Cultural Anthropology
laurettemcguire422@yahoo.com
My research focuses on the rise of Type II diabetes in American Indian communities. Examining the discourse between researchers, geneticists, health care providers and their patients elucidates the linkage of type II diabetes in American Indian populations and larger social processes such as genetics, race, colonialism, and global capitalism. The goal of this work is to understand the mechanisms that perpetuate the hegemony of scientific knowledge as it constructs the diabetic body as belonging to a specific category of Otherness. The construction of this Other diabetic body becomes a field for capitalist expansion and supports existing racial and economic orders. As a result this work will contribute to a better understanding of how diabetes has become the newest epidemic in Native communities and constitutes contemporary racialized and politicized domains for the exercise of power.