Standard Grant: Cochlear Implants, (Re)Distribution, Maintenance, and Cures

该项目是对一项创新的国家计划进行的多地点研究，该计划为贫困线以下的聋哑儿童提供人工耳蜗。人工耳蜗是最古老和最广泛使用的神经假体设备，因此提供了丰富的机会来研究围绕仿生创造，恢复和增强人类能力的复杂社会问题。世界卫生组织估计，全球有4.6亿人患有听力损失。虽然《联合国残疾人权利公约》承认聋人是语言上的少数群体，应该有机会使用手语，但在过去二十年中，使用人工耳蜗减轻耳聋已日益成为一种正常程序，全世界有35万多人接受人工耳蜗。人工耳蜗的流行引发了争论-例如，关于儿童选择性手术的道德，它对手语聋人社区的影响，以及正常，耳聋，听力和残疾等概念。人工耳蜗植入创造了新的聋人类别，“聋人听力者”，他们可能在录音室里听到声音，但他们与其他聋人和残疾人以及聋人和残疾人的关系越来越复杂，他们谈判获得分配给不同利害关系的残疾人的国家资源。然而，大多数学术分析和这些辩论和类别的帐户都集中在发达国家的背景下。相比之下，该项目分析了由于生物技术干预，残疾类别在发展中国家的变化。这项研究从人种学的角度分析了人工耳蜗植入的知识、实践和经验如何在一个发展的背景下传播和相互作用，这个背景在国家资助的耳聋项目的范围和规模上是独一无二的。植入物是物质，道德，社会和政治基础设施，将人们与彼此，医学和国家联系起来，它们有可能重塑身份，关系，教育和生计路径。该项目涉及在学校，诊所，医院，会议场所，家庭和活动家活动中进行人种学研究，并与多个利益相关者进行深入访谈，包括政府官员，外科医生，康复专业人员，人工耳蜗制造商，教育工作者，聋人和家庭。因此，该项目将多个话语汇集在一个科学和技术研究的研究伞下，以阐明生物技术采用，适应和维护的可能性和局限性。广泛的实地工作提供了与关键利益相关者互动并收集数据的机会，这些利益相关者包括用户支持团体和临床设备和护理提供者，以及政府政策制定者和世界卫生组织。除了一本专著，该项目还将制作和传播研究结果的工作文件，并在芝加哥大学召开为期两天的会议，包括不同利益相关者的圆桌会议，以促进该研究项目结束时的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This project is a multi-sited study of an innovative national program that provides deaf children below the poverty line with cochlear implants. The cochlear implant is the oldest and most widely used neuroprosthetic device and thus presents a rich opportunity to investigate the complex social issues surrounding the bionic creation, restoration, and enhancement of human capabilities. The World Health Organization estimates that 460 million people globally experience hearing loss. While the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes deaf people as a linguistic minority who should have access to signed languages, in the last two decades the use of cochlear implants to mitigate deafness has increasingly become a normalized procedure, with over 350,000 recipients worldwide. The prevalence of cochlear implants has sparked debates - e.g., about the ethics of elective surgery for children, its effects on signing deaf communities, and the very notions of normality, deafness, hearing, and disability as such. Cochlear implants create new categories of deaf people, "deaf hearers," who might hear typically in a sound booth, but who have increasingly complicated relationships with other deaf and disabled people and the categories of deafness and disability, and who negotiate access to state resources allocated to disabled people with different stakes. However, most scholarly analysis and accounts of these debates and categories have focused on developed contexts. In contrast, the project analyzes how the category of disability is changing in developing contexts because of biotechnological interventions. This research ethnographically analyzes how knowledge, practices, and experiences of and about cochlear implants circulate and interact with one another in a developing context that is unique in the scope and scale of its state-sponsored programs directed at deafness. Cochlear implants are material, moral, social, and political infrastructures that connect people with each other, with medicine, and with the state and they have the potential to remake identities, relationships, and educational and livelihood paths. The project involves conducting ethnographic research at schools, clinics, hospitals, meeting spaces, family households, and activist events as well as conducting in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders including government officials, surgeons, rehabilitation professionals, cochlear implant manufacturers, educators, deaf people, and families. The project thus brings multiple discourses together under one science and technology studies research umbrella to illuminate the possibilities and limits of biotechnology adoption, adaptation, and maintenance. Extensive field work provides opportunity to interact with and gather data from key stakeholders ranging from user support groups and clinical device and care providers to government policy makers and the World Health Organization. In addition to a monograph, the project will produce and disseminate working papers of findings and convene a two-day conference at the University of Chicago featuring roundtables of diverse stakeholders to facilitate engagement at the end of this research project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.