On Dialogue: Disability Studies and Science & Technology Studies

I am grateful to Somatosphere for inviting to me to write a post for the blog. I was asked to write about the relationship between disability studies and science and technology studies (STS). So in this blog post, I want to explore some particular ways of thinking about this relationship.

I have been writing for some time now about the use of cochlear implants (CIs) in infants identified as deaf. I am currently finishing a book manuscript based on my dissertation research, which was a multi-sited ethnographic project in a CI clinic and other places encountered in the lives of families where a child received a CI. Throughout that project, I was interested in understanding and gathering stories about CIs in particular, but on a more general level I was trying to get at how a dual process – the increased medicalization of everyday life and the proliferation of new technologies — changes how we understand, act upon, cope with, and expect others to cope with human bodies. Part of what I want to do here is simply...