Embodying illness and managing the uncertainty

Entering a career of a person having a chronic illness implies the management of several situations of uncertainty. Through two pilot ethnographic researches carried on in Northern Italy and France among children affected by a type 1 diabetes, we have analysed how somatic instability due to the children’s growing up is intertwined with the instability of the manifestations of the illness. Managing this “new body”, therapeutic objects and technologies implies a reconfiguration of self, a path entangled with pitfalls and fruitful infringements. In this article, we put forward the concept of “savoir-faire” as more pertinent to express a bodily experience, embedded in material culture and the ability to cope with highly sensitive and unstable situations.