World-wide, diabetes is taking on epidemic proportions. This is a debilitating disease that damages and destroys bodily systems unless blood sugar levels are kept close to normal, and patients are therefore urged to practise attentive self-management. Among people with type II diabetes in Vietnam, such everyday attentiveness seems to far exceed clinical recommendations, suffusing daily lives in pervasive and yet elusive ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Vietnam, this article aims to depict the lifeworlds in which diabetes attentiveness unfolds. Seeking to capture the inchoate ways in which diabetes alters everyday lives, the article develops literary displacement as an experimental mode of writing-cum-inquiry that combines standard ethnography with ethnographic fiction. Taking diabetes in Vietnam as its case, the article shows how literary displacement can contribute to cultivating ethnographic as well as analytical sensibilities, strengthening the capacity of anthropology to capture subtle and subdued layers of life.

中文翻译：

---

日常注意力：通过文学位移了解越南的糖尿病

在世界范围内，糖尿病正在流行。这是一种使人衰弱的疾病，除非血糖水平保持接近正常水平，否则会损害和破坏身体系统，因此敦促患者进行细心的自我管理。在越南的 II 型糖尿病患者中，这种日常注意力似乎远远超过了临床建议，以普遍但难以捉摸的方式渗透到日常生活中。本文借鉴在越南北部进行的民族志田野调查，旨在描绘糖尿病关注的生活世界。为了捕捉糖尿病改变日常生活的早期方式，文章发展了文学置换作为一种将标准民族志与民族志小说相结合的写作兼探究的实验模式。本文以越南的糖尿病为例，展示了文学置换如何有助于培养民族志和分析敏感性，增强人类学捕捉生活微妙和柔和层次的能力。