Assemblages of Cancer

Assemblages of cancer offers a comparative, in-depth analysis of breast cancer in the UK, France and Italy, 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 with breast cancer and medical professionals across the 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 analysis highlights the shared specificities and internal variations of breast cancer in the three countries. It explores how universal healthcare systems impacted by processes of privatisation, local variations in the workings of biomedicine, and local changes to the North-American pink ribbon discourses and advocacy, transform the experiences of breast cancer. The book 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 counter 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.