Performing Diabetes: Surveillance and Self-Management

Abstract

Sustaining the diabetic body involves visible practices of expert self-management: injecting insulin and testing blood sugar levels. Drawing form qualitative interviews I consider how people with diabetes manage the visibility of these practices relative to space. For many, the practices of diabetes are configured as ‘to be hidden’, and micro-spatial strategies are frequently deployed to conceal injections and tests from possible observing others. Diabetes then, is often a performance, one influenced by the performativity in space and place in which bodies are felt to be monitored. People with diabetes internalise self-disciplinary practices – keeping their diabetes discreet – especially in public. In this paper I contend that because of this performed discretion of diabetes self-management practices, there is a barrier to knowing diabetic bodies and lifeworlds. I suggest that, through increasing awareness of this subtle performance and surveillance, people with diabetes may feel less restricted in their self-management when in public space.

Converting, Monitoring, and Policing PrEP Citizenship: Biosexual Citizenship and the PrEP Surveillance Regime

“…There are likely many other forms of biosexual citizenship, and biocitizenship in general, that can be informed by this case in which individuals and structures must regulate themselves and be involved in indefinite surveillance or otherwise be positioned "against health" (Metzl and Kirkland 2010). For instance, the surveillance of those with diabetes is lateral by fellow users and nonusers alike, as well as continual through biomedical structures (Lucherini 2016). Once identified as someone with type 2 diabetes, one does not lose the medical status and will have their weight constantly monitored with additional implications for other arenas of their life, similar to our PrEP participants.…”

The (un)habitual geographies of Social Anxiety Disorder

“…They are continually assessed and re-structured in response to internal and symptomatic warning signs and various socio-spatial cues and clues. By exploring the day-to-day consequences of living with social anxiety this paper complements existing research on disruptive experiences of mental and emotional health (Davidson, 2003a;Parr, 1999;Segrott and Doel, 2004) and chronic illness and impairment (Crooks, 2007;Dyck, 1995;Lucherini, 2016;Smith, 2012) by paying attention to how participants experience and negotiate social anxiety (whether socially, spatially or otherwise) in the context of their everyday lives. Comparatively, attention needs to be paid to the disruptions caused to 'whole' lives and the impact of wider ill-health trajectories on, for example, social lives, educational attainment and employment opportunities (Bell et al, 2016).…”

“…Being 'under surveillance' is an intensely felt experience that is inherently tied to notions of social performance and behaviour (Lucherini, 2016) and how she believes she is perceived by others. Anya's story is instructive of how 'habitual patterns of thought trans-form what might otherwise be a fleeting negative feeling/thought into a more enduring form of negativity or rumination' (Lea et al, 2015, 55) through her tendency to 'obsess' over the microscopic details of social encounters.…”

Representing diabetes: ‘Brightside’ and ‘chaos’ in autobiography

“…The moral imperative to overcome diabetes creates a social opprobrium where space to talk about Representing diabetes 12 diabetes is restricted. It is these views that can lead to diabetes being hidden and silenced as people wish not to be seen 'failing', admitting that they may have difficulty managing the condition (Lucherini, 2016). Diabetes is therefore a 'contested' illness (Moss and Teghtsoonian, 2008) but perhaps one that is less readily considered in this way.…”