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Paper short abstract

Engagement of diabetes patients with the Serbian state to receive medical technologies, in which acts of adapting and improvising with their own body to qualify to receive (and keep) medical technologies present creative acts of agency and repair in the face of organized abandonment.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, I focus on the engagement of diabetes patients with the Serbian state to receive medical technologies and materials, where insulin pumps and sensors constitute sources of pleasure/displeasure, possibilities/impossibilities, care/harm (Winance 2010). Tinkering with the state regarding these medical aids in itself produces various affects and (im)possiblities. Medical technologies reconfigure the body and the self and how they are engaged with, and rendered knowable. Who qualifies for medical aids, knowing how to get them, having the opportunity to enter the process of receiving them, are complex issues. Acts of harming oneself and omitting the truth from the state in order to qualify to receive, and later, keep, medical technologies present acts of agency, rather than passive "waiting" for the possibility of receiving life-saving technology. What good care is in this case is thus a complicated matter, as it involves active interventions to one's own body to (potentially) receive (potentially) better care. Persons with diabetes in Serbia tinker among themselves, with patient organizations, with the state, and with technology and define what constitutes good care and the good life. The search for the good life via tinkering includes negotiations, asking questions, seeking advice, helping, receiving, collecting documents, managing technology, harming, keeping safe, experimenting, figuring out, mobilizing connections, enacting citizenship, waiting. What is equivalent to good diabetes care is contextual, and involves constant reconfigurations of the body, technology, and how the patients move in the world.