Rhythms of Care: Autistic Embodiment and Empathy in Equine Therapy

By Roslyn Malcolm

A thoughtful exploration of autism, offering a new understanding of social relations through a sensory-perceptual approach

Sensitive and flighty, horses require carefully designed environments to help them feel calm and soothed--precisely the sort of places that Roslyn Malcolm finds can help some autistic youth to flourish. In Rhythms of Care, she changes the conversation around autism, redefining it as a whole-body condition of sensory-perceptual difference rather than neurological misfiring.

Malcolm chronicles the experiences of several youth with autism and their families at two UK equestrian riding centers, developing new language to elaborate on an advancing sense of autistic embodiment and sociality emerging through equine-assisted therapy. Her inquiry turns away from a focus on autistic brains and toward cultivating ecologies where autistic people's ways of being and embodiments can be accepted and supported.

Tracing the role of sensory and endocrinological knowledge in our formulations of bodies, empathy, and personhood, Rhythms of Care explores more-than-human sociality, multispecies distributions of care, and anthropology. In our chronically stressful and overstimulating era of late capitalism and inequality, Malcolm envisions a sensory environment for all beings.

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1517919703
• ISBN13: 9781517919702
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.