Subtext ::: Deconstructing Neurelitism ::: Emancipation through Healing and World Unity by an Autistic Self among Selves

I am presently coming out of a meltdown. During these periods, which have at times lasted a few years, I discontinue most activities which are not directly related to my academic position. The meltdowns seem to occur when I am over-extended. In any event, this situation explains why I have not posted in about three months. Just, because I likely appear fairly neurotypical to the majority of people does not mean I do not have my share of difficulties. As I have gotten older, I have merely become more proficient at positioning my mask.

On the other hand, as a child, the meltdowns were usually unbearable. I was almost constantly surrounded by people. Try as I might to escape in a corner from perceptual overload, someone always came by to say something or another. As an adult, however, I have lived alone. Except for my job, I can choose to shut out the world at will. No one, based on their misunderstandings of my needs, attempts to supposedly “rescue” me. Perhaps that explains why, despite the awful prognosis delivered by my child psychiatrist, that I would spend my life on disability, I have shown him to be wrong.

This is the entire first part of my methodology paper:

A research methodology, as an instantiation of the scientific method, incorporates more than research techniques or “methods,” such as participant observation and content analysis. Broadly characterized, methodology, or the scientific method, is a specification of epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, within the sciences.

A methodology must be carefully formulated in the context of a particular discipline or, to be precise, as a distinct undertaking within that discipline. So delineated, a methodology encompasses research techniques (either singly or in triangulation), a philosophy of science (as in pragmatism or empiricism), a theoretical (explanatory) perspective, the axiology (value system) of the researcher (whether made explicit or left unstated), and relevant modes of presentation or pedagogy.

The MarkFoster.NETwork™ project centers around the theory of emancipatory constructionism™, i.e., The Emancipatory Constructionist Paradigm™. That theory’s methodology, emancipatory research, can be defined by its attention to the empowerment and self-determination of the oppressed, not by its application of particular research techniques. In fact, a variety of investigative methods are utilized in this program.

This project’s emancipatory research methodology focuses on the construction, including the historical construction, of online lebenswelten (lifeworlds). It triangulates the following research technigues: contemporary radical history (historiography), narrative approaches, participant observation, reflexive sociology, content analysis, phenomenology, and existentialism. The project has been developed around the online universe of The MarkFoster.NETwork. The research implications of emancipatory constructionism, a new critical theory, include an examination of relevant processes of social construction.

The Internet will be regarded as a metasociety, analogous to the concept of virtual communities. It is, in other words, a digital society, operating beyond particular geopolitical units, and, in its bits and bytes (tropes or attributes), is socially constructed in the minds of its participants.

The project has two principal dimensions:

1. In its participant observational aspects, explorations of constructionist processes on the Internet, synchronous and asynchronous, will be explored through active engagement in, and utilization of, online communications media. Social construction, discussed below, is taken as heuristics and, in the social construction of online lifeworlds, as praxis. One set of behaviors to be explored is within the ongoing radical history project in mass media. Another is applied textual reasonings in situated settings.
2. As a reflexive sociology, the construction of The MarkFoster.NETwork™ is examined through active engagement with others – on email lists, in chat rooms, and on message boards. Given the cooperative character of this process, the production of the network more accurately reflects social constructionism, an approach within sociology, than constructivism, a psychological perspective.

Methodologically, the term, emancipatory research, was coined by Mike Oliver in 1992. The construct has been particularly influential upon the social model of disability. As a radical approach, it frames the basic epistemology of this project. Oliver, in addition to being both an author and a disability rights activist, is Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich. Emancipatory methodologies tend to adopt a stance which is simultaneously critical of normative research methodologies and concerned with exploring the experiences of oppressed persons, such as the disabled, in their own voices.

This project’s own emancipatory methodology has been developed through trope nominalism. That is to say, our observations of entities are of their tropes (attributes). We are only categorizing, or naming, them. Universal essences are rejected, while, concerning the essences of particulars, should they even exist, we remain agnostic. To engage in discourse upon such unknown quiddities is speculative (or metaphysical) and a waste of good time.

Emancipatory research may be differentiated from lifeworld research. The latter is grounded in phenomenology and, as such, incorporates the usual Husserlian categories, such as epoché and intersubjectivity. The objective of the researcher is, through a bracketing of her intentionality, to enter into the lifeworlds of disabled persons. As a nominalist, phenomenological reduction impresses me as both metaphysical (speculative) and essentialist. Indeed, I question whether such phenomenological reduction is even possible or desirable. Nonetheless, I have tried to be sensitive to this mode of inquiry where suitable.

Critical to emancipatory research is empowerment. Much of the relevant literature I encountered looked at marginalized groups, as in the feminist consciousness raising of the 1970s. Some of it came out of community healthcare and community psychology. The interest, in those settings, was on examining the promotion of wellness as a patient’s responsibility. (Anecdotally, I may have experienced an implementation of this strategy: A hospital seminar I attended, after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, incorporated many of the characteristics I came across in my reading.)

Here is a useful, if somewhat obvious, definition of empowerment:

Empowerment is a construct shared by many disciplines and arenas: community development, psychology, education, economics, and studies of social movements and organizations, among others. How empowerment is understood varies among these perspectives. In recent empowerment literature, the meaning of the term empowerment is often assumed rather than explained or defined….

As a general definition, however, we suggest that empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives. It is a process that fosters power (that is, the capacity to implement) in people, for use in their own lives, their communities, and in their society, by acting on issues that they define as important.

We suggest that three components of our definition are basic to any understanding of empowerment. Empowerment is multi-dimensional, social, and a process. It is multi-dimensional in that it occurs within sociological, psychological, economic, and other dimensions. Empowerment also occurs at various levels, such as individual, group, and community. Empowerment, by definition, is a social process, since it occurs in relationship to others. Empowerment is a process that is similar to a path or journey, one that develops as we work through it. Other aspects of empowerment may vary according to the specific context and people involved, but these remain constant. In addition, one important implication of this definition of empowerment is that the individual and community are fundamentally connected.

Page, Nanette, and Czuba, Cheryl E., “Empowerment: What Is It?” Journal of Extension. October 1999. Volume 37. Number 5.

According to Milon Gupta, the manager of marketing and public relations for eHealhthonline.org:

The vision of the empowered patient is still lagging behind reality, but now e-health offers the opportunity for patient empowerment. Potential benefits include better health outcomes and higher cost-effectiveness. However, looking at the European situation, one realizes that a number of obstacles have to be overcome, before these benefits can be reaped.

The concept of patient empowerment emerged in the 1970s in the United States and Europe in the context of the civil rights movement. Patients and their organisations demanded a right to self-determination over decisions affecting their health.

In addition to political pressure for giving consumers and patients more rights, there were also factors in the healthcare sector itself, which supported this trend. Alternative medicine and the growing number of alternative treatments, especially for chronic diseases, increased the choice available to the patients. A growing sensitivity to environmental factors influencing health further fuelled the push towards patient empowerment.

Furthermore, regarding the dynamics of interpersonal discourse, their purpose or volition, as well as attributed truth content, are transitively situated in a designated function, not in any substantive content. Consequently, if a cultural narrative or truth system, one purposefully elucidated and enacted upon by a set of conscious elites, is realized in domination, its truth content has thereby been confirmed. This epistemological, or methodological, pragmatism, is accepted here. However, when pragmatism is schooled by the axiological principal that the sole value of social action is the achievement of ambition, with little or no regard for one’s defined adversary, the epiphenomena become Machiavellian or realpolitik.

