Caring for star-children : autism, families, and ethics in contemporary China
Caring for Star-Children: Autism, Families, and Ethics in Contemporary China studies the emergence and development of family caregiving for autistic children after 1982, when autism was first diagnosed separately in two cities in China. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork at municipal specialist hospitals, community child-health clinics, autism rehabilitation centers, and homes of families with autistic children across six provinces, this study explores how social stratification and the turn towards self-governance not only made autism as an epistemic object, but has intersected with that category to create new forms of inequality. In the absence of thorough and consistent state initiatives, moral economies around the child's potential have sprung up.
Program in Science, Technology and Society.
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