Inscriptions Assemblages of Cancer

A qualitative, social science study using multi-sited ethnography and qualitative interviews with patients and medical professionals that analyses breast cancer experiences and how they are shaped by the interaction with biomedical, institutional and cultural contexts in the UK, France and Italy. Assemblages of cancer offers an in-depth comparative analysis of breast cancer, linking patients’ experiences with the biomedical, political and cultural context of the disease. The book is based on ten years of ethnographic research with patients and medical professionals across the UK, France and Italy, highlighting both the shared specificities and internal variations of breast cancer across these three countries. It shows how breast cancer experiences can be best understood as provisional assemblages involving transformed bodies, uncertainties linked to a possible relapse, and tinkering with standardised protocols and pathways to make treatments work for each patient. The book explores how experiences of breast cancer are transformed by universal healthcare systems impacted by processes of privatisation, local variations in the workings of biomedicine, and changes to the ‘pink ribbon’ discourses and advocacy. It presents an in-depth analysis of how breast cancer and its treatments alter not only women’s bodies but also their personal and professional lives. It further analyses patients’ strategies to attempt build new meaning and values around the uncertainties brought by cancer and its consequences. Assemblages of cancer is an essential contribution to the social studies of medicine that, by redefining the relations between illness, biomedicine and society, develops a new understanding of breast cancer in contemporary Europe. Assemblages of cancer illustrates the tensions in the experiences and context of breast cancer in Western Europe. Breast cancer is presented as a success story in oncology, especially in countries with advanced, universal healthcare systems. At the same time, individual experiences are shaped by uncertainty, local variability of healthcare provisions, and the need for patients to assemble information about the treatments, knowledge on healthcare systems navigation, and different processes of meaning-making to manage the uncertainty and variability characterising individual outcomes. The book explores both how individual bodies and experiences are transformed by different local medical practices, institutions and discourses of breast cancer and how patients need to find their own way in these contexts. Assemblages of cancer is based on ten years of ethnographic work with patients and medical professionals in the UK, France and Italy.