Building Practical Knowledge in Deep Brain Stimulation in Greece: Navigating, Moving, Adjusting, Sensing

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Greece, this article explores the practical knowledge and agency enacted by persons living with deep brain stimulation (DBS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), as well as by their caregivers. It examines how these practices help make their worlds more habitable, particularly within a healthcare system where continuity of care is uncertain. As an under-the-skin technology, DBS is frequently presented within the Greek context as a technological solution to chronic illnesses and disabilities, premised on an imagined seamless human–machine integration. This understanding is not neutral; it sustains and legitimizes dominant constructions of technological bodyminds as passive recipients of technological intervention, obscuring their situated forms of action and expertise. Drawing on Science, Technology, and Society and Critical Disability Studies, I approach the implanted bodymind as a site of epistemic inquiry, rather than an object to be corrected. In doing so, the analysis is structured around four thematic clusters: navigating the Greek healthcare infrastructure, moving within a spacetime regime, adjusting parameters, and building knowledge through sensing. Despite important contributions, existing literature has given relatively little attention to how implanted and chronically ill persons, such as those with PD, enact knowledge and agency to make their worlds more habitable, especially in contexts shaped by economic constraints and bureaucratic complexity.