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The author of this chapter works as exactly the sort of social, cultural and language role model that deaf children need, as argued in previous chapters. He describes methods in teaching deaf children how to be Deaf. Part of the work is teaching British Sign Language, focusing particularly on characteristics typical of sign languages but not of speech, such as the use of space in locating participants in an event. Another part is introducing them to Deaf culture. Children need to understand that experiences they may have had are typical of deaf people and, as such, make them part of the community. And, finally, the author educates them about deaf history and famous deaf people, to instill in them pride in their cultural heritage.

The author worked with Paul Scott, the author of chapter 12, educating deaf children before entering academia. This chapter reports on an earlier research project in which the author interviewed children about their experiences in Scott’s classroom. The chapter gives us the children’s responses to the author’s questions, showing through masterfully chosen examples their eloquently expressed appreciation of Scott’s training.

The author of this chapter has been advising the Myanmar government on policy regarding deaf people. Because Myanmar does not have a national deaf community, a national sign language cannot emerge naturally. The government wants to develop and promote a standard sign language. However, the government did not agree to form a national deaf organization as a first step, fearing a power to contend with. The new recommendation is that a Myanmar Sign Language textbook be published. The author hopes the text will enlighten hearing and deaf readers, and foster a sense of entitlement to rights, from which a national organization will emerge to advocate for deaf communities. The chapters ends with remarks on the changing situation in Japan with respect to JSL.

The author uses chapter 12 as a jumping off point to talk about deaf education in general. The chapter opens with the value of Deaf educators in the deaf classroom, and argues that deaf education is minority education and should be afforded the same attention. The author urges that cultural education be included, and laments the dominance of medical procedures that threaten Deaf culture. The deaf child in a hearing world needs a safe environment in which to develop a healthy identity that will allow for a strong education and the ability to find a satisfying, productive place in the worlds they must straddle.

In this chapter the authors converse about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in deaf communities, recommending national, not local, action with regard to funding, information dissemination, and information gathering. At the same time they focus attention on strengths deaf communities bring to this fight, such as peer-to-peer teaching. Communication barriers, the stigma of AIDS, and lack of recognition and funding from larger organizations hamper outreach and treatment efforts. Many are afflicted due to failure to deliver relevant information to deaf communities — from how the disease is transmitted, to what a plus symbol means (i.e. something negative, not positive), to what is appropriate medical treatment and how to get it. The lack of accessible language in outreach organizations has been a major culprit in this confusion.

This chapter outlines difficulties in determining a national sign language, examining language ideologies. The author witnessed political fragmentation in Japan, as the older generation, represented by Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD), coined and disseminated new signs in order to compete with the national public television service as well as fend off criticism from younger, cultural Deaf members. While everyone agrees new signs are necessary, JFD is challenged as the guardian of the JSL lexicon both by D-Pro, a group that wants to protect against spoken language influences, and by the television network NHK, which reaches out to all deaf, regardless of the extent to which they vocalize or sign and regardless of which variety of sign they use.

In the Chinese social situation, heath care, education, and employment are consistent family concerns. While 80 percent of deaf children receive an education now, many do not use standardized Chinese Sign Language and have little exposure to deaf adult role models. Although charities and international organizations help some deaf children receive assistive technology and training, most go without. A major goal of the Chinese Disabled People Foundation is to get deaf children placed in local regular schools (not in bilingual-bicultural schools) with rehabilitation and vocational support. On the other hand, recent media attention has led to sign courses in universities, and a Deaf Pride movement has begun, so Deaf culture is now valued, and there are some new bilingual-bicultural schools.

In this chapter the author recounts his work, supporting the call for the establishment of schools and local and national organizations for deaf people, as well as supporting the call for international organizations to empower deaf communities to meet their goals. International aid institutions after World War II effected changes in the world view of deaf people that led to the establishment of schools for deaf children. Missionaries introduced foreign sign languages or the oral method rather than local sign languages. British Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language were imposed on African and Asian schools, although tribal sign languages persisted. Still, much work remains to be done in raising awareness of Deaf culture and of the validity of sign languages as natural human languages.

The authors extend chapter 9’s discussion to a different world arena, South Africa. They, too, talk about pernicious effects of lack of access to proper health information, particularly regarding sexual behavior. Meletse is an activist — and was the first Deaf African to self-identify as HIV-positive — and Morgan is a linguistic anthropologist. They met in 2000 when he was interviewed for a Deaf culture project and have been colleagues and friends ever since. In South Africa even some outreach workers are misinformed and pass on that misinformation. The social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS leads to secrecy, which compounds the problem. National organizations, including disability ones, do not meet their responsibilities to deaf communities, resulting in an ever-escalating number of cases.

Attention shifts to another developing country, India. The chapter highlights the two main problems hampering deaf rights: lack of appreciation of Deaf culture and lack of successful role models. Indians tend to hide their deaf children, so that only 5 percent attend school, with only 10 percent of those in programs designed to meet deaf needs. The rest struggle without interpreters or other support in regular programs. Few have hearing aids. Most arrive at school with no language and pick up Indian Sign Language from other children, since most teachers know little sign. There are no training programs for interpreters. To date, little research has been done on deaf communities or Indian Sign Language.

