection gathers the voices of both activists and academics. The introduction explains the approach to commissioning the chapters.

Book title: Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline.

Introduction

The first book to bring together a collection of neurodiverse contributors to talk about events that shaped the movement, and which they themselves were involved with. Focuses on activists’ direct experience effecting change for people who identify as autistic rather than abstract accounts that reflect on autism’s social construction or essence.

Provides a one-stop shop for readers interested in the history and ideas of the neurodiversity movement and how these ideas have shaped production of expert and especially lay knowledge about autism. Gathers a collective of autistic activist/academic voices and engages in current theoretical debates around knowledge production and epistemic authority within (critical) research on autism.

This book is an open-access publication and licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Abstract

This edited collection offers a historical overview of the autistic community and neurodiversity movement through first-hand accounts. While the awareness and impact of the movement have grown, apparent misunderstandings persist. Therefore, the editor introduces the neurodiversity movement, documenting concepts via the scientific literature, community activists and advocates, and the contributors themselves.

This covers the terms neurodiversity and neurodiversity movement, the breadth of the movement, the rhetorical basis of its advocacy in neurological differences, its overlap with and divergence from the medical model, and its emphasis on self-advocacy. Then the introduction explains the approach to commissioning and editing contributing chapters, the historical background to the subject matter, and how the chapters fit into themes of gaining community, getting heard, and possibly entering the autism establishment.

Introduction, Steven K. Kapp

Gaining Community

Historicizing Jim Sinclair’s “Don’t Mourn for Us”: A Cultural and Intellectual History of Neurodiversity’s First Manifesto, Sarah Pripas-Kapit

From Exclusion to Acceptance: Independent Living on the Autistic Spectrum, Martijn Dekker

Autistic People Against Neuroleptic Abuse, Dinah Murray

Autistics.Org and Finding Our Voices as an Activist Movement, Laura A. Tisoncik

Losing, Mel Baggs

Getting Heard

Neurodiversity.Com: A Decade of Advocacy. Kathleen Seidel

Autscape, Karen Leneh Buckle

The Autistic Genocide Clock, Meg Evans

Shifting the System: AASPIRE and the Loom of Science and Activism, Dora M. Raymaker