Neurodiversity and disability: what is at stake?
Neurodiversity and disability: what is at stake?
Neurodiversity has come hugely to the fore in recent years in a variety of contexts, and is now subject to academic debate, activist discussion, and increasingly embedded in a range of institutional and corporate settings in the Global North, from workplaces to early years education, from psychotherapy to mainstream political discourses. The term has gained traction in Medical Humanities, as well as debate within bioethics, philosophy of psychology, and of law. Institutionally, it is now relied on in therapeutic practice, autism service provision, as well as in higher education, in particular. In this conceptual article we examine what is at stake in these usages and the implications in need of scrutiny. We resituate neurodiversity in relation to questions of disability by examining the deployment of neurology as the basis for identity, rights and benefits. The emergence of the term and the understandings to which it gives rise, we argue, leave out urgent questions of what is at stake for disabled people in a political climate of increasing harshness and ableism.
disability, medical humanities, neurology, politics, sociology, Neurology, Medical humanities, Politics
Jones, Eleanor K.
42bcb412-95ca-4acb-b80a-2b9b471e0c7f
Orchard, Vivienne
887b56d5-eda6-4583-ba2e-709de2ccff3a
15 February 2024
Jones, Eleanor K.
42bcb412-95ca-4acb-b80a-2b9b471e0c7f
Orchard, Vivienne
887b56d5-eda6-4583-ba2e-709de2ccff3a
Abstract
Neurodiversity has come hugely to the fore in recent years in a variety of contexts, and is now subject to academic debate, activist discussion, and increasingly embedded in a range of institutional and corporate settings in the Global North, from workplaces to early years education, from psychotherapy to mainstream political discourses. The term has gained traction in Medical Humanities, as well as debate within bioethics, philosophy of psychology, and of law. Institutionally, it is now relied on in therapeutic practice, autism service provision, as well as in higher education, in particular. In this conceptual article we examine what is at stake in these usages and the implications in need of scrutiny. We resituate neurodiversity in relation to questions of disability by examining the deployment of neurology as the basis for identity, rights and benefits. The emergence of the term and the understandings to which it gives rise, we argue, leave out urgent questions of what is at stake for disabled people in a political climate of increasing harshness and ableism.
Text
Neurodiversity ACCEPTED MS
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 2024
Published date: 15 February 2024
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© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
Keywords:
disability, medical humanities, neurology, politics, sociology, Neurology, Medical humanities, Politics
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Local EPrints ID: 487396
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/487396
ISSN: 1468-215X
PURE UUID: cb6f7f01-adde-4dfd-9dc5-88bd9d851c50
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Date deposited: 20 Feb 2024 12:44
Last modified: 27 Apr 2024 01:40
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