Fortunately, there are, in addition to realpolitik and political realism, other present-day species of pragmatism. These include neopragmatism, a relatively conservative approach commonly identified with Richard Rorty, and incommensurability. The latter expresses Thomas Kuhn’s work on paradigms in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or, as he preferred late in his life (though with little influence on the established lexicon), exemplars.

As a philosophy of science, this project utilizes a contemporary, and indeed an emancipatory, version of pragmatism. This perspective, which fuses pragmatism with critical social theory, has been generally referred to as critical pragmatism. As developed here, critical pragmatism retains the equasion of truth with instrumentality or agency. Nevertheless, the internalized, or reverse, Machiavellianism, such as characterizes Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, is thorougly repudiated.

The methodology also presumes a pragmatic conventionalism:

Unlike conventionalism, a philosophy of science that regards scientific laws and theories as freely chosen constructs that are simply devised by the scientist for the purpose of describing reality, Realism holds that laws and theories have determined and real counterparts in things.
– “Realism,” Encyclopedia Britannica

Critical social research must, in its conveyance, be praxical or pedagogical. In other words, it should address, not only the craftiness of domination, but the craft of emancipation. The pedagogy of this paradigm, whether in voice or text, is founded upon a nonessentialist (constructionist) version of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. Although similar to certain theologies of liberation, given Freire’s Marxian influences and his unabashed devotion to Roman Catholicism, its specific focus, inspired by his occupation as an educator, is upon conscientization, which is to say, a consciousness raising process among students regarding specific categories of oppression accompanied by the means to realize liberation.

Please respond to this poll on the relation between capitalism and oppression.

The League to Fight Neurelitism, a nonpartisan public sociology and advocacy journalism project, supports the consistent application of United Nations values concerning human rights and social justice to all members of the Autistic community.

Today, July 4, 2009, is the International Day of Cooperatives. Given our unwavering support for universal collectivization, and staunch opposition to corporate capitalism in all its forms, The League to Fight Neurelitism enthusiastically joins with the United Nations in proclaiming today, and each subsequent first Saturday of July, as the International Day of Cooperatives.

In the present climate of pandemic economic crisis, unparalleled since the Great Depression of the previous century, we fervently hope that this Day of commemoration will inspire a solemn reflection on the broad-based expansion of cooperatives. The advancement and multiplication of these entities would, in our view, constitute a significant and salutary step toward the eventual realization of world socialism.

Furthermore, owing to the ubiquitous disproportionality of poverty in the Autistic community, the League has maintained, and will continue to maintain, an acute interest in the issues surrounding cooperatives and collectivization. Indeed, Autists are among the more socially and economically dominated, or oppressed, citizens of many industrialized nations.

From the standpoint of the League, the collectivization of labor and the elimination of the corporatocracy – that is to say, the grave predicament of de facto governance by transnational corporations – would promote the peace and well-being of the Autistic community. However, a transition to universal socialism would also be advantageous to the larger Fourth World, or global poor, and, over the long term, conducive to a more irenic social polity for humanity in general.

The following examples of activities by cooperatives celebrating the International Day of Cooperatives have been provided by the United Nations:

• The messages of the ICA [International Co-operative Alliance] and United Nations are translated into local languages and widely disseminated to co-operators, media, government officials at all level.
• Co-operatives use newspapers and radio programmes to create awareness on their movements and contributions.
• Co-operative Fairs, exhibits, contests, and campaigns are held.
• Meetings with government officials, United Nations agencies and other partner organisations are held.
• Co-operatives partner with community agencies to champion economic, environmental, social and health challenges (blood drives, tree planting, etc.)
• Cultural events are sponsored – theatre, concerts, etc.

Finally, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a message dated July 4, 2009, wrote:

The first cooperatives were born more than two hundred years ago when rural entrepreneurs and farmers decided to pool resources and help one another to overcome their limited access to commercial opportunities. Subsequently, retail cooperatives emerged to help poor households escape the debt trap and provide access to better quality goods and services. Cooperatives have since developed in many areas, from manufacturing to financial services, spurred by the desire for a more equitable way of working and doing business.

At a time of global economic distress, this history deserves to be more widely known. The theme of this year’s observance of the International Day of Cooperatives – “Driving Global Recovery Through Cooperatives” – highlights the value of cooperative enterprise. Cooperatives can strengthen the resilience of the vulnerable. They can help to establish more balanced markets for small farmers and give small entrepreneurs access to financial services. They can create job opportunities and improve working conditions.

The economic model of cooperatives is based not on charity but on self-help and reciprocity. In countries hit by the financial crisis, the cooperative bank and credit union sector expanded lending when other financial institutions had to cut back, easing the impact of the credit freeze on the most vulnerable. This highlights the importance of strong alternative business models and institutional diversity for the resilience of the financial system. Cooperatives deserve greater support. I urge Governments to adopt policies that support the establishment and development of cooperatives. Consumers, too, can help by buying food produced by small- holder cooperatives that is traded in fair markets.

In the face of the current economic crisis, communities around the world are rediscovering the critical necessity to work for the common good. On this International Day, I encourage Governments and civil society everywhere to recognize the effectiveness of cooperatives and to engage with them as vital partners for global recovery and achieving internationally agreed development goals.

Even in these formidable times, let us attempt to remain optimistic of better seasons ahead.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Originally published to: http://statements.neurelitism.com/dayofcooperatives.html

I have been reading afresh, and reflecting upon, the neo-Marxisms of Paulo Freire (1921-1997) and Saul Alinsky (1909-1972). For anyone who is unfamiliar with the ideas of these two writers, I strongly encourage you to read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Comparing the ideas presented in them has, for me, been a delightful experience.

First, I will provide short quotations from these two books. I will then briefly comment. To begin, here is Freire:

This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (be they individuals or whole peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade.

The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality where to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.

Liberation is thus a child birth, and a painful one. The man who emerges is a new man, viable only as the oppressor-oppressed contradiction is superseded by the humanization of all men. Or to put it another way, the solution of this contradiction is born in the labour which brings this new man into the world: no longer oppressor or oppressed, but man in the process of achieving freedom.

This solution cannot be achieved in idealistic terms. In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression, not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is necessary, but not a sufficient condition by itself for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action.

Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Now, a quotation from Alinsky:

Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.

For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then…conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Second: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

Sixth rule: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment.

Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. you cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his suddenly agreeing with your demand and saying “You’re right – we don’t know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and “frozen.” By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck. The target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target.

One of the criteria in picking your target is the target’s vulnerability – where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, the target can always say, “Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?” When you “freeze the target,” you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all others to blame.

Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the “others” come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target.

The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a community’s segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Freire was an educator. Alinksy was a community organizer. Freire was a Roman Catholic who developed a system not terribly at variance from Latin American theologies of liberation. Alinsky was an atheist who demonstrated his willingness to work with various groups, including those in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Now, a more subjective evaluation: In reading Freire, I could not help but feel his compassion for the poor and his overriding desire for them to recognize their dominated statuses and, through conscientization (critical consciousness or consciousness raising), to ultimately become emancipated.

