Autism--a concept that barely existed 75 years ago--currently feeds
multiple, multi-billion-dollar-a-year, global industries.
In The Autism Industrial Complex: How Branding, Marketing, and Capital
Investment Turned Autism into Big Business, Alicia A. Broderick
analyzes how we got from the 11 children first identified by Leo Kanner
in 1943 as "autistic" to the billion-dollar autism industries that are
booming today. Broderick argues that, within the Autism Industrial
Complex (AIC), almost anyone can capitalize on--and profit from--autism,
and she also shows us how. The AIC has not always been there: it was
built, conjured, created, manufactured, produced, not out of thin air,
but out of ideologies, rhetorics, branding, business plans, policy
lobbying, media saturation, capital investment, and the bodies of
autistic people. Broderick excavates the 75-year-long history of the
concept of autism, and shows us how the AIC--and indeed, autism
today--can only be understood within capitalism itself. The Autism
Industrial Complex is essential reading for a wide variety of
audiences, from autistic activists, to professionals in the autism
industries, to educators, to parents, to graduate students in public
policy, (special) education, psychology, economics, and rhetoric.
Watch the book presentation "Raising Awareness of the AIC" hosted by
NJACE and featuring the author, Alicia Broderick at: https:
//youtu.be/-fxzfuvuek4?t=336
Listen to Anne Borden King interview the author on The
NoncompliantPodcast
https:
//noncompliantpodcast.com/2022/06/30/is-there-an-autism-industrial-complex-interview-with-prof...
Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Critical Autism
Studies; Disability Studies--Theory, Policy, Practice; Disability &
Rhetoric; Disability & Cultural Studies; Doctoral Seminar in Disability
Studies; Cultural Foundations of Disability in Education
