Cancer and the Politics of Care: Inequalities and Interventions in Global Perspective - Paperback

by Linda Rae Bennett (Editor), Lenore Manderson (Editor), Belinda Spagnoletti (Editor)

An ethnographic examination of the effects of structural inequalities on cancer treatment around the world.

Taking an ethnographic approach, the contributors to this book offer new examinations of cancer and its treatment to show how social, economic, race, gender, and other structural inequalities intersect, compound, and complicate health inequalities. Cancer experiences and impacts are explored across eleven countries: Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, France, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Senegal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The volume engages with specific cancers from the point of primary prevention to screening, diagnosis, treatment (or its absence), and end-of-life care. Cancer and the Politics of Care traverses new theoretical terrain by explicitly critiquing cancer interventions, their limitations and success, the politics that drive them, and their embeddedness in local cultures and value systems. Its diversity and innovation ensure its wide utility among those working in and studying medical anthropology, social anthropology, and other fields at the intersections of social science, medicine, and health equity.

Author Biography

Linda Rae Bennett is associate professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne. Lenore Manderson is distinguished professor of public health and medical anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Belinda Spagnoletti works for the Adelaide Primary Health Network.