192 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
1 bw, 4 color, 1 table
Paperback
Release Date:14 Apr 2023
ISBN:9781978826847
Cancer Entangled
Anticipation, Acceleration, and the Danish State
Edited by Rikke Sand Andersen and Marie Louise Tørring
Rutgers University Press
Cancer Entangled explores the shifts that took place in Denmark around the millennium, when health promoters set out to minimize delays in cancer diagnoses in hope of improving cancer survival. The authors suggest a temporal reframing of cancer control that emphasizes the importance of focusing on how people – potential patients as well as health care professionals – experience and anticipate cancer before a diagnosis or a prediction has been made. This argument compellingly challenges and augments anthropological work on cancer control that has privileged attention to the productive role of science and technology and to life with cancer or cancer risk. By offering rich ethnographic insights into the introduction of the first cancer vaccine, cancer signs and symptoms, public discourses on delays, social class and care seeking, cancer suspicion in the clinic, as well as the work on fast-track referral – the book convincingly situates cancer control in an ethical registrar involving attention to acceleration and time, showing how cancer waiting times become an index of the "state of the nation".
Cancer Entangled is a remarkable edited collection that chronicles the social life and shaping of cancer in Denmark. Andersen and Tørring have crafted a vital contribution to the anthropology of cancer that innovatively weaves intimate experiences of surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment with historico-political analyses of the birth of 'fast-track cancer pathways' within the Danish healthcare system. Cancer Entangled is a must read for all anthropologists, sociologists, STS scholars, and political scientists interested in healthcare.
Cancer Entangled explores how the miasma of the potential of cancer infiltrates and weighs on people’s ordinary lives as well as clinical experiences. The impact of anticipatory cancer within a welfare state is at the core of each of the chapters, yet each individual chapter contributes a contextually different perspective, contributing to our understanding of the broader context. This is a conversation well worth joining!
RIKKE SAND ANDERSEN is an anthropologist and professor with special responsibilities in the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University and the Department of Public Health, Research Unit of General Practice, University of Southern Denmark. She has written extensively on cancer diagnostics, the production of cancer symptoms and care seeking practices.
MARIE LOUISE TØRRING is an associate professor and research program director of anthropology at Aarhus University. For the past decade, she has conducted epidemiological and anthropological research on contemporary cancer transitions, in particular how cancer was reframed as an "acute disease".
MARIE LOUISE TØRRING is an associate professor and research program director of anthropology at Aarhus University. For the past decade, she has conducted epidemiological and anthropological research on contemporary cancer transitions, in particular how cancer was reframed as an "acute disease".
Introduction: Crafting Cancer Anticipations
Rikke Sand Andersen
Chapter 1: The Waiting Time Paradox: Intensifying Public Discourses on the Vital Character of Cancer Waiting Times
Marie Louise Tørring
Chapter 2: Accelerated Diagnostics in Slow Motion: Ordinary Dramas of Life and Death
in the Middle Class
Sara Marie Hebsgaard Offersen
Chapter 3: “What If It Is Just Hiding?”: Care Seeking in the Context of Symptom Expansion
Rikke Sand Andersen
Chapter 4: Cancer, Inequality, and Expectations of Sameness
Camilla Hoffmann Merrild
Chapter 5: The Ghost of Cancer in the Clinic
Benedikte Møller Kristensen
Chapter 6. Making Cancer Patient Pathways Work
Rikke Aarhus
Chapter 7: “Keeping an Eye on It”: Infrastructures of Lung Cancer Uncertainty and Certainty
Michal Frumer
Chapter 8: Silent Cancer Vaccine Encounters: Young Women’s Experiences with Suspected HPV Vaccine Adverse Reactions
Stine Hauberg Nielsen
Afterword: Urgency, Modernity, and Pace in Cancer Care
Lenore Manderson
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Rikke Sand Andersen
Chapter 1: The Waiting Time Paradox: Intensifying Public Discourses on the Vital Character of Cancer Waiting Times
Marie Louise Tørring
Chapter 2: Accelerated Diagnostics in Slow Motion: Ordinary Dramas of Life and Death
in the Middle Class
Sara Marie Hebsgaard Offersen
Chapter 3: “What If It Is Just Hiding?”: Care Seeking in the Context of Symptom Expansion
Rikke Sand Andersen
Chapter 4: Cancer, Inequality, and Expectations of Sameness
Camilla Hoffmann Merrild
Chapter 5: The Ghost of Cancer in the Clinic
Benedikte Møller Kristensen
Chapter 6. Making Cancer Patient Pathways Work
Rikke Aarhus
Chapter 7: “Keeping an Eye on It”: Infrastructures of Lung Cancer Uncertainty and Certainty
Michal Frumer
Chapter 8: Silent Cancer Vaccine Encounters: Young Women’s Experiences with Suspected HPV Vaccine Adverse Reactions
Stine Hauberg Nielsen
Afterword: Urgency, Modernity, and Pace in Cancer Care
Lenore Manderson
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
