To aid research on 'Translating Autism: Knowledge Transfer, Expertise, and Therapeutics of the Self in Morocco,'

This dissertation examines the introduction and reworking of the category autism in urban Morocco. Drawing on studies of linguistic anthropology and science, technology and society (STS), the project develops a new approach to studying the relationship between clinical classifications and the sociocultural and institutional contexts of their application. With support from Wenner-Gren, the student researcher conducted twelve months of intensive fieldwork across a range of sites in Morocco: four family homes, the nation's first child psychiatry department, an 'integration' classroom for adolescents with disabilities, and at numerous sites of religious healing. It also included in-depth life history interviews with parents, extended interviews with experts, and extended visits to seventeen autism organizations in twelve different cities. Ongoing data analysis examines the impact and transformation of knowledge and practices associated with autism in Morocco. It analyzes shifts in understandings, meanings, and enactments of autism in the context of competing forms of expertise, especially French psychoanalysis and American behaviorism, and the recent rise of transnational and domestic parent activism. Drawing on the fine-grained details of ethnography, it also tracks the real-world consequences of such experiments in autism activism and expertise for people with autism and their families and caregivers.