Classifying diabetes; or, commensurating bodies of unequal experience

Public Culture

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 467-486

  Rock, Melanie ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844438490     PISSN: 08992363     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/08992363-17-3-467     Document Type: Review

References (128)

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2. Elizabeth A. Povinelli, "Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability," Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 319-34.
3. For a superb analysis of legal arguments that partly hinge on knowledge from biomedicine and epidemiology, see Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, " 'Come up to the Kool Taste': African American Upward Mobility and the Semiotics of Smoking Menthols," Public Culture 15 (2003): 295-322.
4. Michael Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).
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8. Hacking, The Taming of Chance.
9. Chris Feudtner, Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
10. Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin.
11. Canguilhem mobilized this understanding of diabetes mellitus in arguing for a departure from the views of Bernard on the nature of pathology. See George Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (1943, 1966; New York: Zone, 1989);
12. Keating, "George Canguilhem's On the Normal and the Pathological.'" The subsequent recasting of diabetes mellitus as two different diseases, type 1 and type 2, therefore invites reconsideration of Canguilhem's influential argument.
13. Feudtner, Bittersweet.
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22. Melanie Rock, "Figuring out Diabetes: Reckoning Kinship and the Causes of Sickness through Genetic Research," Anthropology and Medicine (in press).
23. Chris Feudtner, Bittersweet;
24. Harry M. Marks, "Anatomy of a Controversy: The University Group Diabetes Program Study," in The Progress of Experiments: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the united States, 1900-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
25. Melanie Rock, "Reconstituting Populations through Evidence-Based Medicine: An Ethnographic Account of Recommending Procedures for Diagnosing Type 2 Diabetes in Clinical Practice," Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness, and Medicine 9 (2005): 241-66;
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27. See Diabetes Control and Complications Trial Research Group, "The Effect of Intensive Diabetes Management on Macrovascular Events and Risk Factors in the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial," American Journal of Cardiology 75 (1995): 894-903,
28. and "The Effect of Intensive Diabetes Management on the Development and Progression of Long-Term Complications in Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus," New England Journal of Medicine 329 (1993): 977-86;
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30. and "Intensive Blood-Glucose Control with Sulphonylureas or Insulin Compared with Conventional Treatment and Risk of Complications in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes," Lancet 352 (1998): 837-53.
31. For further discussion and analysis of this consensus, see Rock, "Reconstituting Populations through Evidence-Based Medicine."
32. Canadian Diabetes Association Clinical Practice Guidelines Expert Committee, "Canadian Diabetes Association 2003 Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention and Management of Diabetes in Canada," Canadian Journal of Diabetes 27, supp. no. 2 (2003): 27.
33. Sandra A. Black, "Diabetes, Diversity, and Disparity: What Do We Do with the Evidence?" American Journal of Public Health 92 (2002): 543-48. U.S. diabetes statistics are among the most accurate in the world because the U.S. government regularly conducts a survey that incorporates blood glucose measurement, allowing the tabulation of the number of people who have been diagnosed, remain undiagnosed, or are at very high risk for type 2 diabetes. This survey has shown that about one-third of all type 2 diabetes cases remain undiagnosed. Similar results have been obtained in Canada, which offers universal insurance for medical care; see
34. Lawrence A. Leiter, Aiala Barr, Andre Belanger, Stanley Lubin, Stuart A. Ross, Hugh D. Tildesley, and Nathalie Fontaine, "Diabetes Screening in Canada (DIASCAN) Study: Prevalence of Undiagnosed Diabetes and Glucose Intolerance in Family Physician Offices," Diabetes Care 24 (2001): 1038-43. Undiagnosed type 1 diabetes is not a pressing public health problem because type 1 diabetes tends to present acutely; type 1 diabetics often learn of their diagnosis following an emergency hospital visit.
35. Canadian Diabetes Association Clinical Practice Guidelines Expert Committee, "Canadian Diabetes Association 2003 Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention and Management of Diabetes in Canada";
