Place: 4274 Chamberlin (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Doug Maynard, UW Department of Sociology
Abstract: Perceivedly inappropriate social behavior is a central feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder, in that individuals with ASD frequently may violate or breach commonsense norms and expectations. These violations may meet with polite indifference, informal prohibitions, or corrections. Using two forensic cases (police encounters with ASD individuals) and one clinical encounter, I will explore more formal sanctioning and how this can involve something we call “transpositioning.” Under the auspices of official protocols, transpositioning refers to how an official may turn a child’s responsive move into an initiating move, justifying consequential indifference at best or sometimes severe intervention at worst. However, by situating violations in their interactional contexts, we can see how actions usually attributed to the child and his psychological functioning alone are concertedly produced. In group discussion, I hope to have us consider how we can have better understandings of ASD-associated conduct in home, school, and public environments.