Accommodating care through strategic ignorance: The ambiguities of kidney disease amongst Yolnu renal patients in Australia's Northern Territory

Abstract

Chronic health conditions blur distinctions between states of health and illness. Conditions such as kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer are long-term, often incurable, and can cause fluctuating symptoms (WHO, 2018), reconfiguring the temporal dimensions of being unwell. Sometimes referred to as ‘silent killers’, chronic conditions may not be evident until a crisis point is reached and may rupture the way that people understand and experience their own corporeality (Anderson, 1995). As this chapter shows through ethnographic enquiry in collaboration with Yolŋu, an Australian Indigenous people,¹ diagnosis of chronic conditions does not necessarily create a sense of certainty, subjecting people to regimes of surveillance and further risk assessment to prevent disease progression and complications. As Heffernan and Cabrera Torrecilla (both this volume) demonstrate, perceptions of crisis, rupture and liminality can disturb temporal experience. Here I show how the uncertainties of chronic conditions shape temporality and bring about new social and spatial imaginaries of centre and periphery, health and illness, and closeness and distance experienced through care. Show more