Gergana Mircheva: "Contested normalities: socio-historical images of autism in Bulgaria"

• Vortrag

SNAKLAB Regensburg Southeastern Europe Research Seminars

This research project addresses the socio-historical images of autism in Bulgaria, as constructed in parental and professional experiences of care for autistic children. The object of research includes the varying and disputed normative models of dealing with the now-called “autism spectrum disorders” (ASD) during the socialist and the post-socialist period. Such normative models are part of the conventions of “(ab)normality”, which have a prescriptive nature and are determined by particular psycho-medical and more general socio-cultural scripts. To what extent, why and how did therapists and parents adopt, negotiate, hybridise and/or confront such models?

The talk will focus mainly on the contemporary parental attitudes towards the healthcare system in Bulgaria, as well as to the parental images of autistic children and on the parental strategies towards the normative models of ASD regulation.

The project combines methods of anthropology and social history of medicine and the “psy-sciences", with concepts of disability studies, social studies of autism, and ethics of care.