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 enlarge | Authors: Carol A. Padden, Tom L. Humphries
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 521842
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 0674015061
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.90820973
EAN: 9780674015067
ASIN: 0674015061
Publication Date: January 30, 2005
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| Customer Reviews:
 M. Hoffman's Review of Inside Deaf Culture March 19, 2007
Padden and Humphries's elegant and absorbing work looks at the history of sign language and the development of a deaf culture in the United States. They repeatedly demonstrate that the community is not a single, solid block of people. There are many different histories and experiences. Some deaf people grew up with families that signed, others were isolated in hearing families that did not. Some were the only deaf people in their community, while others were raised in a deaf household. There were also discrepancies in whether signing was encouraged or opposed. The authors expertly show the multiplicity of cultures within the deaf community, as in the ways the meeting houses were divided by race and class.
Padden and Humphries also trace the history of educational institutions for the deaf. Using Foucault's analysis in Discipline and Punish, they illustrate the "regulation and labeling" of bodies as well as the abuses of power that were inevitable/occurred in institutions for the deaf. They examine the multiple reactions and experiences of deaf people in those institutions. For some it was empowering to have a community, for others it was isolating and the institutions were run by unsympathetic hearing/non-signing people. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in culture, alternate US histories, and/or communication.
T Eggink's and M Walsh's Reviews of Deaf Culture March 18, 2007
Inside Deaf Culture chronicles and engages the emergence and acceptance of the concept of Deaf culture. Padden and Humphries situate themselves as children of a historical period during which the idea of Deaf culture had not yet emerged, while asserting that Deaf culture did already exist as a culture. As the debate over Deaf culture and language arose during their college years, their account of the history and development of a group identity among deaf people therefore intersects with their own biographies. They argue that the self-definition as a culture allowed Deaf people a sense of wholeness as both Deaf people and hearing people learned to see the Deaf community as culturally rich and empowered. They examine influential moments in the history of that community, showing throughout how the themes of the challenge of voice and of the struggle against power imbalances resonate from the nineteenth century, with its prevalence of oralism, asylums, and eugenics, to the twenty first century, and the emergence of cochlear implants and the Human Genome Project.
The theme of the struggle for voice is fundamental to Padden and Humphries's account. Deaf culture emerges to be recognized as a whole culture like other cultures, but nonetheless it does have its own distinct political goals. Padden and Humphries show the enduring impact of the nineteenth-century schools for the deaf, with their censure of sign language and their insistence on oralist teaching methods. They assert that, because of these early forms of segregation and separation, the struggle for the use and management of voice, and to make sign language intelligible, is the basis for nearly every political act within the Deaf community. They chronicle the shift in public perception of the Deaf, from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, when deafness and muteness were linked, to the means by which new links were forged, connecting deaf culture with spoken voice; from the conception of speech and language as inseparable to the recent recognition by a hearing world of American Sign Language as a language.
The theme of the struggle against power imbalances is also central. Again, Padden and Humphries stress the historical legacy of the early-nineteenth-century asylums, the practices of which-naming, management, classification, control, separation-constitute the imbalance of power inherent to these institutions. They discuss the conflictual nature of that legacy, as even while the institution made deaf children vulnerable to abuses of power it also forged them into a sign language community. This conflict remains unresolved, as the authors question how deaf children can be educated within a community, which is what Deaf people want, without repeating the patterns of the nineteenth-century asylum where the Deaf are rendered powerless.
The concluding chapter discusses the contemporary situation and the continued relevance of these two themes in the current age of cochlear implants and the Human Genome Project. Padden and Humphries situate Deaf people within what they term as one of the deepest contradictions of the twenty-first century-the conflicting drives to acknowledge diversity on the one hand, and "repair" it on the other. They argue that the struggle for voice is crucial in order to communicate the risks of post-cochlear-implant social programs that are dangerously reminiscent of the nineteenth-century oralism. Padden and Humphries stress that the fact that Deaf people want to preserve their language and culture does not mean that they do not also want to embrace technology, and that the challenge is how to voice their perspectives on scientific technology in a world that finds it easier not to listen.
M Walsh's Review:Provocative. Speaking out from the inside, authors Carol Padden and Tom Humphries provide a compelling narrative of the historical, cultural, and contemporary forces that influence the lives of the deaf. Only within the last 30 years has academic literature about deafness shifted its account from one centered on pathology and the search for a cure, to a more nuanced, intimate examination of sociocultural perspectives that open readers' ears, inclining them into a deeper understanding of deaf culture and the deaf experience. In their exciting new book, Inside Deaf Culture, Padden and Humphries give readers a chronological tour of the moments that they've identified as the most influential in shaping the deaf community.
