M. Ariel Cascio

M. ARIEL CASCIO, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, was approved for funding in April 2022 to aid research on “Meanings of Autism and Work: Autistic and Non-autistic People Navigating Shared Spaces and Conflicting Conceptualizations.” This research contributes to the cultural anthropology project investigating how people negotiate meanings of identity, difference, and social roles. Specifically, it investigates how people in mid-Michigan, United States, use everyday understandings of autism — medicalized and non-medicalized — to create and navigate the important spaces of work. Research collected data from 22 autistic participants (19 participated in semi-structured interviews, 11 in photo-elicitation interviews, and 5 in shadowing or shadowing-like activities), 8 people who helped those participants with work, and 13 local autism advocates/professionals. Once analysis and interpretation are complete, this work will lead to a more fully defined theory of the relationship between meanings of autism and meanings of work than that captured by current anthropological scholarship. It will expand upon existing anthropological theory to better account for the human variation represented by autism and imagining more inclusive futures that better account for any type of human variation.