Alinsky, on the other hand, was a political pragmatist – a proponent of realpolitik. To abuse an analogy, he turned Machiavelli upside down on his head. Even a superficial reading of Alinsky makes his position evident that dominated groups, in the course of their organizing, must utilize similar tactics and expediencies to “the prince.” By such means, he contended, will they accomplish their objectives over and against their oppressors.

As might be evident at this point, while I find Freire’s approach to be much to my own liking (and much like my own), I substantially reject Alinsky’s rules for radicals as exemplary of the sort of consequentialism often characterized as “the end justifies the means.”

Bluntly stated, internalizing the Machiavellianism of one’s oppressors, like other expressions of internalized dominance, implicitly legitimizes their actions. What is more, such practice of realpolitik by dominated individuals would demonstrate that the oppressor, her mentality and rules of operation, continues to reside within their hearts.

Finally, in my view, the ultimate revolution in human rights, whether pertaining to Autists or to other socially dominated populations, will come through an education into conscientization, not through the ruthless exercise of disparagement and dissimulation. The axiology, or value system, one cherishes while still dominated may be prescient of the world one wishes to construct.

The The League to Fight Neurelitism, a public sociology and an advocacy journalism project, supports a consistent application of United Nations values regarding human rights and social justice to all Autistics.

United States President Barak Obama has designated the period June 22 through September 11, 2009, as United We Serve. Administered by the Corporation for National Service, it is, in the president’s words, a “summer service initiative.”

As explained on the United We Serve website:

The national service movement will continue long after September 11, 2009. This summer, we are laying the foundation for a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to promote service as a way of life for all Americans. President Obama is asking us to make an initial service commitment from June 22 to September 11. After the culmination of our 81 days of service, we will renew our commitment and continue our work.

The League to Fight Neurelitism wholeheartedly endorses the president’s service initiative. We have also registered our own project:

Description: The League to Fight Neurelitism, a single-person initiative, is seeking Autistic self-advocates who would be interested in helping to develop the Fight Neurelitism Forum (through ning.com). The site is already set up. What is needed are people to promote it, make postings, and respond to questions.

Tasks for Volunteers: Aside from being on the Autistic spectrum, you should be a reasonably good writer.

You may, if you like, sign up for our project on this page of the United We Serve site. If not, we would encourage you to either volunteer for another project or develop your own. Several toolkits are provided to assist you in the developmental process.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Originally posted to http://statements.neurelitism.com/unitedweserve.html

I am a socialist, not a social liberal, but I have been a cultural liberal for as long as I can remember. Since my diagnosis as an Autistic and after, subsequently, achieving a degree of conscientization concerning my autobiographical status in the matrix of social domination, my commitment to cultural liberalism has been even more pronounced than before. That is to say, becoming aware of my own contexts of oppression has increased my sensitivity to the human rights struggles of other oppressed populations, particularly women, racial and ethnic minorities, and the LGBT community.

In terms of the latter, my dilemma, at one time, had been focused upon a reconciliation of the official positions of my religious community, which disallows Gay marriage, with my personal beliefs in support of it. Indeed, I would like to see marriage taken out of the hands of governments altogether.

In place of marriage, I would propose that any adults, of whatever number or gender, could receive a civil union license. It would then be left to those persons, or to the determinations of their religious organizations, as to whether to designate those unions as marriages (ceremonially or otherwise). Thus, marriage leaves the public sphere and becomes a private matter.

I have digressed a bit. As I said, my concern centered around being culturally liberal on sexual orientation when my religion was not. I resolved it, as a nominalist, by refusing to conflate my religion, as a voluntary association, with the secular arena to which sexual preference belongs.

In other words, I am able to acknowledge the requirements of my religion as covenantal obligations, binding only on believers, while simultaneously affiming my personal views, in support of Gay rights, as a private individual. Similarly, although I would like to see the elimination of gender categories, I accept them in within the framework of my voluntary religious association.

Goldie Hawn and Buddhist Mindfulness

I saw the wonderful Goldie Hawn today on Hardball, an MSNBC program hosted by Chris Matthews. Hawn, a self-described Jewish Buddhist, discussed her Hawn Foundation which promotes an education in mindfulness, a Buddhist concept, to children. For one perspective on mindfulness, you can visit this website.

Although I am not personally a Buddhist, I was impressed by the site and by Hawn’s discussion, on Hardball, of the objectives of her foundation. Among the foundation’s claims is that, through its work with neuroscientists, children have decreased their levels of stress and anxiety, raised their self-confidence, and improved their scholastic performance. At the very least, the materials on the site, in my view, deserve to be examined.

New Critical Theory

Since first describing my theoretical perspective as a new critical theory, a neo-Marxian approach, I have sensed that I am moving in a useful direction. While social constructionism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, etc. have informed my orientation (generally the case with new critical social theories), as do other nominalist viewpoints, the neo-Marxist grounding of my approach, has, even going back to my days as a critical realist, completed the circle.

Although I have been a neo-Marxist of sorts, in one way or another, since I was around twelve years old and active in the New Left, I had come to feel as though, within the theory, the neo-Marxism was, perhaps, insufficiently obvious to most readers until now. I must say that I am pleased.

The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism

The Structurization Institute is now The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism. The new name more accurately conveys that the institute is based upon a postmodern, or new, critical theory. Building upon critical theory, including the Marxian Frankfurt school, the institute’s influences include postmodernism and poststructuralism (Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard in particular), medieval nominalism (Roscelin and Ockham), and the social constructionisms.

Economic and Social Rights as Human Rights

Here is an interesting site which focuses on the economic and social rights as dimensions of human rights:

http://www.nesri.org/

Petition to Print in Passports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

I just signed the following petition, and I encourage others to do the same:

http://www.onedayforhumanrights.com/

Spiritual Orientation

For those who may be interested, my spiritual orientation, which contributes to my perspectives on issues of civil and other human rights, is on this page:

http://asma.bahaifaith.info

Two Public Sociologies

I think that there are really two different public sociologies. First, there was, of course, twentieth-century public sociology, as the term was coined by Herbert Gans in his ASA address:

http://www2.asanet.org/governance/PresidentialAddress1988.pdf

Then, there is twenty-first-century public sociology, as the term was redefined by Michael Burawoy in his ASA address:

http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/PS/ASA%20Presidential%20Address.pdf

Gans’ public sociology would be reflected in Contexts magazine:

http://contexts.org/

Burawoy’s public sociology is seen in Sociologists without Borders.

Sociologists without Borders

Sociologists without Borders is an excellent organization which focuses on public sociology (sociological activism). Other sociologists, particularly those with a leftist bent, are encouraged to join. I personally operate a MySpace group for Sociologists without Borders.

My Autobiographies

I would encourage anyone who has not done so to read my autobiography:

http://narrative.markfoster.name

A considerably shorter version, which I would only recommend to those who are easily bored [grin], is here:

http://story.markfoster.name

United Nations Enable

United Nations Enable has been at the forefront of efforts to address the discrimination and oppression of disabled populations throughout the world. In their own words:

The objectives of the Secretariat at DESA are: (i) to support the full and effective participation of persons with disabilities in social life and development; (ii) to advance the rights and protect the dignity of persons with disabilities and; (iii) to promote equal access to employment, education, information, goods and services.