The book opens with a haunting look into the power dynamics of the hearing community, beginning with allegations that molestation was prevalent in the first schools for deaf children. While they highlight how power, control, and repression are forces that course through this history, shaping people's identity and influencing their attitudes about deaf schools, Padden and Humphries do not oversimplify the history. Their account acknowledges the crucial role that the schools played in transmitting culture, the role the schools played in providing a vehicle for communication across hearing and Deaf communities, and importantly, a place for the Deaf to join in community. Descriptions of burgeoning Deaf social clubs during the mid twentieth century, the height of Deaf theatre, and the effects the Second World War had on the Deaf community are inflected with the voices of friends, family members, and colleagues that they interviewed. Their attempt to remember an era, and their effort to record the stories of a different generation, is what draws readers closer to the page. It's what pulls readers into a conversation that they cannot walk away from.
Inside Deaf Culture is a book for multiple audiences. Graceful prose, a kaleidoscope of examples, personal narrative, and the authors' clear passion to preserve the history and culture of the Deaf community - complete with its bruises and its triumphs - make this a valuable book for students, professors, and anyone interested in understanding Deaf culture. Breaking the silence, Padden and Humphries offer a moving tour through the powerful and complicated history of Deaf culture, allowing readers to hear the resounding voices of a community many of us have never before heard.
Great insight into the history and emergence of Deaf Culture March 11, 2007
Inside Deaf Culture examines the history of the deaf community and the emergence of Deaf culture. This history encompasses the institutionalization of deaf children in special schools, the Deaf clubs that provided a space for advocacy and socializing, the Deaf performances that acknowledged and encouraged the creativity through sign, and the debates within and out of the Deaf community about Deaf culture and the legitimacy of American Sign Language.
Throughout the book, Padden and Humphries trace and examine the separation and control of Deaf people. They use interviews, personal memories, and historical documents to give a variety of perspectives on what the institutionalization of the Deaf into special schools has meant for the Deaf community. They explore how even the earliest separations of children - by gender, race, and teaching method - impacted the community as the children grew up. These issues are brought into the present as Padden & Humphries discuss cochlear implants.
Padden and Humphries also discuss the internal and external struggle to recognize Deaf culture. Having experienced the struggles themselves, the authors fully recognize that the legitimization of Deaf culture and American Sign Language did not come easily. They do an excellent job of how Deaf culture allowed the Deaf community a "thread of connection to the past" (161) while also recognizing that Deaf culture and ASL was not always greeted positively or without suspicions, even within the Deaf community.
The book is easy to read and provides a fascinating look into the struggles of Deaf culture, past and present.
Inside Deaf Culture March 8, 2007
Inside Deaf Culture presents a beautifully well-written, grounded, and historical exploration of Deaf culture. The book is in part about ASL as a medium for cultural expression. It is also about the history of Deaf culture, its struggle for recognition and struggle with questions of what it means to be a culture. Culture cannot be defined by a dictionary nor reduced to theatrical performance. Rather, it is practices in everyday life. How then, the authors ask, does one define culture or declare who is a member of that culture? Where are the boundaries?
Padden and Humphries find that cultures give us spaces of separation and inclusion. They describe the segregation the Deaf community has experienced from without and within by institution, race, teaching methods, how a person became deaf, extent of hearing-loss, and adoption of technology to help hear. As deaf people are constrained through the management of their bodies, these boundaries can also be liberating as ideas and goals are shared, new practices developed, new spaces of belonging created.
The authors also demonstrates through the history of the Deaf community how shifts in physical geographies lead to shifts in social relations from which emerge shifts in language and culture. As physical boundaries disappear (such as a decrease in the number of deaf educational institutions and community gathering spaces), language is used to stake out new edges. Boundaries become mediated through voice and sign, not fences.
The book emphasizes that culture exists within a history made up of individuals, social forces and conflicts. Padden and Humphries show very well how the border between the body and the world is always mediated (for example, through ASL), changing, and reiterated in every moment through the circumstances of the present.
This book can be helpful to anyone working with the idea of culture. Not only does it provide a solid example of a good analysis, but it opened my eyes to the nuances of what culture means and the importance of individuals in the larger cultural scheme.
 Culture vs. Disability March 7, 2007
Culture is a term that frequently brings to mind images of exotic cuisine, strange rituals, and unfamiliar forms of dress. In Inside Deaf Culture, communication scholars Tom Humphries and Carol Padden outline a culture very different from those that appear in pages of National Geographic: that of the Deaf communities of the United States. Starting with histories of some of the first schools for the deaf, the authors show how sign language has brought together persons with a wide range of hearing abilities around a common form of speech--but not without challenges.
The authors describe some of the most notable instantiations of Deaf culture: early sign language films, the Deaf clubs set up in industrial centers during World War II, Deaf theater and poetry, as well as schools for the Deaf. While these cultural centers and forms helped to solidify the Deaf community around the use of sign language, controversy surrounds the history of the linguistic form. Deaf and hearing alike have doubted, lauded, and studied the status of ASL as a language.
The history of Deaf culture that Humphries and Padden tell is rich, varied, and sometimes emotional, drawing upon both the history of Deafness in America, as well as their personal histories of growing up without hearing. The book's clear style will be accessible to a wide range of readers interested in learning a new way to think about a form of life often labeled disabled. Deaf culture not only exists, it has a fascinating history.
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