Paper short abstract:

Autism is a prime example of a non-contagious “disease” which invites exploration of the social construction of biology. Though a social constructionist approach is illuminating, the moral dimensions of care are easily overlooked. I these from a phenomenological and first person virtue ethics perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Autism is a prime example of a non-contagious "disease" whose rapid spread, both in the United States and globally, invites exploration of the social construction of biology. It exemplifies how new types of biosociality are developed. It has been marked as a diagnostic epidemic rather than a biological one. Powerful disability activist groups have arisen around it, influencing the direction of scientific research for treatment and cure as well as promoting the expansion of rights and services. Hacking (1999) has described it as a syndrome created through a "looping effect" process in which expert decisions and the populations they designate and define work together to produce new identities. While recognizing the importance of this social constructionist approach, in this paper I address what can easily be overlooked -- the reality of this diagnosis as a lived experience for those suffering from it. From a phenomenological and "first person" virtue ethics perspective, I investigate the strenuous and shifting moral demands parents face when caring for children identified as autistic. I also explore parents' adoptions of new health identities and new communities of care, including explicitly political ones. I argue that a first person perspective provides a vantage point for investigating the ethics of care as something that is created as well as structurally imposed and that may be both familial and intimate as well as public and political.