Autism and the Culture of Therapy is the first empirical study of the highly controversial field of applied behavioural therapies. Julia Gruson-Wood finds that despite the proscriptive, programmatic nature of the underlying behavioural science, behaviour therapies have become the standard of autism care because of how adaptable and flexible they are. They are embodied not simply within managerial or clinical attempts at standardization and regulation, but through multiple interpretations, ethical frameworks, and creative applications by diverse practitioners. Thus, to understand behaviour therapies, we need to assess them not as science, but by how they are applied in everyday practice. Doing so shows how the complexity of larger economic, institutional, and political forces results in their deeply variable application. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Ontario, Autism and the Culture of Therapy examines how applied behaviour checklists, forms, protocols, and plans shape professional consciousness, how managerial governance strategically appropriates clinical data, how the rise of para-practitioners democratizes science, and how gender, sexuality, and identity politics imbue clinical practice and social responses to autism. This important study reveals the fascinating and complex workplace culture of therapy providers to tell the story of a clinical field that has risen along with rates of autism diagnosis, and redefined what autism means.
Autism and the Culture of Therapy : The Politics and Practice of Applied Behaviour Analysis