This agency of the UN, in my view, deserves the conscientious support of all members of the global community.

Human Rights and Socioeconomic Development

For an extensive listing of human rights and socioeconomic development groups, and a large collection of files, you may visit the links page of my Subtext site.

Initiatives of Change

I have, for many years, been drawn to Initiatives of Change, previously called Moral Re-Armament, the successor to Frank Buchman‘s Oxford group. The organization has a strong social justice orientation. The following, which is reminiscent of the Society of Friends or Quakerism, is from their website:

Initiatives of Change emphasizes that there is a real connection between the personal and the global: when people and relationships change, situations change. IofC founder, Frank Buchman, believed foremost in helping people unlock their potential. With this in mind, we emphasize:

• Inner reflection – listening to, and tapping, the deep inner wisdom, the voice of conscience or, for some, the spirit of God
• Commitment to the highest values of humanity – a ‘reality check’ revealing the truth about ourselves and inspiring a humble search for deeper integrity, and greater passion
• Forgiveness – letting go of hate, resentment, and judgements of ourselves and those who have wronged us, a process that can unlock a view of our own and other’s potential
• The big picture – daring to imagine a world where the needs of the whole human family are met, and to discover our unique part in bringing this vision into reality

Whenever anyone, prompted by compassion and conscience, faces reality about themselves and takes honest steps towards change, that action communicates to others. It inspires a growth in the human spirit that in turn kindles initiatives of change in families, communities and beyond. This integrity could be the engine which drives social transformation in the 21st Century – a growing momentum of people who become agents of change and reconciliation, forging relationships of trust across the world’s divides.

… A quiet time is a period set aside, preferably each day, to listen to the inner voice of conscience or, for some, the spirit of God – to consider changes in one’s own life and seek direction. It is often helpful to write down the thoughts that come during these times of quiet and, when appropriate, to share them with others.

This emphasis on inward guidance can also be seen in the Formation movement, started by Parker Palmer (a Quaker):

… exploring questions about the inner life and about “the inner teacher,” which are indeed personal questions but need not be entirely private, and are often best answered in and through community.

I have personally attended about a dozen Formation retreats.

Undocumented Immigrants or Illegal Aliens

We need a seachange in how we view issues of human rights and social justice. In my view, the United States and other wealthy countries, having failed to adequately redistribute their wealth and knowledge to poorer countries, have no right to deny entry to any fourth world persons (the global poor). Even the term “undocumented immigrants,” while preferable to “illegal aliens,” makes me cringe.

Fixing Racism

Each generation which I can recall seems to think it has fixed the ideology of racism. Many baby-boomers, like myself, believed we had remedied the problem in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, I find that a lot of my students, especially following the election of Barak Obama, hold to similar views. They are, in my view, confusing our greater tolerance and the lessening of certain prejudices with the racist ideology itself and with institutionalized racism. Any, even cursory, examination of, say, income levels or rates of incarceration would demonstrate that institutionalized racism is alive and well in 21st-century America.

Terrorism or What?

The broad social acceptance of a “war on terror” is an excellent example of Foucaultian construction, the social construction of reality by the maintainers of the panopticon, i.e., the ones in power. Most people never consider that there might be another way to untangle the net of international relations. The narrative of a war on terror, proclaimed from the bully pulpit of former president George W. Bush, has become ubiquitous.

Terrorism-speak is simply a convenient means by which global actors strive to distinguish, through the manipulation of public opinion, their own acts of militant nationalism or statism, as with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from the militant nationalisms of other states or quasi-states, such as al-Qa’ída. The war on terror is, ultimately, a war of language games, where the winner of the conversational argument shapes, not only global discourse, but geopolitics.

Offensive Cartoon

I am, as an autistic and human rights activist, deeply offended by a cartoon which depicted the shooting of a chimpanzee by police officers. It was accompanied by the words, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon, an apparent dual reference to President Barak Obama’s stimulus package and the recent killing of a chimpanzee in Connecticut, was published this past Tuesday in the New York Post, one of the media properties of Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, which also owns Fox News Channel. In solidarity with Rev. Al Sharpton, I stand against this blatant example of bigotry and call upon the publisher of the New York Post to offer an apology.

Here, again, is an excerpt from my revised methodology paper. The following is taken from the opening section:

This project’s emancipatory research methodology, focusing on the construction of online lifeworlds, triangulates the following research technigues: contemporary history (historiography), narrative approaches, participant observation, reflexive sociology, content analysis, phenomenology, and existentialism. It has been developed around the online universe of The MarkFoster.NETwork. The research implications of emancipatory constructionism, a new critical theory, include an examination of relevant processes of social construction.

The Internet will be regarded as a metasociety, analogous to the concept of virtual communities. It is, in other words, a society beyond particular geopolitical units, and it is constructed entirely in the minds of its participants.

The project has two principal aspects:

1. In its participant observational aspects, explorations of constructionist processes on the Internet, synchronous and asynchronous, will be explored through active engagement in, and utilization of, online communications media. Social construction, discussed below, is taken as heuristics and, in the social construction of online lifeworlds, as praxis. For instance, one behavior to be explored is applied textual reasonings in situated settings.
2. As a reflexive sociology, the construction of The MarkFoster.NETwork™ is examined through active engagement with others – on email lists, in chat rooms, and on message boards –. Given the cooperative character of this process, the production of the network more accurately reflects social constructionism, an approach within sociology, than constructivism, a psychological perspective.

Methodologically, the term, emancipatory research, was coined by Mike Oliver in 1992. The construct has been particularly influential upon the social model of disability. As a radical approach, it frames the basic epistemology of this project. Oliver, in addition to being both an author and a disability rights activist, is Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich. Emancipatory methodologies tend to adopt a stance which is simultaneously critical of normative research methodologies and concerned with exploring the experiences of oppressed persons, such as the disabled, in their own voices.

This project’s own emancipatory methodology has been developed through trope nominalism. That is to say, our observations of entities are of their tropes (attributes). We are only categorizing, or naming, them. Universal essences are rejected, while, concerning the essences of particulars, should they even exist, we remain agnostic. To engage in discourse upon such unknown quiddities is speculative (or metaphysical) and a waste of good time.

Emancipatory research may be distinguished from lifeworld research. The latter is grounded in phenomenology and, as such, incorporates the usual Husserlian categories, such as epoché and intersubjectivity. The objective of the researcher is, through a bracketing of her intentionality, to enter into the lifeworlds of disabled persons. As a nominalist, phenomenological reduction impresses me as both metaphysical (speculative) and essentialist. Indeed, I question whether such phenomenological reduction is even possible or desirable. Nonetheless, I have tried to be sensitive to this mode of inquiry where suitable.

Emancipatory research may also be differentiated from empowerment research. I have been unable to locate a consistent definition, but empowerment research appears to be associated with notions of wellness and personal responsibility. Most of the relevant literature I have found comes out of the fields of community healthcare and community psychology. Anecdotally, I may have experienced an implementation of this methodology. A hospital seminar I attended, after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, had many of the characteristics I came across in my reading.

