Dissertation Research: Translating Diagnoses Across Cultures: Expertise, Autism, and Therapeutics of the Self in Morocco

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Doctoral student Brendan Hart (Columbia University), with the guidance of Dr. Lesley Sharp, will conduct research on the relationship between clinical classifications and the socio-cultural and institutional contexts of their application. To pursue these topics, the researcher will undertake a theoretically-driven, fine-grained case study of the introduction and reworking of the category autism in Morocco. Autism is particularly appropriate for an anthropological study because it speaks directly to domains of communication, sociality, and behavior in the realm of culturally specific selfhood. The autism label is not yet widely known or commonly used in Morocco. But some parents and professionals are currently working to change that by training a new cadre of experts, raising awareness, and building an infrastructure to identify and educate children as autistic. This study investigates these efforts, their consequences, and the broader social and cultural understanding and engagement with autism. The research will be conducted in Rabat and Taroudant. It will involve participant observation in homes, classrooms, clinical consulations, and sites of religious healing; semi-structured interviews with experts and activists; life histories with parents of affected children; and analysis of multimedia materials (including home videos). Analyzing and comparing data across sites and over time will allow the researcher to address the study's core questions: How and to what extent are experts and activists making autism a salient category in Morocco? How does the autism label, and its meanings, definitions, uses, and enactments, change and respond to complex processes initiated by its introduction within ordinary everyday contexts of Moroccan social life? Rich with multiple, competing types of therapeutic expertise, which include vernacular and revivalist Islamic cures as well as psychoanalysis, biopsychiatry, and behaviorism, Morocco presents an important setting for contributing to debates about how diverse systems of thought and practice concerning the idea of "the self" are increasingly coming into contact and conflict with one another amidst processes of globalization. The research will provide important comparative materials for scholars studying autism and other psychiatric categories cross-culturally. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.