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University of California Press

An Ordinary Future

Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born Different
by Thomas W Pearson (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $27.95 / £24.00
Publication Date: Sep 2023
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 222
ISBN: 9780520388291
Trim Size: 6 x 9
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About the Book

This vivid portrait of contemporary parenting blends memoir and cultural analysis to explore evolving ideas of disability and human difference.
 
An Ordinary Future is a deeply moving work that weaves an account of Margaret Mead's path to disability rights activism with one anthropologist's experience as the parent of a child with Down syndrome. With this book, Thomas W. Pearson confronts the dominant ideas, disturbing contradictions, and dramatic transformations that have shaped our perspectives on disability over the last century.

Pearson examines his family's story through the lens of Mead's evolving relationship to disability—a topic once so stigmatized that she advised Erik Erikson to institutionalize his son, born with Down syndrome in 1944. Over the course of her career, Mead would become an advocate for disability rights and call on anthropology to embrace a wider understanding of humanity that values diverse bodies and minds. Powerful and personal, An Ordinary Future reveals why this call is still relevant in the ongoing fight for disability justice and inclusion, while shedding light on the history of Down syndrome and how we raise children born different.

About the Author

Thomas W. Pearson is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Social Science Department at the University of Wisconsin–Stout and author of When the Hills Are Gone: Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community.

From Our Blog

Did Margaret Mead Support Disability Rights?

By Thomas W. Pearson, author of An Ordinary Future: Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born DifferentIn 1944, Margaret Mead helped banish a disabled child to a dismal existence in an institution.Mead was close friends with Erik Erikson, a psychoanalyst who would also becom
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

1. Becoming 
2. Features 
3. Institutions 
4. Potential 
5. Belonging 1
6. Vulnerability 
Epilogue 

Acknowledgments 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index

Reviews

"[A] moving meditation on difference, disability, and humanity. In 2015, when his newborn daughter, Michaela, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, [Pearson] and his wife were shocked. Soon, though, he asked himself whether that initial response was generated by ideas about normalcy deeply embedded in the culture. . . . Sensitive reflections on human value."
— Kirkus Reviews
"In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting."
— Sapiens
"Overall, this book does not shy away from difficult content and debates, providing ample opportunity to grapple with questions of positionality, the past, present, and future of anthropology, and the way society treats disabled citizens. With its rich combination of personal narrative, history of anthropology, and historical ethnography, this book is likely to be of interest to a wide variety of students, both undergraduate and graduate, and scholars at various levels in both anthropology and disability studies."
— Medical Anthropology Quarterly
"Thomas Pearson has written an informed, insightful, and heartfelt account of what it's like to be an anthropologist stretched to confront a form of difference beyond what our discipline was built to accept. Margaret Mead famously declared that the mission of anthropology was making the world safe for difference. But when Erik Erikson asked Mead how to raise his newborn son, who had Down syndrome, she told him to send his child away. Pearson traces a transformation in Mead's understanding of difference and disability, and his own, drawing on archival research, wide reading in disability studies, and the lessons he's learned from life with his daughter, Michaela, who was born with Down syndrome in 2015. A beautifully written, honest, and insightful history of the world that children with Down syndrome and their parents now inhabit—and the new worlds they are making."—Danilyn Rutherford, President, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

"Pearson illustrates the depths of disability negation that reach deep into our collective consciousness. An Ordinary Future is a timely and compelling reminder of how important it is to critically revisit the past to understand the present and envision future possibilities."—Aaron J. Jackson, author of Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities

"Pearson's research is omnivorous, and the anthropological framework that he applies to both his life events and the history of disability is clarifying. An Ordinary Future is honest, sharing painful experiences that do not flinch from admitting unflattering thoughts. This work isn't just about scholarship, but about telling a valuable story. Pearson has done this."—Chris Kaposy, author of Choosing Down Syndrome: Ethics and New Prenatal Testing Technologies