A critical study of diabetes in the popular imagination
Over twenty-nine million people in the United States, more than nine
percent of the population, have some form of diabetes. In Managing
Diabetes, Jeffrey A. Bennett focuses on how the disease is imagined in
public culture. Bennett argues that popular anecdotes, media
representation, and communal myths are as meaningful as medical and
scientific understandings of the disease.
In focusing on the public character of the disease, Bennett looks at
health campaigns and promotions as well as the debate over public
figures like Sonia Sotomayor and her management of type 1 diabetes.
Bennett examines the confusing and contradictory public depictions of
diabetes to demonstrate how management of the disease is not only
clinical but also cultural. Bennett also has type 1 diabetes and speaks
from personal experience about the many misunderstandings and myths that
are alive in the popular imagination. Ultimately, Managing Diabetes
offers a fresh take on how disease is understood in contemporary society
and the ways that stigma, fatalism, and health can intersect to shape
diabetes's public character. This disease has dire health implications,
and rates keep rising. Bennett argues that until it is better understood
it cannot be better treated.