36. Chris Green et al., "Geographic Analysis of Diabetes Prevalence in an Urban Area," Social Science and Medicine 57 (2003): 551-60;
37. Health Canada, Diabetes in Canada, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, Population and Public Health Branch, Health Canada, 2003), www.hc-sc.gc.ca/pphb-dgspsp/publicat/dic-dac2/english/01cover_e. html.
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48. Benyshek, Martin, and Johnston, "A Reconsideration of the Origins of the Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic"; Leslie Sue Lieberman, "Dietary, Evolutionary, and Modernizing Influences on the Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes," Annual Review of Nutrition 23 (2003): 345-77;
49. Melanie Rock, "Sweet Blood and Social Suffering: Rethinking Cause-Effect Relationships in Diabetes, Distress, and Duress," Medical Anthropology 22 (2003): 131-74.
50. Benyshek, Martin, and Johnston, "A Reconsideration of the Origins of the Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic";
51. Daniel et al., "Glycated Hemoglobin as an Indicator of Social Environmental Stress";
52. Jeff Reading and Earl Nowgesic, "Improving the Health of Future Generations: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health," American Journal of Public Health 92 (2002): 1396-1400;
53. Rock, "Sweet Blood and Social Suffering";
54. Emoke J. E. Szathmary, "Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus among Aboriginal North Americans," Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 457-82;
55. T. Kue Young et al., "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Canada's First Nations: Status of an Epidemic in Progress," Canadian Medical Association Journal 163 (2000): 561-66.
56. Patricia Boston et al., "Using Participatory Action Research to Understand the Meanings Aboriginal Canadians Attribute to the Rising Incidence of Diabetes," Chronic Diseases in Canada 18, no. 1 (1997): 5-12;
57. Linda C. Garro, "Individual or Societal Responsibility? Explanations of Diabetes in an Anishnaabe (Ojibway) Community," Social Science and Medicine 40, no. 1 (1995): 37-46,
58. "Intracultural Variation in Causal Accounts of Diabetes: A Comparison of Three Canadian Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Communities," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 20, no. 4 (1996): 381-420;
59. Yoshi Iwasaki, Judith Bartlett, and John O'Neil, "An Examination of Stress among Aboriginal Women and Men with Diabetes in Manitoba, Canada," Ethnicity and Health 9, no. 2 (2004): 189-213;
60. Julie Sunday, John Eyles, and Ross Upshur, "Applying Aristotle's Doctrine of Causation to Aboriginal and Biomedical Understandings of Diabetes," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 25, no. 1 (2001): 63-84;
61. Thompson and Gifford, "Trying to Keep a Balance."
62. Sherri Bisset et al., "Legitimizing Diabetes as a Community Health Issue: A Case Analysis of an Aboriginal Community in Canada," Health Promotion International 19, no. 3 (2004): 317-26;
63. Mark Daniel et al., "Effectiveness of Community-Directed Diabetes Prevention and Control in a Rural Aboriginal Population in British Columbia, Canada," Social Science and Medicine 48, no. 6 (1999): 815-32;
64. Joel Gittelsohn et al., "Use of Ethnographic Methods for Applied Research on Diabetes among the Ojibway-Cree in Northern Ontario," Health Education Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1996): 365-82;
65. Reading and Nowgesic, "Improving the Health of Future Generations";
66. Carolyn Smith-Morris, "Reducing Diabetes in Indian Country: Lessons from the Three Domains Influencing Pima Diabetes," Human Organization 63, no. 1 (2004): 34-46.
67. Thomas A. Arcury et al., "Diabetes Meanings among Those without Diabetes: Explanatory Models of Immigrant Latinos in Rural North Carolina," Social Science and Medicine 59, no. 11 (2004): 2183-94;
68. Marlene Z. Cohen et al., "Explanatory Models of Diabetes: Patient Practitioner Variation," Social Science and Medicine 38, no. 1 (1994): 59-66;
69. Steve Ferzacca, "Lived Food and Judgements of Taste at a Time of Disease," Medical Anthropology 23, no. 1 (2004): 41-67;
70. Steve Ferraca, "'Actually, I Don't Feel That Bad': Managing Diabetes and the Clinical Encounter," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14, no. 1 (2000): 28-50;
71. Ron Loewe and Joshua Freeman, "Interpreting Diabetes Mellitus: Differences between Patient and Provider Models of Disease and Their Implications for Clinical Practice," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 24, no. 4 (2000): 379-401;
72. Jane Poss and Mary Ann Jezewski, "The Role and Meaning of Susto in Mexican Americans' Explanatory Model of Type 2 Diabetes," Medical Anthropological Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2002): 360-77.
73. Ferzacca, "'Actually, I Don't Feel That Bad.'"
74. See also Ferzacca, "Lived Food and Judgements of Taste at a Time of Disease."
75. Eric Mykhalovskiy, Liza McCoy, and Michael Bresalier, "Compliance/Adherence, HIV, and the Critique of Medical Power," Social Theory and Health 2, no. 4 (2004): 315-40;
