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The trading zone of autism genetics: Examining the intersection of genomic and psychiatric classification

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Abstract

This article argues that the impact of genetics on psychiatry, and on our understanding of human difference more generally, will be mediated by the threefold social role of diagnostic categories as (i) coordinating devices; (ii) identities; (iii) sites of looping processes. This argument is explored by examining the intersection of a rare genetic disorder – 22q13 Deletion/Phelan-McDermid Syndrome (PMS) – with the much broader but genetically heterogeneous category of autism. We show that a ‘genomically designated’ classification such as PMS thrives as an object of research and social mobilization by virtue of its capacity to interface with, rather than supplant, the existing psychiatric diagnosis of autism. Autism genetics thus functions as a ‘trading zone’ (Galison, 1997) that allows for the exchange of knowledge, biomedical objects and resources despite incommensurable ends and frameworks of understanding.

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Notes

  1. As the philosophical literature called the very idea of ‘natural kinds’ into question, Hacking (2007: fn 17) shifted to talking about ‘kinds of people’ rather than ‘human kinds’. For our purposes, however, the distinction remains pertinent for the reasons discussed below.

  2. Our Web of Science search string: “TI=(autis* AND (gene OR genes OR genetic* OR DNA OR genom* OR chromosom* OR heritab* OR mutation*))”. Restricting the analysis to titles undoubtedly misses much of the field, but given the change in Web of Science capture for topic terms from 1991 onwards it is the only reliable metric.

  3. We will see below, regarding 22q13.3, how crucial is it that autism and MR are not mutually exclusive diagnoses (as was true for both Kanner and Rimland), but that it is possible to view them as concurrent.

  4. For the National Fragile X Foundation’s latest annual report, see: www.fragilex.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2012_AnnualReport_NFXF.pdf, accessed 15 June 2013.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful for feedback from Martine Lappé and the anonymous reviewers. This study was conducted with the generous support of the USA-Israel Binational Science Foundation, grant number 2010175.

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Navon, D., Eyal, G. The trading zone of autism genetics: Examining the intersection of genomic and psychiatric classification. BioSocieties 9, 329–352 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2014.18

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