Parents of deaf children with cochlear implants: Disability, medicalization and neuroculture
Item
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Title
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Parents of deaf children with cochlear implants: Disability, medicalization and neuroculture
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:fe27afa9dafd:11335
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identifier
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11708
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Creator
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Mauldin, Laura K.,
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Contributor
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Barbara Katz Rothman
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Individual & family studies | Audiology | Cultural anthropology | cochlear implants | deaf | Deaf culture | disability | medicalization | technology
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Abstract
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Changes in technology are radically altering how conditions are treated, transforming the way we understand diseases and disabilities, and creating new stakeholders and subjectivities. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of parents and professionals involved in cochlear implantation in and around New York City. In the last two decades, the cochlear implant (CI) has become a common treatment for deafness, and since deaf children born to hearing parents are the fastest growing demographic of recipients, this research focuses on pediatric implantation. By spending time in a CI clinic, parents' homes, and children's schools, I learned how these parents and professionals participate in a social world based on interconnected institutions and the integration of clinical aspects of care into the home. I found that the success of this was significantly correlated with a mother's style of parenting, which was influenced by her class position. Perhaps the most striking quality of this social world was how dependent it is upon neuroscientific knowledge. I found that parents saw themselves as engaged in a 'neural project' to overcome their child's deafness. I describe parents' desires to be successful at this, their willingness to comply with medical professionals, but also the ways they struggle to find their own agency in the middle of it all. Lastly, all of this must be seen within the larger context of social and technological change. There has been tremendous controversy over CIs; many in Deaf culture argue against their use because they diminish the numbers of children that learn sign language. They argue that CIs ultimately represent a case of a technology destroying a community. I found that this technology also generates community. The battle has been characterized as medical knowledge versus Deaf cultural knowledge. However, this research shows that the world of implantation, while steeped in medicine and presumed 'objectivity,' is equally cultural and uses neuroscientific arguments that help to maintain controversy and division between the communities.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
