Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies

ABSTRACT

Sound studies and Deaf studies may seem at first impression to operate in worlds apart. We argue in this article, however, that similar renderings of hearing, deafness, and seeing as ideal types—and as often essentialized sensory modes—make it possible to read differences between Sound studies and Deaf studies as sites of possible articulation. We direct attention to four zones of productive overlap, attending to how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice, how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deafhearing dichotomies, how “deaf futurists” champion cyborg sound, and how signing and other non-spoken communicative practices might undo phonocentric models of speech. Sound studies and Deaf studies emerge as fields with much to offer one another epistemologically, theoretically, and practically.     

Fairness decisions in children and early adolescents with and without hearing loss

Although having universal aspects, development of a sense of fairness, a milestone in children's social development, is influenced by social and cultural forces. Yet, it scarcely has been studied in children who are at risk for their social development, let alone in deaf and hard‐of‐hearing (DHH) children, who have limited access to linguistic and social input. This study examined for the first time equity preferences in DHH children compared with hearing counterparts. About 179 children (8–11 years) and early adolescents (12–14 years) played four economic allocation games where they distributed coins between themselves and another child. Participants with and without hearing loss were similar in conditions that entailed non‐costly prosociality or self‐maximization. However, DHH participants showed weaker inequity aversion in more complex conditions: DHH children were more willing to allow other players to receive more coins than themselves, compared with hearing children and to DHH or hearing adolescents, and DHH adolescents were less willing to share resources when it was self‐costly, compared with all other groups. Findings are discussed in light of the tension between norms of social comparison and norms of prosociality, and how they are reflected in developmental trajectories for inequity aversion when access to these norms is limited.     

社会融合视角下聋人大学生身份认同及其影响因素研究

认同被视为个人对外在环境和自身状况的综合反映,相当程度上能够表现出个人心理层面社会融合的状态。本文以N学院在校全部聋人大学生为研究对象,通过304份问卷调查,对他们身份认同进行研究,结果表明：聋人大学生身份认同呈现四个倾向分化并处于一定困境之中;听力损失年龄在四个认同倾向上影响并不显著,性别、听力损失程度、家庭背景、家庭教育、学校受教育方式、学业成绩以及社会交往等因素对身份认同影响比较显著。政府、学校及家庭等相关人员要关注聋人大学生身份认同困境并寻找对策以促进他们融入社会。     

Sensory Orientations and Sensory Designs in the American Deafworld

ABSTRACT

In order to understand the meaning of deafness, one needs to understand the role of senses in culture. The DeafWorld is a sensory world. People who are d/Deaf create their own sensory profile. There are three principal sensory orientations among d/Deaf people in the American DeafWorld: visual, auditory, and tactile. These orientations have led to the invention of visual, tactile, and auditory sensible objects and architectures to fit the d/Deaf world and d/Deaf subjects' needs. These objects are also partly generated through interaction with the audist sensory orientation of the hearing world and thus constitute a kind of bridge between the two worlds while at the same time contributing to their distinctive contours.     

CLINICAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL GROUP WORK WITH THE DEAF

Social Group work with deaf clients is virtually non-existent although there is a need for it in the deaf community. The author describes some of the psychosocial factors that should be considered when working with the deaf, and some of the skills that social workers should have before attempting it. In addition, some of the author's own experiences in working with a group of deaf clients are described and related to the foregoing psychosocial factors.     

Resonant Texts: Sounds of the American Public Library

ABSTRACT

Public libraries have long been associated with silence and order. Historians have argued that the architecture of library buildings has served in disciplining patrons into silent reading subjects. I argue that, in light of evolving, subjective definitions of and responses to noise, changing philosophies of librarianship and library design and the proliferation of media formats and the sounds they emit, we need to consider new ways of thinking about sound in the library, not as something to be eliminated or controlled, but as something to be orchestrated, and even designed for. In order to do so, I propose that we consider first what sounds people, buildings and media make, and then use architectural design to promote their cooperative interaction.     

