Focusing on cancer from social sciences

LUXARDO N.

Tarragona

Conferencia; Encounters and engagements: Creating new agendas for medical anthropology.; 2013

EASA Medical Anthropology Network. AAA Society for medical Anthropology

Medical antropology was one of the first fields -along with the sociology of health- that proposed to study cancer beyond clinical-epidemiological or psychological variables. Instead, it has provided insights -and also heuristic and theoretical tools- in order to identify the metaphors, symbolism, conceptualizations and frameworks that people use to interpret their symptons and to make sense of it, giving meaning to the illness experience and considering the decision-making process as regards treatments, available options and –eventually- the end-of-life care. The general outline of the research that was carried out in Argentina and that will be presented in the conference, focus on describing the heterogeneity of cancer experiences in relation to its impact on the daily lives, challenges, role of kinships in caregiving, social networks and other informal care arrengements, obstacles and facilitators to health care access, sanitary bureaucreacy components, etc. The methodology developed is based in an ethnography, for exploring local words meanings, but also relies on the combination of methods, such as secondary data analysis of cancer registries from oncology´s institutes and epidemiogical sources that provide the map of prevalence and incidence of cancer. The research also aims to highlight the macro-dimensions of the phenomenon, specially the socio-economic, political and historical inequalities that are responsible for the experiences depicted. Theoretical categories such as illness trajectories, embodiment, cancer narratives, therapeutic emplotment are discussed within the research. The study is related to a group of anthropologists who are working in cancer field internationally, and who are inter-connected by participating in previous workshops and a book proposal.