Pragmatically, the purpose or volition attributed to any dynamic of interpersonal discourse is transitively situated in its designated function, not in its substantive content. Thus, if a cultural narrative, described by a set of conscious elites, is realized in domination, its purpose may have been duly satisfied. Taken to an extreme, this sort of axiological pragmatism, in which the principal or sole value of social action is determined through the achievement of ambition, becomes Machiavellian or realpolitik.

However, as philosophy of science, the project utilizes a contemporary, and indeed an emancipatory, version of pragmatism called critical pragmatism, namely, a fusion of pragmatism with critical theory. Still, there are, in addition to realpolitik, other current species of pragmatism. These include neopragmatism, a relatively conservative approach commonly identified with Richard Rorty, and incommensurability, which expresses Thomas Kuhn’s work on paradigms or, as he later preferred, exemplars.

Critical social research must, in its conveyance, be praxical or pedagogical. In other words, it should address, not only the craftiness of domination, but the craft of emancipation. The pedagogy of this paradigm, whether in voice or text, is founded upon a version of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. Although similar to certain theologies of liberation, given Freire’s Marxian influences and his unabashed devotion to Roman Catholicism, its specific focus, inspired by his occupation as an educator, is upon conscientization, which is to say, a consciousness raising process among students regarding specific categories of oppression accompanied by the means to realize liberation.

I have been refining the methodology for my long-term critical sociology project. The following paragraphs, taken from my methodology paper, are particularly relevant in detailing some of the methodologies utilized in the study of disabilities, including Autism. See the full paper for more information, including extensive quotations.

The term, emancipatory research, was coined by Mike Oliver in 1992. The construct has been particularly influential upon the social model of disability. As a radical approach, it frames the basic methodology of this project. Oliver, in addition to being both an author and a disability rights activist, is Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich. Emancipatory methodologies tend to adopt a stance which is simultaneously critical of normative research methodologies and concerned with exploring the experiences of oppressed persons, such as the disabled, in their own voices.

Emancipatory research may be distinguished from lifeworld research. The latter is grounded in phenomenology and, as such, incorporates the usual Husserlian categories, such as epoché and intersubjectivity. The objective of the researcher is, through a bracketing of her intentionality, to enter into the lifeworlds of disabled persons. As a nominalist, phenomenological reduction impresses me as both metaphysical (speculative) and essentialist. Indeed, I question whether such phenomenological reduction is even possible or desirable. Nonetheless, I have tried to be sensitive to this mode of inquiry where suitable.

Emancipatory research may also be differentiated from empowerment research. I have been unable to locate a consistent definition, but empowerment research appears to be associated with notions of wellness and personal responsibility. Most of the relevant literature I have found comes out of the fields of community healthcare and community psychology. Anecdotally, I may have experienced an implementation of this methodology. A hospital seminar I attended, after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, had many of the characteristics I came across in my reading.

The League to Fight Neurelitism operates as a nonpartisan public sociology and advocacy journalism project. It fully supports the consistent application of United Nations values concerning human rights and social justice to all members of the Autistic community. The term, conscientization (kon-she-ən-shə-za‘-shən), anglicized from the Portugese conscientizacao, was used by the late Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire (1921-1997), to point to the attainment of a critical consciousness. One version of this concept was popularized by the 1970s American women’s liberation movement as consciousness raising. Briefly, conscientization addresses the attainment of knowledge or consciousness concerning the forces of domination or oppression and the subsequent struggle, by conscious individuals, for emancipation or liberation. Here is a description of the idea in Freire’s own words. It is taken from his blueprint for emancipation, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968):

One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor…. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion. To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity…. However, the oppressed, who have adapted to the structure of domination in which they are immersed, and have become resigned to it, are inhibited from waging the struggle for freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it requires…. The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be “hosts” of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy.

Freire believed that oppressed persons internalize their domination. As he wrote, in that same work, “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.” Thus, the oppressed person must not only fight the enemies external to her being, those who rob her of her freedom and autonomy. She must also fight the oppresser within. If a socially, politically, or economically dominated individual believes that she deserves her domination, or that she must in some fashion become resigned to it, then that inner phantasm must be defeated, as well. Although Freire developed his critical pedagogy as a tool to enlighten students, its applications have extended well beyond. The Autistic community, too, is unjustly dominated. Unemployment and poverty rates are commonly well in excess of averages. For instance, according to Autism researcher, Simon Baron-Cohen:

… the biggest risk is GPs [general practitioners] not realising how adults with Asperger syndrome may become suicidal from the secondary depression, which is common. This depression is associated with social isolation, the high levels of unemployment, the lack of close friends, the lack of a partner and the abuse that adults with Asperger’s may experience on the bus or in the supermarket or in other everyday situations. GPs need to give reassurance to adults with Asperger’s that just because their disability is invisible, they recognise the patient is suffering underneath and will help them find the right support.

In addition to poverty, Autists are routinely denied many supports which are simply taken for granted by most persons. It remains legal in most U.S. states to deny medical insurance to persons with an Autistic spectrum disorder. In my own state of Kansas, legislation which would have required insurance companies to cover Autistics just went down in defeat. Autistic children are also frequently subjected to a variety of physical abuses, including by school personnel. The League to Fight Neurelitism regards Autistic self-advocacy as, potentially, a form of conscientization. However, Autists must first attain a critical consciousness of their oppression and of the factors which serve to perpetuate it. They must also reject the internalized domination of defining themselves according to the norms of their oppressors and even mirroring their dominations against others. The battle for human rights cannot be merely a series of mechanical, nonideological responses to events. Any nonviolent revolutionary struggle, such as this one, must, if it is to have a chance of success, be principally proactive, not reactive. Respectfully submitted, Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. Founding Director, The League to Fight Neurelitism First published to http://statements.neurelitism.com/conscientization.html

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The League to Fight Neurelitism, as a nonpartisan public sociology and advocacy journalism project, supports the application of United Nations values concerning human rights and social justice to all members of the Autistic community.

UN Public Service Day is described in these words on the United Nations Public Administration website:

The UN General Assembly, in its Resolution 57/277, designated 23 June as Public Service Day (A/RES/57/277). The UN Public Service Day intends to celebrate the value and virtue of public service to the community; highlight the contribution of public service in the development process; recognize the work of public servants, and encourage young people to pursue careers in the public sector. Since the first Awards Ceremony in 2003, the United Nations has received an increasing number of submissions from all around the world.

The Autistic self-advocacy community has been characterized by a history of activist public service for all Autists. Members of this community have also collaborated with other disabled populations. In this light, and with our confidence that such public service will continue and expand, we officially proclaim the twenty-third day of June, 2009, and each subsequent twenty-third day of June, as UN Public Service Day. The League to Fight Neurelitism hopes that, in drawing attention to this annual commemoration, even more Autists, and other disabled persons, may be inspired to engage in public service and activism themselves.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Originally published to: PublicServiceDay.neurelitism.com

Here is the late Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, discussing Karl Marx. Freire is one of the key figures, some would say the founder, of critical pedagogy (teaching as emancipation). I incorporate Freire’s critical pedagogy into my emancipatory constructionist theory and believe that it can work as one of the groundings of Autistic liberation.