This introduction is an overview of the book’s goals, with a brief summary of each chapter. The book followed an eponymous conference at Swarthmore College in 2008 at which activists and scholars in deaf matters exchanged ideas. The major thesis is that the interaction of activists and scholars is synergistic: activists find support in the work of scholars and scholars both have a responsibility toward the community they study and do better work when they understand activists’ concerns. The first part of the book is on the creation, context, and form of sign languages; the second, on social issues of Deaf communities. The global picture that emerges shows great similarity and continuity in the Deaf World.

Chapter 2 addresses the ways in which properties of ethnic groups create and maintain ethnic boundaries. The contexts in which we find active boundary maintenance in the Deaf-World can be sorted into outside and inside forces. Outside forces include formal classification, official policies, labor markets, residential space, and daily experience. Inside forces include language, common physical features such as height and skin color, and cultural mores. Deaf and hearing people have profound differences on fundamental issues that create and maintain boundaries. Opposed views include: designation of Deaf people (Deaf vs. hearing-impaired); competence to control Deaf institutions (privileged / incompetent); shaping the lives of Deaf children (bilingual education / cochlear implants); Cultural status (ASL recognition / ASL replacement); discriminatory practices (job networking / prejudicial job descriptions and hiring). The practice of marrying within one's ethnic group is another internal force for boundary maintenance.

This chapter describes the life and extended Deaf family of the first great American Deaf leader, Thomas Brown, whose town of Henniker, N.H. became an important Deaf enclave in the founding of the Deaf World in America. In the 1850 census 27 Deaf people are listed for Henniker or at one or two towns remove. Brown labored to create the first Deaf association in America: the New England Gallaudet Association, which he served as president. In his later years Brown proposed a national convention of Deaf-mutes, which took place in 1880, and led to the founding of the National Association of the Deaf. The genealogy of the Henniker Deaf enclave is described; the enclave contrasts in genetic makeup, marriage practices, sign language use and cultural mores with the large Deaf community on Martha's Vineyard.

This chapter describes a limits model of theological reflection, attending to the fluidity of human embodiment and most particularly the claim that limits are an unsurprising aspect of being human. By reflecting specifically on Deaf Culture and cognitive disabilities, it explores the theological implications of the limits model for anthropology, reinterpreting limitation as part of what it means to be human rather than as a punishment for sin or an obstacle to be overcome in pursuit of perfection. In particular, the chapter explores the nature of human diversity and suggests a reinterpretation of traditional theological anthropology and images of God. It also suggests that a limits perspective, rather than leading us toward fragmentation or universality, can instead offer a common ground for conversation and can be an important source for theological reflection.

This chapter examines “sound” and “hearing” in relation to silence and deafness. Sound studies and Deaf studies would seem, at first perception, to operate in worlds apart. Sound studies privileges attention to listening and hearing in cultural experience, whereas Deaf studies emphasizes the visual, particularly as a space of communicative practice. The chapter considers four major practices that might prompt scholars in sound studies and Deaf studies into conversation. These practices ask how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice; how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deaf–hearing dichotomies; how “deaf futurists” champion cyborg sound; and how signing, non-speech-based communicative practices, and listening might unwind phonocentric models of speech and move analysis away from the simple frame of “speech communities.” The chapter concludes by asking how to move beyond the ear and eye, rethinking the subjects of sound and Deaf studies.

Three Deaf enclaves that flourished in the nineteenth century stand out in an analysis of how the Deaf-World was founded in New England: Henniker, New Hampshire, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, and southern Maine. Deaf ancestry in America has its roots in the English settlers of the seventeenth century. What the settlers found and created together is the backdrop for a consideration of the individual Deaf families. The homogeneity of the small population of settlers made it more likely that marriages would be among people with similar genetic backgrounds, favoring the birth of Deaf children. Nearly everyone was engaged in farming in the early years of the new republic. Each farmer was highly dependent on his neighbors, and this no doubt reinforced the importance for Deaf people of finding one another and of forming small enclaves. The practice of marrying kin yielded more opportunities for children to be hereditarily Deaf.

Many Deaf households were enmeshed in a Deaf kinship network. Marriage with a person of one's own kind in an environment of otherness creates a heightened consciousness of shared identity and destiny. Deaf ethnicity is an upward projection of family, of language, and of cultural rules and values. An intermediate stage between Deaf family and Deaf ethnicity is intermarriage across Deaf families, forming larger Deaf clans. Three factors contributed mightily to Deaf solidarity: marriage between Deaf people, marriage between relatives, and de novo creation of Deaf ethnicity. Abetted by institutions such as the American Asylum, the New England Gallaudet Association and the Deaf-Mute Mission, the Deaf of southern New Hampshire and Maine came to see themselves as a class apart from the hearing world, a group with its own distinctive language, culture, and physical makeup. This chapter considers the possible consequences for the Deaf were they to embrace an ethnic classification.

This chapter highlights aspects of best practices of researchers and organizations when collaborating with deaf communities (such as in Brazil) to nurture them in achieving independence and enhanced quality of life. The authors’ joint study aimed to discover how outside funding institutions can aid the economic development of Kenyan deaf communities from the point of view of those communities. Community members identified problems of corruption and cultural misunderstandings, resulting in misuse of funding. They recommended community planning, management, and evaluation of projects, and that money from institutions go directly to communities, not via brokers, and deaf Kenyans be trained and thus empowered to make their own changes.