Unruly Voices in the Museum

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the use of audio recordings and oral memory for the critical engagement with colonial pasts in ethnographic museums by focusing on the traveling exhibition What We See, curated by Anette Hoffmann (2009). Specifically, it draws on Jeffrey Feldman's notion of colonial “contact points,” i.e. material traces of colonial encounter, to highlight the exhibition's ability to convey and critique the sensory experience of colonial contact. In What We See, this colonial contact consisted in an anthropometric project conducted in South-West Africa, today's Namibia, in 1931, resulting in an archive of anthropometric measurements and photographs, life-casts, and phonographic recordings. The exhibition proposed an innovative way of reworking this archive by staging an intricate interplay between sound and sight, thereby disrupting conventional ocularcentric forms of display. However, this multisensory approach provoked highly divergent reactions at its various exhibition venues. This article argues that the divergent reactions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Vienna, Austria, were due to different levels of what Ann Stoler describes as “colonial aphasia”—that is the context-dependent difficulty of addressing disquieting colonial pasts and its sensory dimensions.     

Young Men Living Through and with Child Sexual Abuse: A Practitioner Research Study

to andrewdurham{at}warwickshire.gov.uk Summary This paper uses a post-structural framework to examine the experienceand impact of child sexual abuse on the lives of seven youngmen aged between 15 and 24. The study highlights the importanceof survivors' perspectives and of allowing children and youngpeople to speak for themselves and theorize their own experiences.The study's sensitive methodology allowed the young men to besupported throughout the research and feel able to impart hiddenfeelings and anxieties which they had held on to for significantperiods of time. The research showed how the perpetrators tookextensive measures in targeting and gaining access to and silencingthe boys they sexually abused. Through purposefully constructedrelationships, the boys were made to feel responsible and guiltyabout being abused and therefore found it extremely difficultto tell. A social context of patriarchal relations, with genderconstructions characterized by compulsory heterosexism and homophobiasignificantly exacerbated the experiences of the young men.This context was shown to create circumstances and ‘normal’power relationships that allowed the abuse to happen, creatingmany opportunities for the abusers to justify their actionsand further silence their victims.     

聋人大学生的校园生活调查及分析

聋人大学生对校园生活的感受基本良好,但在校园生活中也遇到一些问题。生活中遇到烦恼时,多数学生喜欢一个人默默承受。聋人学生对其群体的依赖性较强,但多数学生表示愿意与非聋人学生交往。聋人学生的恋爱对象七成为聋人,他们对选择健全人为恋爱对象的热情不高。聋人学生的闲暇生活较为充实,对毕业后就业较有信心。     

Preverbal Communication of Deaf and Hearing Children

Before they acquire verbal language, deaf children and those with intact hearing communicate with others with the aid of nonverbal means: facial expression, gestures, vocalizations, body movements, and glances. Our studies of preverbal communication of children with intact hearing led to the concept of a protolanguage, i.e., a preverbal system of means of communication, which is the precondition for the development of verbal speech and is formed in communication and joint object-related activity of the child and the mother. This system is social in nature and serves the purposes of communication and the expression of notions about the environment and about oneself [2-5]. How does the protolanguage of same-age deaf children and children with normal hearing differ? A study of this question is important for our knowledge about the system of means of communication of two-to-three-year-old deaf children. The language of facial expression and gestures of the deaf has often been studied in special investigations [1,6], but never in children.     

Emerging adults’ judgments about helping at home: Situational and experiential sources of variability

Judgments and decisions about household helping affect how families function, and they develop through everyday experiences. Much prior research has examined stable individual differences in prosocial orientations, but such orientations also vary within individuals. The present work examined situational and experiential sources of variability in emerging adults’ judgments and reasoning about helping at home. The research assessed judgments and reasoning about household helping in events that were either hypothetical (Studies 1 and 2) or took place in participants’ own homes (Study 2). Participants’ judgments about helping incorporated moral, personal, and social-conventional considerations and differentiated helping in one's own home from helping in another home. Participants’ past experiences with household helping predicted their judgments about helping. Findings supported the view that emerging adults’ judgments about household helping are informed by both situational considerations and personal experiences.     

Object relations theory: Cultural and social implications for psychotherapy with individuals who are deaf

The case of Rita highlights the importance of integrating a multicultural perspective with psychodynamic theory for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Social constructivist theory suggests that the meaning and stigma of deafness influences the parent‐child relationship as well as the numerous socialization experiences that an individual encounters. As this paper shows, the Deaf community, with its unique linguistic, cultural, and social processes, played an integral role in developing whole object relations for Rita. This case exemplifies the importance of integrating psychological, sociocultural, and linguistic components, which are essential to the development of those who are deaf.     

Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations, 2005 Smith College School for Social Work

Abstract

This essay reflects on personal transformative experiences as explored using ideas from transformative learning, developmental perspectives and the practice of spiritual direction. This reflects the multi-disciplinary, relationally based perspectives that are useful in exploring transformation when spirituality is an essential dimension of understanding the meaning of critical incidents or events in one's life. Using the metaphor of spinning a kaleidoscope to identify memories that elucidate critical transitions in a personal narrative, there are memories from childhood, early professional life and recent events which afford an opportunity to revisit and explore the meaning of those events. The essay provides insight into the practice of spiritual direction that has similar parallels in clinical practice. These parallels include: the importance of attending to the relationship; of paying attention to one's own stillness and silence; and of engaging the other in owning the transformative power of insights from their explorations.     

The Power of Learning and Men’s Stories in Engaging Abusive Men in the Change Process: Qualitative Study Across Programs

This study draws upon input from facilitators (n = 8) and a sample of men who committed acts of domestic abuse (n = 14) from two urban programs. A key finding of the research was that “learning things and motivation to learn” was an important factor keeping men engaged in treatment. Men also reported that hearing other mens’ stories was a motivator for change. These findings validated the importance of open-ended groups with an educational format. They also suggest that men already in treatment can be of value to others just beginning the treatment process by sharing their stories of change.     

The Millhill

This study reports on discharged patients' experiences of care at a therapeutic community - The Millhill. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and interviews. The focus of the study is on the former patients' own experiences of The Millhill and their present state. The majority report positive changes when they compare how they feel today with how they felt just prior to admission and just after discharge. Eighty-five percent claim that the major problem which led them to seek treatment is less serious today than it was when they were admitted to The Millhill. Compared with other inpatient care, the interviews showed that treatment at The Millhill was based on long-term individual treatment plans and that those undergoing treatment were treated as "individuals", whereas treatment in the psychiatric wards was more like "storage" and medication and those undergoing treatment were treated as "patients".     

Embracing Sculptural Ceramics: A Lived Experience of Touch in Art

ABSTRACT

Sculptural ceramic objects created by and for the body were made within the context of art-based research, in which theoretical explorations and studio practice were integrally interwoven. Studio explorations developed from theoretical knowledge gained from human physiology, and from the development of an understanding of the “lived experience” as expressed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, through the experiences of the artist in making, and comments from visitors at exhibitions. The artworks challenge the visual hegemony of the art gallery by more fully engaging the body's sense of touch through the embrace. The sculptures, which were made by “casting hugs,” instinctively invite interaction, with soft curves that echo the human body, textures to visually entice individuals to touch, and a pleasurable weight that slows down responses. In public exhibition the artworks are enthusiastically embraced and held, broadening and articulating a tactile aesthetic for sculpture, and shifting focus from the sculptural objects themselves to one's physical and emotional experience of those objects.     

The Survival Experiences of People with Depression in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Depression is one of the most common mental health problems, yet it is a challenge for service practitioners to establish a relationship with those that suffer in silence. Relatively few qualitative studies have been conducted in East Asia to understand the illness experience of people with depression and their interaction with service practitioners. This study delineates the struggling and surviving experiences of 4 qualitative interviews with people with depression in Taiwan and their comments on service provision. It is found that all participants lived with depression by developing their own coping strategies. Moreover, the participants preferred a friend-like relationship with service provider and some service practitioners' attributes can enhance the interaction and relationship with depression sufferers. Future research is needed to investigate depression sufferers' preferences on professional relationship in different societies and search for effective ways to work with seemingly “apathetic” sufferers.     

Differential treatment in unemployment relief cases 1

Abstract

Trauma therapy influences the personal and professional lives of therapists as they cope with the secondary traumatic stress associated with treating trauma survivors. Therapists go through an internal process as they try both to make sense out of the stories they hear from clients, and to integrate those stories into their own existing cognitive schemas. During this process of integration, trauma therapists often experience secondary traumatic stress reactions that negatively impact the treatment process, as well as their own experiences of self. Secondary traumatic stress, vicarious traumitization, and worker burnout are distinctly different processes that practitioners need to differentiate, even though they are often similar in their initial presentation.