Diabetogenic diets and culture in a diasporic Indian community: depathologizing lifestyles in Debe, Trinidad
December 7, 12:00 PM
For this lecture, I draw upon doctoral research conducted into Type 2 diabetes management practices within an Indian diasporic community in the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean to interrogate the tensions between the pathologizing of Indian Trinidadian ethnic practices as part of the biosocial identity of “diabetogenic” in healthcare setting. In this guest lecture, I explore small-scale acts of living, growing, and consuming engaged in by persons with Type 2 diabetes as resistant and resilient practices that invoked and materially constituted Indian Trinidadian histories and identity practices as inherently anti-diabetic. Through this analysis, I consider a theory of scale in which agency is articulated through social and cultural practices and can be explicated alongside the overwhelming forces of state and capital.