In my personal narrative, I wrote the following:

The objective of such a struggle should be the attainment of what Paulo Freire referred to, in Portugese, as conscientizacao (i.e., conscientization, critical consciousness, or consciousness raising), that is to say, an awareness of the social contradictions of domination and of the emancipatory strategies for subduing them. Indeed, from a Freirian standpoint, the collaborative character of the educational process is encompased by a model of critical pedagogy. As in Mahayana Buddhism, the Bodhisattva becomes a preceptor to others, so the critical pedagogue imparts her conscientization to a tyrannized population. Approached in a thoughtful manner, praxis can become a normative framework for disability activism and self-advocacy.

The following message, slightly edited here, was posted to an email list.

New critical theory (NCT) is also known as postmodern critical theory. It is similar, though not identical, to critical postmodernism and to the post-Marxism of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.

To elaborate, just as some first-generational critical theorists supplemented Karl Marx with Sigmund Freud and as Jurgen Habermas (of the second generation) mixed in pragmatism and systems theory (among others), NCTs are injected with postmodernism, poststructuralism, social constructionism, etc. Critical theories have been, and remain, decidedly ecclectic.

All critical theories (of whatever generation) emphasize a dialectic of domination (or oppression) and emancipation (or liberation from oppression). That is to say, critical theorists develop a praxis (theoretically reflective social action), centered on emancipation, on top of the theory itself. Praxis was also a central feature of Marx’s own radical theory.

In The League to Fight Neurelitism, an Autistic activist project I founded, I work with other Autists on human (including civil) rights issues concerning the Autistic community. Autists are frequently the objects of discrimination in schools (bullying), the workplace, the courts (e.g., child custody cases), etc. The League to Fight Neurelitism is an expression of the praxis I have developed in The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism.

I just posted the following on a message board.

The vaccination issue is very troubling. In spite of of a broad scientific and medical consensus that vaccines do not have a role in causing Autism, many parents are refusing them for their children. Some believe that there is a conspiracy of one sort or another by the pharmaceutical industry.

The problem with this view, aside from the possible medical consequences of being unvaccinated, is that no studies in peer-reviewed journals, including those performed by researchers without a connection to the pharmaceutical industry, report a causal relationship. Sadly, the anti-vaccination issue has turned into a popular social movement, which makes it difficult to challenge.

In support of United Nations values of civil and other human rights, The League to Fight Neurelitism, a nonpartisan and nonsectarian public sociology and advocacy journalism project, officially proclaims the twenty-first day of May, 2009, and each subsequent twenty-first day of May, as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. This annual commemoration, authorized by a 2003 resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, honors the 2002 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

The League to Fight Neurelitism addressed the subject of Autistic culture, comparing it with Deaf culture, in a previous communication. Interested readers may wish to pursue our Position Statement on Autistic Culture. As properly defined in a sociological context, culture is a way of life or a toolkit for addressing life’s challenges. Given the ubiquitousness of the Internet, cultures are not always contained within a single geographical space.

On this day of commemoration, the League would encourage Autists to reflect on Autistic culture from a multidimensional and relational standpoint. For instance:

1. What, at present, are some of the distinguishing features of Autistic culture?
2. Accounting for the diversity of perspectives among Autists, even stark disagreements on certain issues, how could cultural pluralism be turned to an advantage?
3. Is it possible for Autists holding to very different views to work together on certain issues?
4. If so, what might those issues be?
5. How can Autists reach out even further to individuals and groups with other disabilities?
6. Finally, what would be the objectives of these contacts?

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Originally published to: http://culturaldiversity.neurelitism.com

The public sociology and advocacy journalism project, The League to Fight Neurelitism, supports the application of United Nations values concerning human rights and social justice to all Autistics.

Following recent discussions on an Autism-focused email list, the League has crafted a position on the subject of Autistic culture. One of the most obvious results of this process will be the capitalization, in this and in all subsequent documents, of the words Autism, Autistic, and Autist. The latter term, the noun Autist, will be utilized, interchangeably with Autistic, when referring to one or more Autistic individuals. For instance, just as one is a Gambian, one is, in the first person, an Autist or Autistic. One does not have Gambia or Autism.

This approach to capitalization, which is already being practiced by some Autists, has long been in use within the Deaf community. As explained on the Alternative Solutions Center blog:

Far from viewing “Deaf” as a way of excluding people, we see the term as an inclusive one. To us, “Deaf” refers to any people who happen to be Deaf. It has nothing to do with having Deaf or hearing parents, or using ASL, SEE, spoken English, cued speech, or any other communication modality. Neither does it matter if one was mainstreamed, educated at a Deaf school, or homeschooled. Degree of hearing loss, being Deaf from birth or being late-Deafened, using a hearing aid or a cochlear implant – none of these, in our minds, precludes anyone from being Deaf.

Capitalizing Deaf parallels capitalizing African American, Jewish, Hispanic, and so on, with each of these capitalized designations referring to a group of people with their own culture and physical characteristics (i.e., skin color, bloodline, hearing status). All of these terms are inclusive. Some Jewish people may be observant Orthodox Jews, centering their lives around their religion, while others may simply identify as Jewish through their family lineage and never set foot in a temple. Some Jewish people speak Hebrew, while others don’t.

Similarly, capitalizing Autism and its forms emphasizes the culture of Autistics. While the Autistic community is certainly heterogeneous, or diverse, in its viewpoints on a host of issues, few cultures, even those which have functioned under extraordinarily rigid, authoritarian, or totalitarian political systems, have ever achieved a true consensus or unanimity. For this reason, a culture may better be appreciated, not as a system of uniform or mechanical behaviors, but as a way of life or as a symbolic toolkit for resolving problems and addressing existential challenges.

Furthermore, cultures do not arise without precedent. Their development, whether systematic or haphazard, occurs within historical frameworks of interaction and adaptation. Social groupings are, as sociologist Anthony Giddens has observed, ongoing accomplishments. That is to say, as willful agents, we need not be passive objects of grand cultural processes. Instead, we can, individually or collectively, express our voices concerning the maintenance, modification, or deconstruction of contemporary cultures. We can also become actively engaged in building new and emancipatory ones grounded on human rights.

A culture, in its nonmaterial aspects, incorporates a population’s language, values, and norms. With respect to the first of these, language, cultures and subcultures are defined, in part, by a characteristic semantics or lexicon. A stranger on an Autistic discussion forum might have difficulty following most conversations. Moreover, opposition to curing Autism is, perhaps, the most ubiquitous value of the self-advocacy Autistic community. In establishing territoriality and appropriate social norms or rules of conduct, this value serves to differentiate self-advocates from many largely parent-dominated groups.

Cultures and subcultures move through stages. Given that Autistic online culture remains in its early phases of development, it would be patently unfair to compare its nascence with online culture as a whole. Similarly, it would be unjust to compare online culture with the cultures of Western industrialized countries. In other words, culture is not an object which a population “either has or does not have.” It is, as a lifeworld, defined by its process – the lived-in experiences of a community.

Concluding on a personal note, when I first connected with other Autistics online, I had to learn the significances of various terms: neurotypical (NT), aspie, curebie, nonspeaking autistics (and not “nonverbal”), and so forth. I also had to study the values (and value debates) and norms in the online Autistic community. I have been involved with computers for many years and ran a BBS (dialup bulletin board service) on a dedicated line in pre-Internet days. Even though I watched virtual culture, in general, develop, becoming a part of online Autistic culture required me to discover a new vocabulary, value system, and normative framework.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Originally published to: http://autisticculture.neurelitism.com

The following letter comes from Ari Ne’eman, the president of The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and is posted here by permission. I would encourage all readers to sign the petition.

