As part of the Seminar of the SASA Institute of Ethnography, research associate  Jelena Vukićević, PhD, delivered a lecture “Cultural Conceptualization of Health Risks: Biomedical Model, Social Control, and Self-Care.” Vukićević, PhD, presented her current research to her colleagues, which focuses on narratives of illness among chronic patients and Foucault’s concept of self-care. Aiming to complement her earlier studies on the connections between health, biomedicine, risk discourse, and neoliberal governance, Vukićević,PhD, shifts her focus in her current research from macro-level, structures of power and publicly proclaimed discourses to the individual. Considering the impact of long-term illness experiences on the construction of subjectivity, Vukićević, PhD, examines narratives of illness through the lens of Foucault’s concept of self-care. With a reflection on the biomedical notion of self-care and the inadequacy of its application in this context, her goal is also to highlight how Foucault’s concept of self-care allows for a better understanding of the ways chronic patients affect and construct themselves during and through the experience of illness.