Conclusion

Abstract

The aim of this book has been to situate the relationship between people’s lived everyday experiences of a health condition—diabetes—against the wider, socio-political backdrop of discursive racialised constructions of risk. I aimed at exploring the ways in which a particular group of people think of diabetes, how it affects their daily lives, and the kinds of things they do to manage it. The varied, complex, and interconnected processes of race, ethnicity, and cultural identity have a symbolic and practical significance in how they were manifested in these ‘cultural negotiations’. The workings of identities and multilayered complexities of the intersection with health can be gleaned from what people do and the way they talk about their experiences. When these experiences were contextualised by biographical histories, knowledge, and ethno-religious and cultural identities, the resulting negotiated orders were seen as part of a dynamic, flexible, adaptive, and agency-driven modality. In short, I attempted to contrast what people did with what constructions of them claimed they did or were capable of. The ‘risky’ South Asian diabetic body emerges as an ongoing result of knowledge-generating and meaning-making racialised constructions of the ‘other’.