In Tracing Autism, Des Fitzgerald offers an up-close account of the search for a neurological explanation of autism. As autism has gained cultural prominence with more diagnoses and more controversy, its biological causes remain elusive.
Through in-depth interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, Fitzgerald examines what it means to do scientific research in the ambiguous terrain of autism research, a field marked by shifting horizons of uncertainty and ambivalence. He draws out how autism scientists talk and feel their way through their research, demonstrating its profoundly affective character, and expanding our understanding of what is at stake in the new brain sciences.
A propos de l’auteur
Des Fitzgerald is lecturer in sociology at Cardiff University. He is co-author of Rethinking Interdisciplinarity across the Social Sciences and Neurosciences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and co-author of articles in journals including The Sociological Review, Palgrave Communications, British Journal of Sociology, Theory, Culture & Society, Social Studies of Science, Consciousness and Cognition, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and author of articles in journals Bio Societies and Subjectivity.