I’m writing to ask you to sign our petition, calling on Dr. Tony Attwood and Dr. Isabelle Hénault, two respected experts in the world of Autism, to disassociate themselves from hate groups promoting stereotypes and libels that seek to encourage discrimination against Autistic people in family law and relationships. We in the disability community have long suffered from many forms of discrimination, stereotyping and discrimination. Historically, one of the most pervasive forms of this type of discrimination has come from those who use stereotypes and psuedo-science to try and deprive us of one of the most common ways of expressing membership in the human community – the right to have a family, to marry and to raise children on an equal basis with any other citizen. The eugenics movement is one of the most well known examples of this dangerous and unethical means of discriminating against people with disabilities, as is the related idea that disabled people are inherently unfit as spouses or parents. In the name of these kinds of stereotypes, people with disabilities have been deprived of parental rights and discriminated against in divorce and child custody cases for generations. In the Autistic community, we face opponents who seek to propogate these same forms of hatred, often claiming to do so either for our own good or wrapped in the guise of the same types of false science that justified the involuntary sterilization of hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide who were deemed unfit to raise children.

For the last decade, groups like Families of Adults Afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome (FAAAS) have been promoting the idea that prolonged family contact with Autistic adults in romantic or family relationships is harmful to “normal” people. Amongst other methods, they have done this by promoting “Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder,” a term invented by British psychologist Maxine Aston. Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder, a condition developed by Aston and which serves as the basis for much of her marketing and income, is claimed by Aston to be a depressive disorder caused by romantic involvement with an Autistic person. CADD is based entirely upon pseudoscience, personal grudges, and stereotypes rather than any form of accurate research or evidence. CADD has never been recognised by any psychological association and is not supported by any peer-reviewed scientific research. Aston and others involved with such groups have purported to diagnose clients with CADD, despite having no legitimate authority for doing so. In CADD support groups, clients are encouraged to “vent” about the failures of their partners and to characterise Autistics in general as unsuitable for family life.

Attwood and Hénault have, despite respected professional activities and scholarships in other contexts, consistently appeared and promoted Cassandra-related events and organizations. Over the past decade, both Attwood and Hénault have been regular presenters at events sponsored by FAAAS, which actively promotes the Cassandra concept. Attwood and Hénault are closely associated with FAAAS through their membership in the FAAAS Professional Advisory Panel. The founder of FAAAS, Karen Rodman, has publicly described Autistics as randomly violent and has suggested that Autistic children ought to be excluded from public schools. Through its activities, FAAAS has sought to influence social workers and family law courts to make biased decisions removing custody of children from Autistic parents and discriminating against Autistic adults in other family law contexts, as detailed in a paper by FAAAS member Sheila Jennings Linehan, who also has levied this libel against other neurological disability groups. Several articles by ASPIA, a group in Australia with the same goals and objectives as FAAAS, founder Carol Grigg appear prominently on the FAAAS website, and the content of Grigg’s articles clearly shows that she also promotes the false accusation that autistic people and others with disabilities are likely to abuse their family members. She explicitly makes this claim in an article entitled Asperger’s Syndrome in Adults: Potential for Abuse?

Though Autistic adults now face discrimination in family law settings, all credible research on the topic states that Autistic people are far more vulnerable to being abused than the general population and have no natural predisposition towards abusive behaviour. By promoting a libel that places Autistic people at a disadvantage in family law contexts, FAAAS, ASPIA and other promoters of CADD have decreased opportunities for Autistic people to seek protection against abuse. Due to the presumption of fault promoted by these groups, Autistic adults are at risk of being discriminated against if they attempt to terminate abusive marriages and other relationships. Furthermore, these libels threaten the rights of Autistic people and all people with disabilities to fully participate in society by marrying, having children and enjoying the right to be judged on the basis of ones actions not by ones medical diagnosis.

We’re asking you, regardless of your background or interest in Autism or cross-disability issues, to join us in signing this petition to help secure the rights of all people to be treated equally under the law. Our petition can be found at: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/AttwoodHenault/ and if you are interested in e-mailing directly tony@tonyattwood.com.au is the e-mail address for Dr. Attwood and ihenault@internet.uqam.ca is the e-mail address for Dr. Hénault. Thank you for your support. Together, we can mobilize our community and stop discrimination wherever it rears its ugly head.

As always, Nothing About Us, Without Us!

Regards,
Ari Ne’eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
1660 L Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC  20036
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
732.763.5530

The League to Fight Neurelitism, a public sociology and an advocacy journalism project, engages in activism to support the direct application of United Nations values on human rights and social justice to all Autistics.

The terms, nonviolent resistance, passive resistance, and civil disobedience are often treated as relatively synonymous. Strictly speaking, however, they are defined differently. In this brief paper, The League to Fight Neurelitism will set forth what it considers to be the distinctions between these concepts. It will then suggest possible strategies for Autistic praxis (activism grounded in reflection) which do not involve breaking the laws within many modern societies.

Passive resistance is essentially synonymous with a broad usage of pacifism. Johan Galtung (1965) defined the former term as stabilization “at a very low level of interaction” and as “noncooperation.” Passive resistors are individuals who decide not to participate in an activity or who refuse to follow a directive.

Nonviolent resistance, which may also be termed nonviolent revolution, takes this process a step further by actually engaging in positive actions and protests. Such revolutionary resistance or praxis may consist of nothing more elaborate than an activist use of music, theatre, poetry, and other creative arts. It can also include blogging and direct acts of civil disobedience, such as the campus sit-ins of the 1960s (later mirrored by some protesters at abortion clinics), strikes, Rosa Parks’ resusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, and the burning of draft cards.

Consequently, passive resistance and nonviolent resistance may be understood as two overarching categories for a variety of strategies and tactics. These twin rubrics were delineated by no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi, the great advocate of nonviolent resistance, who stated, “Passive resistance, unlike nonviolence, has no power to change men’s hearts.” Although we may not share Gandhi’s evident distaste for passive resistance, his negative evaluation of it supports our claim regarding the distinction between these approaches.

Nevertheless, in this position statement, we will suggest a pragmatic relevance for nonviolent resistance, not of passive resistance. We feel as though an application of the former construct is more practical in addition to being consistent with dominant modes of activism which are currently employed within the online Autistic community.

Pointedly, many Autistics are currently participating in nonviolent resistance without labeling it as such. The terms nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience have become so interconnected in popular discourse that a significant proportion of people might not even realize that civil disobedience is only a single subset of nonviolent resistance. By way of illustration, here is a brief listing of actions which, in addition to civil disobedience, would qualify as nonviolent resistance:

1. writing protest letters
2. encouraging boycotts
3. online consciousness-raising (conscientization)
4. waging information wars against “curebie” groups
5. expressing oneself through blogging and use of the creative arts

To reiterate, The League to Fight Neurelitism strongly encourages a participation in lawful nonviolent resistance or revolution. We do not promote civil disobedience and other illegal activities.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark A. Foster, Ph.D.
Founding Director,
The League to Fight Neurelitism

Galtung, Johan. “On the Meaning of Nonviolence” Journal of Peace Research. 1965 (2:228). Retrieved April 15, 2009. (http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/228).

