Everyday attentiveness: understanding diabetes in Vietnam through literary displacement

Abstract

World‐wide, diabetes is taking on epidemic proportions. This is a debilitating disease that damages and destroys bodily systems unless blood sugar levels are kept close to normal, and patients are therefore urged to practise attentive self‐management. Among people with type II diabetes in Vietnam, such everyday attentiveness seems to far exceed clinical recommendations, suffusing daily lives in pervasive and yet elusive ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Vietnam, this article aims to depict the lifeworlds in which diabetes attentiveness unfolds. Seeking to capture the inchoate ways in which diabetes alters everyday lives, the article develops literary displacement as an experimental mode of writing‐cum‐inquiry that combines standard ethnography with ethnographic fiction. Taking diabetes in Vietnam as its case, the article shows how literary displacement can contribute to cultivating ethnographic as well as analytical sensibilities, strengthening the capacity of anthropology to capture subtle and subdued layers of life.

The Force of Love: Type II Diabetes in Vietnam as Tentatively Transformative Experience

“…Like Ba Ðào, Bà Lan did not express her love in words, yet it was there, a formidable force throwing her into daily agony over her incapacity to help her children and provide for them in the ways she longed to do. 13 These were merely a few examples of fieldwork situations where the force of love emerged, manifesting in dense and compelling moments of interpersonal attentiveness (Gammeltoft 2021b). The illness ambivalence we noticed seemed to be fueled by this force: While recognizing that they suffered from a chronic and sometimes debilitating disease, people with diabetes strove to continue attending to others-thereby upholding their capacity to enact love, understood as "the human practice of respecting the individuality of other lives" (Rapport 2017, 129).…”

“…her during her last years of life. Such concerns regarding whether love is or will be reciprocated are, I have found, prevalent in parent-child relations in northern Vietnamese communities, not least in the context of chronic illness (Gammeltoft 2021b).…”

“…1313The pain that Bà Lan conveyed stemmed, I sensed, not merely from the agony of burdening her children but also from a deep uncertainty regarding whether her love of them would be returned later on when she became even weaker, manifesting in a willingness to help and “serve” ( phục vụ ) her during her last years of life. Such concerns regarding whether love is or will be reciprocated are, I have found, prevalent in parent–child relations in northern Vietnamese communities, not least in the context of chronic illness (Gammeltoft 2021b). …”

“…The capacity to capture such nonverbal forms of expression is therefore an important part of our methodological repertoire as anthropologists (see Bregnbaek and Gammeltoft, this volume;Gammeltoft 2016Gammeltoft , 2021aGammeltoft , 2021b Mattingly and Grøn 2022).…”

“…While words may serve as important ethnographic evidence, it is often through bodily movements, facial expressions, and tones of voice that inner feelings are most forcefully expressed. The capacity to capture such nonverbal forms of expression is therefore an important part of our methodological repertoire as anthropologists (see Bregnbæk and Gammeltoft, this volume; Gammeltoft 2016, 2021a, 2021b; Mattingly and Grøn 2022).…”