The Autism Matrix

"Gil Eyal and colleagues, five sociologists from Columbia University, have brought a fresh perspective from a different discipline to try to explain autism's expansion in prevalence and popularity...Overall I found much to admire in this detailed study."
British Medical Journal

"This is a very useful book for those interested in autism and the role of parent movements and activists, and more generally in the social factors affecting changes in the classification of diseases."
Sociology of Health and Illness

"The development of the autistic spectrum is laid bare as a cultural construct still in evolutionary process, and the elucidation of this morphing phenomenon is the crowning achievement of this book."
The Kelvingrove Review

"Autism, rare and little publicized twenty years ago, is now constantly in the news and is absorbing ever larger sums of public funding and concern. It has changed school classrooms and perhaps the very nature of childhood. This book is the best available sociological analysis of how this happened, linking recent events to those early in the twentieth century. It tells of the formidable labour of autism activists, their dreams and schisms, with generosity and insight. Institutions, the ideals of the family and its management, and child minding, all play their role. This is a reflective analysis of a pervasive event of our times, replacing clichés by new ideas."
Ian Hacking, Collège de France

"The Autism Matrix is an exemplary exercise in historically informed medical anthropology and sociology. This richly argued, engaging, and well-researched book begins with the basic question of why autism diagnoses have increased in recent years and then offers a wealth of cascading implications. The authors succeed in showing that the simplistic question of 'epidemic or not?' is unproductive in comparison to the more intellectually fruitful question of how institutional matrices identify, name, count, and treat neuropsychiatric difference."
Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, The George Washington University,and author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism