Cancer

Abstract

Previous work in the anthropology of cancer often examined causes, risks, and medical, familial, and embodied relationships created by the disease. Recent writing has expanded that focus, attending to cancer as a “total social fact” ( Jain 2013 ) and dissecting the landscape of “carcinogenic relationships” ( Livingston 2012 ). Cancer-driven relationships become subjectively real through individual suffering, stigma, and inequality. This article traces concepts developed from a primarily US-centered discourse to a global cancer discourse, including cancer-related issues continuing to raise concern such as stigma, narrative moments of critical reflection on the dominance of biomedicine, and processes by which individuals and communities manage inadequate access to biomedical technologies. Beyond the medical relations and politics of cancer, this article considers the ways in which ethnography addresses local moral worlds and differences that come to matter in attending to the disease, the person, and consequent social and material relations.

Patient pathways as social drama: a qualitative study of cancer trajectories from the patient’s perspective

“…In contrast to the cancer context in Botswana (Livingston, 2012), the access to appropriate conventional cancer care is well developed in Norway and may give the patients hope for healing (Delvecchio Good et al, 1990). The study of cancer pathways in Norway also shows a different picture than the inequality that is revealed in many contexts of cancer (McMullin, 2016). The welfare state's organization is built around the value of equality and the ideal of providing care to all, regardless of persons' social status and economy.…”

“…Previous anthropological cancer research has focused on various topics such as relationships, technology and hope, carcinogenic environments, politics and inequality, stigma and silence, cancer narratives and support groups in global contexts (McMullin, 2016). Livingston (2012) explores the medical landscape of Botswana.…”

INTERNATIONAL COLUMN: Supportive care needs in predicting the quality of life among gynecological cancer patients

“…In other words, the female patients with gynecological cancer were worried about their significant others rather than themselves. McMullin (2016) describes this phenomenon as the sociality of cancer, where the social context affects how the cancer patients attend to their disease. Livingston (2012) highlights that most patients in poor-resource settings are more concerned about the needs of their family instead of their own biomedical concerns.…”

Cancer and Conjugality in Contemporary Delhi: Mediating Life between Violence and Care

“…Such an examination of cancer intimacies-that encourages living on with already difficult relations and reconciling with distress-deepens and shifts how anthropologists have understood the social life of the disease. Specifically, anthropologists writing about cancer have demonstrated the ubiquity of a biotechnical imaginary of hope in the global north (McMullin 2016). Produced by a faith in imminent biotechnological cures and by corporations that commodify survival, this imaginary attracts capital, guides medical encounters and offers patients the possibility of survival and prolonged life (del Vecchio Good 2007;del Vecchio Good et al 1990).…”

“…While joining Jain's critique, I also draw on Juliet McMullin's (2016) insight that in places where treatments are even more inaccessible than in the United States, hope might not dominate public imaginations about cancer. Indeed, Julie Livingston's ethnography of cancer in Botswana describes how concerns about pain, rather than a discourse of hope, guides the experience of the disease (2012,.…”