76. Eric Mykhalovskiy and Lorna Weir, "The Problem of Evidence-Based Medicine: Directions for Social Science," Social Science and Medicine 59 (2004): 1059-69;
77. Stephan Timmermans and Marc Berg, The Gold Standard: The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine and Standardization in Health Care (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2003).
78. Melanie Rock, "Deaths, Taxes, and the Midas Touch of Mary Tyler Moore: Accounting for Promises by Politicians to Help Avert and Control Diabetes," Medical Anthropological Quarterly 17, no. 2 (2003): 200-232.
79. Ferzacca, "Lived Food and Judgements of Taste at a Time of Disease" 61nd
80. "'Actually, I Don't Feel That Bad'";
81. Mykhalovskiy, McCoy, and Bresalier, "Compliance/Adherence, HIV, and the Critique of Medical Power."
82. Rock, "Deaths, Taxes, and the Midas Touch of Mary Tyler Moore" and "Numbered Days, Valued Lives: Statistics, Shopping, Pharmacy, and the Commodification of People," in Values and Valuables: From the Sacred to the Symbolic,
83. ed. Cynthia Werner and Duran Bell, Society for Economic Anthropology Monographs No. 21 (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 2004): 282-306.
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85. and "Reconstituting Populations through Evidence-Based Medicine."
86. Rock, "Numbered Days, Valued Lives."
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89. Young et al., "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Canada's First Nations."
90. For further discussion of the distinction between mechanism and cause, see Rock, "Figuring out Diabetes"; Allan Young, "Internalizing and Externalizing Medical Belief Systems: An Ethiopian Example," Social Science and Medicine 10 (1976): 5-23.
91. Rock, "Sweet Blood and Social Suffering"; Geoffrey Rose, "Sick Individuals and Sick Populations," International Journal of Epidemiology 14 (1985): 32-38.
92. Rock, "Figuring out Diabetes" and "Reconstituting Populations through Evidence-Based Medicine."
93. Benyshek, Martin, and Johnston, "A Reconsideration of the Origins of the Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic";
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95. Rock, "Sweet Blood and Social Suffering."
96. Hertzel C. Gerstein, "Dysglycaemia: A Cardiovascular Risk Factor," Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 40, supp. no. 1 (1998): 9-14.
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98. Daniel et al., "Glycated Hemoglobin as an Indicator of Social Environmental Stress"
99. "Social Environmental Stress in Indigenous Populations";
100. Jo C. Scheder, "A Sickly-Sweet Harvest: Farmworker Diabetes and Social Inequality," Medical Anthropological Quarterly 2, no. 3 (1988): 251-77;
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102. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds., Social Suffering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
103. For further discussion, see Benyshek, Martin, and Johnston, "A Reconsideration of the Origins of the Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic";
104. Rock, "Sweet Blood and Social Suffering."
105. Michael G. Marmot et al., "Employment Grade and Coronary Heart Disease in British Civil Servants," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 32, no. 4 (1978): 244-49.
106. Rose, "Sick Individuals and Sick Populations" and The Strategy of Preventative Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
107. Lieberman, "Diabetes."
108. John Last, ed., A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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111. Paul Farmer, "An Anthropology of Structural Violence," Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (2004): 305-25, and
112. "On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below," in Social Suffering,
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114. Laurence Kirmayer, "An Anthropology of Structural Violence (Comment)," Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (2004): 321-22;
115. Stephen Hiltgartner and Charles L. Bosk, "The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model," American Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): 53-78;
116. Rock, "Making Diabetics Count."
117. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976),
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120. Lochlann Jain, "'Come up to the Kool Taste'"; Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics," Public Culture 15(2002): 11-40.
121. Mykhalovskiy and Weir, "The Problem of Evidence-Based Medicine";
122. Timmermans and Berg, The Gold Standard;
123. Michael Traynor, "Introduction," special issue, "Understanding the Evidence-Based Movements," Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness, and Medicine 7, no. 3 (2003): 265-66.
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128. Mykhalovskiy, McCoy, and Bresalier, "Compliance/Adherence, HIV, and the Critique of Medical Power."