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Originally published to: http://resistance.neurelitism.com

I have spent the last few days revising the website which contains the general framework I use as a sociologist and in my autistic advocacy. After some reflection, I concluded that the site’s previous name, The Structurization Institute and the associated structurization theory, did not adequately convey my approach to the majority of visitors. However, the twin references I have made in the new title, The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism, will be immediately evident to most sociologists and, no doubt, to many academics in related fields and to a variety of informed readers in general.

Let me break it down: First, the term, emancipatory was initially used by Max Horkheimer, one of the members in the Frankfurt school (a group of German social scientists), to describe an approach to the social sciences, called critical theory, which advocated that, in addition to engaging in research, social scientists examine approaches to liberation. These social scientists were substantially Marxian in their orientation, but they freely combined Marxist concepts with those from a variety of other sources, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis. These days, critical theory is used for a variety of perspectives, sometimes unrelated to the Frankfurt school, which include a significant focus on emancipation.

Second, constructionism, short for social constructionism, is a sociological approach which began, largely, with the 1966 book, written by by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. One of the basic concepts within social constructionism is that knowledge, truth, values, groups, cultures, etc. are all socially relative. They have no reality which is independent from the social contexts in which they orignated.

Finally, to combine emancipation with construction: The idea of social construction, which may seem innocent at first, is actually extraordinarily radical. One of the ways in which political leaders maintain their power is by convincing their publics to accept the exclusive legitimacy of their truth claims, such as former American president George W. Bush’s statements about the war on terror. Well, what if those claims were only language games and linguistic constructions with no objective reality? Then people could organize, reject the constructions of power elites, and formulate entirely different, even emancipatory, constructions.

The League to Fight Neurelitism, a public sociology and an advocacy journalism project, promotes the consistent application of United Nations values on human rights and social justice to all autistics.

Patricia Hill Collins is the first centenary (2009) president of the American Sociological Association and the first African American woman to occupy that distinguished office. As Professor of Sociology at Johnson County Community College, I have used her reader, jointly edited with Margaret L. Anderson, for sixteen years. Collins’ concept of a matrix of domination or intersectionality, discussed in the introduction to the reader, is elaborated upon below:

Placing African-American women and other excluded groups in the center of analysis opens up possibilities for a both/and conceptual stance, one in which all groups possess varying amounts of penalty and privilege in one historically created system. In this system, for example, white women are penalized by their gender but privileged by their race. Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed….

Although most individuals have little difficulty identifying their own victimization within some major system of oppression–whether it be by race, social class, religion, physical ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age or gender–they typically fail to see how their thoughts and actions uphold someone else’s subordination. In essence, each group identifies the oppression with which it feels most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all others as being of lesser importance. Oppression is filled with such contradictions because these approaches fail to recognize that a matrix of domination contains few pure victims or oppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyone’s lives.

According to Collins’ relational model, in approaching the matrix of domination, with its intersecting paths of oppressing and oppressed statuses, individuals should utilize a process she terms, shifting the center of one’s thinking. Here, the observer would determine the dominated or oppressed statuses in any given situation and attempt to view it from the point of view of the oppressed. Doing so would result, not only in an understanding of oppressed statuses, but of oppressor statuses, as well.

Collins’ critical theoretical framework presents a thoroughly sociological perspective on oppression. By emphasizing statuses or positions, rather than individuals, she allows for the possibility that a person acting as an oppressor in one situation might hold an oppressed status in another. One might, hypothetically, imagine certain women, sexually harrassed in their workplace, who then return home and oppose the construction of a minority housing project in their neighborhood.

Shifting the center is not exactly the same as sociologist Max Weber’s concept of Verstehen (literally, German for understanding). In Verstehen, the researcher attempts to examine a given social setting through the eyes of those she is studying. In so doing, the observer allegedly brackets, or sets aside, her own subjectivity from the process of observation.

In shifting the center, one endeavors to view a context of experience through the eyes of those who occupy oppressed statuses. Whether one belongs to that status oneself is irrelevant to the process. Indeed, it is not uncommon for oppressed persons to accept the legitimacy of a worldview which has been constructed for them by their oppressors. This problematic would, from a Marxian standpoint, be designated as a false consciousness.

Collins’ relational model, with its concepts of a matrix of domination and shifting the center of one’s thinking, offers us a useful perspective for autistics involved in activist work. It can encourage a person to reflect on the manners in which each one of us may play the roles of an oppressed person and an oppressor in a diversity of social contexts. After becoming conscious of this matrix of domination, the individual can develop mutually beneficial relationships with persons who, in other situations, experience oppression themselves.

The League to Fight Neurelitism, as a public sociology and an advocacy journalism project, actively promotes a consistent application of United Nations values on human rights and social justice to all persons on the autism spectrum.

The California-based company, Psycho Donuts, provides us with another unfortunate example of corporate insensitivity toward the psychologically and neurologically different. On the restaurant’s website is featured a padded cell, and two donut varieties are named Bipolar and Psycho.

The League to Fight Neurelitism recognizes that the owner or owners of the company may not have intended to offend entire segments of the U.S. population. Indeed, they most likely consider their business model to be merely an entertaining approach to selling their product.

Nonetheless, the League to Fight Neurelitism, working to promote the rights of the neuordiverse, sees this issue differently. Given that, to us, the company’s name and website are offensive and discriminatory, we politely, but firmly, encourage the company to reconsider its marketing strategy.

A large U.S. restaurant chain, Sambo’s, became controversial, during the Civil Rights Movement, due to its name. Although the African American pejorative was unrelated to the selection of the name, eventually, all but one restaurant closed down. Why, now in the twenty-first century, is it acceptable to open one which mocks the psychologically and neurologically different?

First published to: http://psychodonuts.neurelitism.com

The League to Fight Neurelitism, as a public sociology and an advocacy journalism project, actively promotes the application of United Nations values on human rights and social justice to all persons on the autism spectrum.

Simply stated, reification, a common academic term, points to the treatment of abstract categories as real, concrete particulars or essences. The view that these supposed essences can be perceived, comprehended, and discussed is called essentialism. Both concepts are frequently referenced by persons subscribing to one or more systems of metaphysics or speculative philosophy, such as Neoplatonism.

Tendencies toward reification and essentialism can be observed in some of the online discourse concerning the autism spectrum, particularly when the autistic and neurotypical (neurologically typical) constructs are juxtaposed and treated as essentially distinct. Significantly, perhaps, this approach resembles an earlier one taken by cultural feminists who have contended that women and men possess certain essential, innate differences.

Although an essentialistic approach to human neurology, as to gender, lacks nuance and sophistication, it might, nonetheless, be helpful in developing autistic class consciousness. Claims that autistics, especially Asperger’s autistics, represent a prototype for an emerging new species, while superficially silly and easy to dismiss, can be similarly regarded.

Furthermore, anger at oppression, even if manifested in assertions of essentialism, is, in light of a considerable alienation, anomie, and angst which are experienced frequently by autistics, understandable, and it could, over the long run, encourage an activist praxis of self-advocacy. The League to Fight Neurelitism expresses the hope that, moving forwards, feelings of rage may be superseded by a mutual tolerance, which, with the development of third-wave feminism, appears to have taken hold in certain sectors of the women’s movement.