A community where everyone speaks Sign? A society where familial deafness1 condemns people to sterilisation or death? A world where sign languages are suppressed? All have been historically documented: Martha's Vineyard from 17th-20th centuries; Germany in the 1930s-40s; internationally, for a century from 1880. These and other images comprise divergent social imaginaries which are the context for current and future technologies for deafness. These technologies include postnatal genetic and aural testing for deafness, and may in future include prenatal testing. Cochlear implants can enable profoundly deaf people to hear and newborn hearing screening has recently been introduced in New Zealand. Sign language is another technology whereby deaf people can communicate, create poetry and drama and tell jokes; yet its fortunes have fluctuated over time with oralism's dominance. Our article draws on two small ethnographic studies in Auckland: one with two families with hereditary deafness; the other with two families and one young adult who had recently chosen cochlear implants, to suggest that individual and societal moral reasoning on the contested issues of technologies for deafness is embedded in different social imaginaries of normalcy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.