ABSTRACT
So far this book has talked of individual patients and the ways in which ‘choice’ and ‘care’ configure their situation. However, people do not live alone, they form collectives. This chapter considers how the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’ relate in the context of health care. Is a collective the sum total of a number of individuals added together, or can we only understand what individuals are if we first learn about the – various – collectives to which they belong? And should public health be improved by asking individuals to change their behaviour, or by interfering with the conditions in which collectives live? The logic of choice and the logic of care answer these questions in different ways. To show this, I will again talk about life with diabetes in the Netherlands. But improving ‘public health’ includes trying to prevent disease and currently nobody knows how to prevent type 1 diabetes. For this reason I will widen the scope of my discussion and more directly include type 2 diabetes and attempts to prevent it.
