Deafnicty: A study of strategic and adaptive responses to audism by members of the Deaf American community of culture.

Abstract

This project focuses on the social organization and the perceptions of real and imagined differences between Hearing people and members of the Deaf American community of culture who prefer to use American Sign Language in their daily activities. At the core of those differences, organizations and institutions compete for cultural hegemonic gain; especially in the areas of education, methods of communication, and technology. The competing goals of the institutions and organizations are evidenced in debates between medical circumstantialists with assimilatory goals and cultural constructionists with goals of plurality. Comparatively, the concept of <italic>Deafnicity</italic> illuminates inequalities and cultural anxieties experienced by members of the Deaf American community of culture; especially the stratifying features of Hearing society and members of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities. Three questions serve as the centerpiece of this study. First, do members of the Deaf American community of culture exhibit enough of the characteristics of ethnicity to warrant the analogy of being like ethnics? Second, to what extent, if any, are the processes of constructing, maintaining, and renewing ethnic identity boundaries similar to that of other ethnic populations? Finally, I asked, to what extent, if any, does the concept of ethnicity improve our understanding of prejudice and discrimination that Deaf Americans experience in their daily lives. This research is organized by theories of nation-state, social organization of cultural differences, and ethnic renewal. This study utilizes historical, qualitative and quantitative evidence to establish that Deaf Americans exhibit the characteristics of ethnicity and maintain ethnic boundaries in ways similar to other ethnic populations, but renew the boundaries primarily outside the family unit. This study concludes that discrimination and prejudice perceived by Deaf Americans are products of a cultural divide, whereby hearing people and Deaf Americans compete to define the structure of social interactions between each other. I introduce the concept of <italic>Deafnicity</italic> as a Deaf American adaptive and strategic response toward individual, institutional, and metaphysical forms of audism or the stratifying presumption of superiority based on differences in physicality; hearing loss specifically.