Sweet Blood Surveillance: An ethnographic approach to diabetes management through the Diabetes Care Network

Abstract: Is the management of Type 1 Diabetes best left to the medical sciences, or do the social sciences have a stake as well? In ‘Sweet Blood Surveillance,’ I push back against the perceived domination of scientific objectivity to make space for the subjective experience of diabetes in the maintenance of glucose levels through a collaboration with medical technical objects. To accomplish my task, I create an analytical tool, the Diabetes Care Network, in order to conceptualize the sociotechnical system of postmodern diabetes care, focusing on the social group of the User. Doing so generates insights in the political process of how the DCN is initiated, the semiotic nature of its maintenance, and the role of counter-hegemony in its reconstruction.